Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus today rejected calls for her resignation with a statement saying she plans to serve out her term. She is the clerk who "forgot to save" the April 5th Wisconsin Supreme Court votes from Brookfield, Wisconsin into her spreadsheet, thereby omitting them from the totals she reported to the media that evening. The Chairman of the Waukesha County Democratic Party, and others, suggested this week that she should resign.
She claims to have discovered the error on the morning of April 6th, but failed to notify the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board (GAB) or the lone Democratic member of the Waukesha County Canvass Board until late on the afternoon of April 7th, after the official canvass was finalized. By that time, challenger Joanne Kloppenburg had already declared a narrow, 204 vote victory over conservative incumbent and former Wisconsin Assembly Republican Speaker David Prosser.
Nickolaus sat on the news that Prosser would likely be the recipient of a 7,500 vote swing for at least 28 hours. News leaked out when it was reported first by a right-wing Milwaukee radio host on the afternoon of April 7th that the Waukesha County Clerk would be adding 7,500 net votes for Prosser to the official totals.
From Nickolaus's statement, as reported by the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel:
"I will serve the remainder of my term," Nickolaus said. "I understand why people are upset and I am taking this matter seriously. Again, I am sorry for my mistake."
"I have immediately begun the process of reviewing my procedures," with the Government Accountability Board and Waukesha County auditor, she said.
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Nickolaus's actions were reviewed by the GAB, but the head of that agency, Kevin Kennedy, declared that the numbers add up and no evidence of criminal activity was discovered. The GAB probers have not issued a final report, but it's not surprising that they found no criminal activity, given Kennedy's announcement last week before the investigation began:
We have confidence in Wisconsin’s county and municipal clerks, and do not believe any of them would do anything illegal to jeopardize their own reputation, or Wisconsin’s reputation for clean, fair and transparent elections.
One of the responsibilities of the GAB is to train county clerks on election procedures and to make sure that Wisconsin elections are administered openly and fairly. They have an obvious conflict of interest in evaluating the questionable results from Waukesha County and the performance of the clerk whose errors, mishaps, and secretive hoarding of results in previous elections they failed to investigate earlier. Any acknowledgement that Nickolaus failed in her duties is an admission that the GAB failed to provide proper supervision or training.
The U.S. Department of Justice has acknowledged receiving a request from Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin for a federal investigation.Updated by Giles Goat Boy at Tue Apr 12, 2011 at 04:13 PM CDT
From blue aardvark in the comments, you can contact the DOJ here and encourage them to investigate:
http://www.justice.gov/...
Updated by Giles Goat Boy at Tue Apr 12, 2011 at 04:14 PM CDT