The recount for Wisconsin's April 5th election for Supreme Court is scheduled to run 13 days. The deadline is May 9th. Today was day 7, so are we over halfway? Yes and no.
The Government Accountability Board (GAB) has this on their dedicated recount page:
As of 5:45 pm on Tuesday, May 3, 2011, 2,512 Reporting Units have reported results, which have been reviewed by G.A.B. staff. That is approximately 69 percent of the of the 3,602 total Reporting Units.
So far, counties have recounted 960,269 votes, which is approximately 64 percent of the orginal votes cast in the State Supreme Court race.
Mnay of Wisconsin's 72 counties are done, including Grant County. Most of the rest of the counties are on or ahead of schedule. For those that aren't (cough, cough, WAUKESHA, cough), the GAB has this instruction in one of their bulletins:
Recounts are required by §9.01 (1) (5)(ar)(3) to be completed thirteen days from the date of the G.A.B. order, requiring the Boards of Canvassers to be complete the recount by May 9, 2011. The G.A.B. requests that you assess your current progress and determine when the Board of Canvassers will finish the recount. If you believe you may not finish by the deadline, please notify the G.A.B. by sending electronic communication to GABRecount@wi.gov. Please notify us by 5:00 p.m. tomorrow, Wednesday, May 4th, as it may be necessary that we request a court order if an extension is required for any counties.
The GAB's nightly spreadsheet does not include all the votes they describe above as counted. The GAB reviews them first before including them, but here's where we stand on the votes that have been both recounted and reviewed. The "Total of Votes Cast" in the reviewed counties has increased by 874. That includes a gain of 140 by Prosser, 437 for Kloppenburg, and 297 for write-ins ("scattered".)
That gives Kloppenburg a net gain of 297 votes so far.
Waukesha County continues to lag behind. They are livestreaming their recount here. Every time I take a look, they seem to be discussing a problem with the ballot bags. I know of 8 "chain of custody" issues where bags were not labeled or do not have matching tag numbers. There may be more. I can only watch a bit at a time.
Today I watched two discussions of bags that had significant problems (these were in addition to the 3 unlabeled bags I wrote about in my diary from this morning.) One was torn and retaped and the other had a large gap where the bag was supposed to be sealed.The local clerk (not the county clerk) in charge of that municipality explained the tape as a problem with the bags being so full and having to "jam them" into the metal storage containers.
The Kloppenburg observers came very close to formally challenging the other bag. It had a gap that the observer said was large enough to allow a hand in to pull out ballots (or add some, I presume.) The problem appeared to be the way the top of the bag was improperly gathered and sealed. The clerk explained that her precinct worker at that polling station has an arthritic hand, so they added extra "airholes" to bags to make them easier to gather and seal, but it apparently didn't help.
I'm not making this up.
The count continued. When these disputes have come up, the disputed bags are counted separately and the details are all entered on the record. If enough of these "anomalies" (that's Wisconsinese for "hanging chad", also known as "human error") are documented, it's likely the Kloppenburg campaign will challenge the results of the Waukesha recount in court. That would all happen after the recount.
I get the impression the Kloppenburg observers are getting a little frustrated at all the delays and clerical mistakes, though. I wouldn't be surprised if they formally challenge one of these "anomalies" if they continue to surface so frequently. I think that would temporarily stop the recount while a judge decides what to do next, but I'm not certain. It may only stop the counting for that precinct or that municipality.
The GAB has some more detail on yesterday's news from Waupaca County, where they discovered some previously untabulated votes.
Regarding some "bombshell" comments I might have overheard on the livestream and that I referred to previously, I haven't been able to verify anything. The comments were not about this race or this recount, but would be very embarrassing for the Republican members of the Waukesha County canvass board. That's all I can say. Since I can't verify, I will leave it at that for now.
BONUS Wisconsin News: Wisconsin held 3 special elections today for the Wisconsin Assembly to replace 3 Republican representatives who took jobs in the Scott Walker administration. One of those reps was Mike Huebsch, who is now the head of the Department of Administration. Huebsch is the man who ordered the continuing lockdown of the state capitol and made the claim that peaceful protesters had caused 7.5 million dollars in damage to the building and grounds. There is a report due this week that will undoubtedly debunk that estimate. Since it will come from Huebsch's department, the rumor is it will not contain any dollar figures, just descriptions of the "damage" and the number of hours it took for state workers to clean up and make repairs.
The Democrat in that race seems to have a good shot at winning. Election updates will be posted here. Nothing yet as of this writingUpdated by Giles Goat Boy at Tue May 03, 2011 at 09:58 PM CDT
Democrat Steve Doyle wins! Doesn't change much in the Assembly, but good symbolic victory - taking over a Republican seat formerly held by Walkers' 7.5 million dollar man!
http://elections.wispolitics.com/