"County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus said some returns from the City of Waukesha inexplicably had data recorded in the wrong column, which momentarily skewed..." [Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, September 14, 2006]
I don't tend to track the blow-by-blow minutia of electoral politics but Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus' bizarre surprise announcement--that she has found thousands of (election flipping) misplaced votes, from the hotly-contested election for the Wisconsin Supreme Court--which Nickolaus says she "forgot to save" on the Microsoft Access database running on her personal computer, makes me wonder.
Actually, I'm incredulous. Here's why.
It's not merely the fact that Microsoft Access has a convenient auto-save function, such that Nickolaus, running the database program with the voting results of the contested on her personal computer, would not have to intentionally "save" any voting data in the first place.
And, it's not merely the fact that Nickolaus, an amateur computer programmer, was at the center of a state political corruption probe back in 2002, conveniently granted immunity because she became a state witness.
And it's not merely the fact that Nickolaus used to work for judge Prosser, who may be installed in office--in Wisconsin's highest court where he can adjudicate the labor rights dispute currently roiling the state--because of Nickolaus alleged serendipitous incompetence. Nor the fact that she has been a Wisconsin Republican party financial donor.
Rather, it's the accumulation of such data points. I'll leave it to folks who currently have Lexis-Nexus to access the full September 14, 2006 Wisconsin Journal Sentinel story quoted above.
update: a Michigan blogger who seems to know Nickolaus has an amusingly acerbic take on the situation: "she would have been willing to steal the election if she could have, but I don't think she got the chance.
It's important to understand first that Nickolaus was at the very center of a conspiracty to embezzle millions of dollars of public money, which was secretly used to create voter lists for the Wisconsin Republican Party. (Unfortunately, that operation was matched by an exact mirror-image, which was operating on behalf of the Democrats.) By the time it was all over, both the Speaker of the Assembly (Republican) and the Majority Leader of the State Senate (Democrat) were convicted and sent to prison. Nickolaus was granted immunity from prosecution in exchange for her testimony, but there isn't the slightest doubt that she was involved in huge diversions of public funds.
Dismissed from her job running the political operation for the now disgraced Speaker, she returned to her base in Waukesha where she was elected County Clerk. There, she has acquired a reputation for ruthless partisanship, indifference to propriety, and inability to follow instructions."
Maybe the election was fair and legitimate, maybe not. We'll likely never know for sure. By some reports Kathy Nickolaus is a die-hard conservative Christian political activist and whether that is the case or not, it seems clear that she is an extremely well placed Republican political operative. As a general principle, a few well-placed partisans can have immense political impact--that's accepted doctrine among the leaders of the politicized segment of Christianity which I study. Here are a few examples [note: I don't mean to imply that Nickolaus is part of the movement I cover below.]
On June 7, 2009, at Sarah Palin's long-time church the Wasilla Assembly of God, International Coalition of Apostles member Lance Wallnau told church members,
"We have to actually be broadcasting the kingdom--in ways that are stealth as well as in-your-face, ways that are overt and covert. The church has virtually lost the elegance and the art of the covert. The covert is what Daniel did in Babylon, what Joseph did in Egypt, what Esther did in Persia. The covert means, “I don’t need to plaster a Jesus bumper sticker on my forehead to take territory."
As Wallnau stresses in such talks, 3-5 percent of a population, situated at the tops of the "Seven Mountains", can dominate a culture and prevail over the rest of the population, who according to Wallnau "are irrelevant".
Last weekend I attended a conference at Harvard that featured, as speakers, Wallnau and other leading proponents of the "Seven Mountains" doctrine which urges right-wing Christians to covertly seek dominance of the "7 Mountains", seven key sectors of society - the family, religion, arts & entertainment, media, education, business, and last, but not least, government.
Another speaker at the conference was International Coalition of Apostles member Pat Francis, who during a 2009 religio-political conference (there's video footage of the event) near Honolulu told an audience, which included the Hawaii Republican Party's future nominee who ran against Democratic Party US Senator Daniel Inouye, Cam Cavasso,
"we are charged, standing guard, and we put our foot on Hawaii. And you said every place we put our foot, we will rule. So we are the Kingdom, the Kingdom is here.
Therefore in Jesus name, the King of Kings, so rule in Hawaii, and the people of Hawaii are blessed... we break the power of witchcraft power, every witchcraft power we drive you out, in the name of Jesus.
The church is alive in Hawaii. The church is powerful in Hawaii."
The 2010 election effort, run out of right-wing Hawaii churches, to achieve political dominance over Hawaii government did not succeed--in part because of publicity, according to Republican gubernatorial candidate James "Duke" Aiona, over Aiona's ties to the evangelical right, ministries under International Coalition of Apostles member Ed Silvoso, to be specific. It didn't help Aiona to be closely tied to a movement whose leaders boast, in print, of the need to burn Catholic religious relics, Books of Mormon, and native art (Hawaiian native art included).
That was one battle, out of many, in 2010. A decade prior, a covert Christian culture warrior linked to the ICA's apostles and prophets, Florida Attorney General Katherine Harris, shut down the Florida State vote recount in the 2000 presidential election.
In 2008, a longtime friend and prayer-group member of ICA apostle Mary Glazier was picked as John McCain's vice presidential running mate in the 2008 election. Her name? It escapes me at the moment, but I think it starts with "P". I do recall this however - the next year, in 2009, Lance Wallnau showed up at her longtime church, the Wasilla Assembly of God, to deliver a talk on covert politicized Christianity.
Last weekend at a movement conference held at Harvard (the Social Transformation Conference), I had the occasion to have coffee with Wallnau and his fellow ICA apostle Os Hillman. I told the two that secular and liberal Americans don't have a clue about how sophisticated their movement is, or how radically it has reinvented evangelical Christianity. They didn't challenge the point.