Counting and tabulating ballots requires a high degree of precision, so the fact that Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus deviated from standard operating procedure has to raise all kinds of red flags, especially in the wake of Nickolaus's bizarre explanation of how she forgot to save nearly 15,000 votes from Brookfield.
According to Ramona Kitzinger, Democratic Party representative on the Waukesha Board of Canvassers since 2004, "On Tuesday night, I received a voice message from someone in the office of Clerk Kathy Nickolaus informing me of a Wednesday canvass meeting, which I returned the next morning and said I would be able to report into the canvass by noon, which I did. Normally the canvass would begin at 9am on Thursday, as has been the general practice for many years. No one explained why they were beginning the canvass on Wednesday, just to please report immediately."
The canvass continued on Thursday, finally concluding around 4:30 PM. Kitzinger said Nickolaus did not inform her of the situation with the Brookfield votes until after the canvass was complete, just before the press conference where Nickolaus publicly announced the change in the vote total.
It should be noted that Nickolaus had leaked the story about the found votes from Brookfield prior to the press conference, while Kitzinger was still in the dark about the situation.
Nickolaus also deviated from standard operating procedure in the manner in which Waukesha County vote totals were publicly posted on the county's website. The PDF file containing the official results includes county-wide totals with no breakdown by precinct or municipality. This runs contrary to each posted set of election results going all the way back to Nickolaus's first day in her tenure as Waukesha County Clerk. All previous postings contain breakdowns by precinct and municipality. And it should be noted that, as of Tuesday, 41 of Wisconsin's 72 counties had posted results with precinct and/or municipal breakdowns.
In trying to determine why Nickolaus veered away from standard operating procedure, I am reminded of the SOB the brilliant dark comedy by Blake Edwards where there's a discussion among some of the characters about the Hollywood way of doing things and the common use of "Standard Operating Bullshit" as a means to continually misdirect people away from the truth.
As far as Nickolaus, her actions absolutely reek of cover-up. I believe she started the canvass a day early to keep Kitzenger close in order to keep her in the dark and control the information she was receiving.
As far as the posted vote totals, that's simply a way of covering her tracks. Obviously, given easy access to information thanks to the Internet, if Nickolaus had posted actual ward-by-ward, precinct-by-precinct totals, she would have been quickly exposed, if she did indeed enter Brookfield's totals twice as many of us believe.
The importance of not posting this kind of information is especially crucial considering that she may have pulled this exact stunt before. As reported by Daily Kos, in the 2006 election for governor and attorney general, the number of people voting for those two offices actually exceeded the total number of votes cast by nearly 20,000. This information is right there in black and white on the Waukesha County website. Surely, Nickolaus has learned not to publicly post incriminating information. Of course, it is truly amazing that it has taken four and a half years for anyone to notice this clear case of hanky-panky from the 2006 election.
So what might have happened on Tuesday night? Vampire Cabbie can only speculate, but given the way the votes were swinging back and forth, it seems that at a certain point, Nickolaus decided she might try to fix things, if David Prosser needed the help. Perhaps she was keeping that last bullet in the chamber, but in order to prepare for the nuclear option she ended up using, she had an assistant place the call to Kitzinger. She knew Brookfield had the right number of votes to swing the election and put Prosser just over the .5 percent threshold prevented a recount from being paid for by the State of Wisconsin.
Still, there is one troublesome question: Given the heightened attention and close scrutiny of this election, how did Nickolaus think she would get away with counting Brookfield's votes twice?
Vampire Cabbie has some thoughts and will take a bite out of those next time. Stay tuned.