Kathy Nicklaus, infamous Republican Waukesha County Clerk, had more problems last night. And this time the media is paying attention. Unfortunately, the only reason they're paying attention is because they were inconvenienced.
For those who haven't been following the Waukesha overseer of elections, she's the person who magically "found" 8000 votes 3 days after last years elections to overturn a Kloppenburg win for a seat on the State Supreme Court into a victory for notorious RWr David (The Choker) Prosser. Despite numerous election problems for years, the people of Waukesah keep on re-electing her.
Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus may have done her re-election campaign no favors Tuesday night when her plans to post timely election results online for the public and update them periodically failed.
When her staff went to upload data delivered by local clerks in packs and cards into her computer program, it didn't work.
We already know that she tallies all the election results on her own separate, non-networked computer in her office running her own software.
As a result, her staff manually entered every vote total for every candidate in every race and every municipality by hand, and then proofed them against the voting machine tapes before posting them online.
Waukesha is always the last County to post election results, but last nights results left reporters scratching their heads. And it's that which caused todays report of problems.
Meanwhile, frustrated reporters and data collectors for election result reporting services were left to locate races on yards of paper tapes that hung from walls around a meeting room and calculate totals themselves. Some reporters gave up after their smart phones, which were put into service as calculators, burned through their charges after several hours.
Nearly complete results were finally posted more than 6 hours after the polls closed, long after results elsewhere had been finalized.
Asked whether it raised new questions about her competence after an all-nighter in her office, she said, "What it does say is that I'm willing to stay and get the job done. That's exactly what I did."
So ...... shenanigans with vote counting - OK. Continually late results posting - OK. Finding enough votes to overturn election results 3 days after the election - some raised eyebrows, maybe. But make reporters stay up past their bed times (and use up the charges on their mobile devices) - worthy of a news article.
Go figure.
I wish I could post a picture, because the picture at the top of the linked article kind of says it all.
H/T ericlewis0 for helping me post the pic of the Waukesha mess.
Update: Bwahahahaha Edition: Remember the Walker Whine about us protesters "damaging" the State Capitol with an estimate of $7.5 million dollars for repairs? Yes? OK. Remember when actual things needed repair were surveyed, it turned out that most of the damage was caused by the news media taping cables to the floor? Yes? OK.
The final bill is in.
Less than $200,000.
The cost of cleaning walls, reseeding grass and hiring a consultant was significant but was still less than 3% of an early guess hazarded by Gov. Scott Walker's administration in court on March 3, 2011 at the height of the protests.
As of March 15, the state had spent $197,459. Webster said that figure is close to final, though it still could see an additional $20,000 in landscaping work.
Jason Tish, executive director of the Madison Trust for Historic Preservation, said that it made sense to take those precautions in cleaning and restoring the Capitol considering its importance.
"It's quite a reasonable cost considering there were hundreds of thousands of people coming in and out of the Capitol" and walking on the grounds, Tish said.
The costs included:
$65,000 to reseed grass and replace trampled shrubs and bushes harmed by the large crowds that at times covered the Capitol lawn.
$43,520 to pay three limited-term workers to clean large swathes of the Capitol walls to remove tape residue. The workers earned $13 an hour and worked just over 1,040 hours each.
$30,504 for overtime paid to custodial workers in February and March of 2011.
$17,500 to remove marker stains from walls and replace some damaged pieces of stone.
$13,750 to pay a consultant to assess the damage to the Capitol and what needed to be done to restore it.
Bwahahahaha! Nice try, Snotty.
Scottenfreuden. I love it.