The recount of Wisconsin's April 5th election for Supreme Court is wrapping up in most counties. The Government Accountability Board (GAB) has begun populating their "county-by-county" results page and, for the most part, counties are within a dozen votes of their original canvasses. Most of the change is from counting votes where voter intent can be determined by human eyes but were originally rejected by electronic tabulating machines on election day. Both candidates benefit, as do the few voters whose intent was clear but who made errors in completing their ballots.
How about some love for Pepin County? The sparsely populated county in Wisconsin's North Woods came in with a perfect score on the recount. Prosser votes were 882/882 and Kloppenburg totals were 983/983. Laura Ingalls Wilder, a native of Pepin County, would be proud.
Every county except one is now expected to meet the deadline of May 9th, accoording to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Guess which county is behind schedule?
Milwaukee? No.
Dane County, including Madison? No. They were thinking they might need an extra day but now it appears they will finish on time.
Of course, we all know the slacker is Waukesha County, home of the Brookfield Miracle, 14,000 found votes two days after the election that pushed David Prosser ahead of JoAnne Kloppenburg. (Livestream of Waukesha recount.)
According to the Journal Sentinel, here is the latest excuse from Waukesha:
Ellen Nowak, chief of staff to Waukesha County Executive Dan Vrakas, said Friday officials don't know yet how much more time will be needed to complete the recount....
"Waukesha has had more observers than other counties and, therefore, more objections raised and we are also using a court reporter to document such objections, which slows the process," she said.
Yeah, right. Perhaps Ms. Nowak hasn't been observing the proceedings. There are numerous reasons why Waukesha is only 30% done with their recount.
1. Waukesha has more problems with open and improperly sealed bags than other counties, leading to more objections. (By the way, even the most strenuous objections add only a few minutes to the proceedings. They note the objections, mark evidence, and move on.)
2. The canvass board was not very organized when they began. It took them days to get to a point where they had some type of system or checklist to follow. There were days when they finished counting only a few precincts in 9 hours of counting.
3. They aren't working as hard as other counties. While many of the larger counties were working 12-hour days, including last Sunday, Waukesha County consistently shut down for the day after 9 hours and they took Sunday off. That would be fine if you were in, say, Pepin County, but even with all eyes fixed on them, Waukesha County has been lollygagging through the recount. Starting this coming Monday (the deadline) they will finally add additional tabulators and attempt to count more than one precinct simultaneously.
I hope to God they remember to hit save when they finally finish.
Their "excuse/open ballot bag" ratio is about 1:3. So far, they've blamed the design of the bag, too many ballots, arthritis, court reporters, and recount observers. Those are just the ones I've heard. I'm sure there are more.
So, does it matter? If one is hoping for a Kloppenburg win, it doesn't appear that she will gain much from outside Waukesha County. That's actually good if you're rooting for clean elections, like I am. If there are deliberate shenanigans going on, it appears they are only occurring in Waukesha County. It's still possible Kloppenburg wins, since Waukesha has 70% of their recount work ahead of them. If they found 14,000 votes, they can certainly lose them again.
It's possible Kloppenburg will see a bump from Milwaukee County, which counts their absentee ballots separately. They haven't reported many precinct numbers yet, but they are on schedule to finish by May 9th.
Then there's the possible legal challenges. If we continue to see more open ballot bags in Waukesha County, I'll be shocked if the Kloppenburg campaign doesn't eventually dispute the recount results in court.
Here's the Friday night update from the GAB:
As of 6:00 pm on Friday, May 6, 2011, 2,951 Reporting Units have reported results, which have been reviewed by G.A.B. staff. That is approximately 82 percent of the of the 3,602 total Reporting Units.
So far, counties have recounted 1,172,117 votes, which is approximately 78 percent of the orginal votes cast in the State Supreme Court race.
Of the recounted votes that have been reviewed by the GAB and added to their spreadsheet, JoAnne Kloppenburg shows a net gain of 252 votes. She has gained 548 votes in total to Prosser's gain of 296. 178 additional write-in (scattered) votes have been counted.
The GAB says they will not have more updates until Monday. If that's the case, I'll be pulling a Waukesha and taking the rest of the weekend off. Cheers!