Recount necessary — for one, Waukesha County Voting Irregularities go back to 2004

We’ve been having interesting times this year in Wisconsin, with protests against Governor Scott Walker and the Wisconsin state Senate Republicans for passing Walker’s “budget repair bill” that stripped public employee union members of their collective bargaining rights, then a hotly-contested state Supreme Court election that looked to be won by the challenger, JoAnne Kloppenburg by about 200 votes over incumbent Justice David Prosser.

Realize that right now, the Wisconsin state Supreme Court (with David Prosser as a sitting Justice) has a 4-3 conservative-liberal/centrist edge; then realize that Walker’s “budget-repair bill” is likely headed to the Supreme Court.  Then realize that David Prosser is a former Republican Speaker of the Assembly (Wisconsin’s lower house, equivalent to the federal House of Representatives) . . . that’s why the race for state Supreme Court justice was so vitally important.

But then came Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus — County Clerk of the “reddest” Republican district in the entire state —  who said she’d “forgotten to save” the accurate count for the Town of Brookfield two days after the election was over; when those votes were added in, all of a sudden Prosser led Kloppenburg by over 7,000 votes. 

And that’s where it’s stood ever since; the Government Accountability Board is still investigating Waukesha and its County Clerk, but has certified the results of the Supreme Court election.   Because the vote totals were so close (each candidate had about 750,000 votes), and is within 1/2 of a percentage point (meaning Prosser leads Kloppenburg right now with 50.04% of the vote to Kloppenburg’s 49.96% or something along those lines), the state of Wisconsin must pick up the tab if a recount is requested.

Because a 7,000 vote margin is nearly impossible to make up — especially when that margin is established after the voting is over, because a county clerk “realized (her) error” — the Kloppenburg campaign is still mulling over whether to request this recount.

However, with all the allegations regarding the problems in Waukesha County alone, a recount must be requested — only then will the voters of Wisconsin know that all the votes have been properly tallied.  A hand-recount is absolutely vital, and remains the only way to know for certain who voted for whom and why — right now, the canvass only counted vote totals, and we know totals can be manipulated deliberately (as well as be wrong due to human error).

But I am getting ahead of myself.

Waukesha County’s problems are worse than just this year, folks.  In fact, Waukesha County’s problems are so bad that it’s absolutely, positively stunning.

For example, in Waukesha County in 2006, there were more votes cast than there were voters.

Here’s a link:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/04/11/965994/-%28updated%29-Waukesha-voting-irregularities-go-back-to-2004

And here’s a quote:

WAUKESHA COUNTY, WISCONSIN
NOVEMBER 7, 2006

PRECINCTS COUNTED (OF 211).  .  .  .  .       210   99.53
REGISTERED VOTERS – TOTAL .  .  .  .  .        0
BALLOTS CAST – TOTAL.  .  .  .  .  .  .            156,804

GOVERNOR/LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR
DOYLE/LAWTON (DEM)  .  .  .  .  .  .  .    61,401   34.86
GREEN/HUNDERTMARK (REP).  .  .  .  .   112,242   63.73
EISMAN/TODD (WGR).  .  .  .  .  .  .  .     2,320    1.32
WRITE-IN.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .             149     .08

ATTORNEY GENERAL
 KATHLEEN FALK (DEM) .  .  .  .  .  .  .    55,608   31.95              
 J.B. VAN HOLLEN (REP)  .  .  .  .  .  .     118,342   67.99              
 WRITE-IN.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .            97     .06

SECRETARY OF STATE                                                      
 DOUG LA FOLLETTE (DEM) .  .  .  .  .  .    68,302   40.07              
 SANDY SULLIVAN (REP).  .  .  .  .  .  .     96,199   56.44              
 MICHAEL LAFOREST (WGR) .  .  .  .  .  .   5,886    3.45              
 WRITE-IN.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .              53     .03

So, do you see it? In the race for Governor/Lieutenant Governor there were a total of 176,112 votes cast. For Attorney General there were a total of 174,047 votes cast. And for Secretary of State there were a total 170,440 votes cast.

So, look at the 3rd line of the top of that report…Total Ballots Cast: 156,804. So based on those numbers 20,000 extra votes were cast in the election that weren’t actually accounted for in the ballots cast. Again, another sign of election fraud.

(Quote ends.)

Note that the original figures are available here:

http://www.waukeshacounty.gov/uploadedFiles/Media/List_Documents/County_Clerk/2006_Official_Election_Results/Official_Election_Combined_Summary_Nov20_2006.LST

And that’s not all — also from this DKos article, did you know that in 2004, apparently a whopping 97.63% — no, that’s not a misprint — of registered voters went out to vote?  And that in 2005, an off-year for elections, 50,000 new voters were registered when in ’04 there was only a 1.3% increase (about 3,000 voters) for a hotly-contested Presidential election?

I’m sorry, folks; this does not pass the “smell test.”  Something’s really off here.

A good friend of mine found all this out from this blog, and posted it to my Facebook page:

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110415/23002413918/wisconsin-county-that-found-lost-votes-apparently-has-major-voting-irregularities-years.shtml

As this latter blog from Tech Dirt points out:

To say the least, these numbers are pretty troubling if you believe in the integrity of democratic elections.

Amen to that — and that’s exactly why we need a hand recount of all the ballots cast in the recent Supreme Court election.