Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus called it "human error" when she realized she'd failed to properly record votes from Brookfield for Wisconsin Supreme Court. Many are more than willing to call it incompetence. I think I would call it something else.
Let's have a quick review and see how things look.
At a press conference last Thursday afternoon at approximately 5:40 PM, Central, Nickolaus explained that when tabulating the votes for Waukesha County, she forgot to hit the save button for the results from Brookfield. Thus nearly 15,000 votes were not counted, but with those votes finally properly recorded, incumbent Supreme Court Justice David Prosser jumps ahead by nearly 7500 votes over challenge JoAnne Kloppenburg.
In attendance at the press conference is Ramona Kitzinger, Democratic Party representative on the Waukesha Board of Canvassers. Kitzinger is asked about the canvass and the newly found votes from Brookfield. Kitzinger says the number "jibed" and can "vouch for their accuracy."
Since then we have learned the following:
Nickolaus served with the Republican Party Caucus during the years of the caucus scandal. She served under David Prosser when he was speaker of the assembly. Nickolaus was granted immunity, presumably for offering Jane Doe testimony against her GOP caucus colleagues.
There have been at least a few incidences of vote tallying irregularities during Nickolaus's tenure as Waukesha County Clerk. Still she refuses to take any steps to improve or reform her procedures, despite complaints from county authorities. Nickolaus continues to operate in a most opaque manner, continuing to keep records on computers in her office where only she has access.
Numerous reports state that the software program used by Nickolaus has an auto-save, thus debunking her story about failing to hit the save button. The software program in question is quite well known, so this fact is not exactly an obscure bit of trivia.
Ramona Kitzinger has retracted her statement vouching for the accuracy of the canvass. In fact, according to a statement released by Kitzinger on Monday, Nickolaus intentionally kept her in the dark about the alleged failure to report the Brookfield votes, saying nothing about the matter as they conducted a canvass Wednesday and Thursday. Kitzinger said they completed the canvass on Thursday between 4 and 5 PM, but she did not learn about the Brookfield votes until Nickolaus called her into her office to tell her there was going to be a press conference at 5:30 PM.
Kitzinger states, "I am 80 years old and I don't understand anything about computers. I don't know where the numbers Kathy was showing me ultimately came from, but they seemed to add up. I am still very, very confused about why the canvass was finalized before I was informed of the Brookfield error and it wasn't even until the press conference was happening that I learned it was this enormous mistake that could swing the whole election. I was never shown anything that would verify Kathy's statement about the missing vote, and with how events unfolded and people citing me as an authority on this now, I feel like I must speak up."
And lastly, consider the following:
"Reporter Lisa Sink with the online news service patch.com told WKOW 27 News she staffed election night events at Brookfield city hall and received vote totals from the city clerk about two hours after the polls closed.
Sink said she posted the results on patch.com shortly after midnight Wednesday.
Sink said the vote totals she reported... were identical to unofficial vote totals released by Nickolaus Thursday.
The reporting of unofficial vote totals by the Associated Press was based on information from individual county clerks. Nickolaus does not post vote totals of each municipality on her county's website, as is done by most counties."
This tells us that the Brookfield numbers are correct, but it does not prove that they had not been entered as Nickolaus claims. More importantly, it tells us that the numbers cannot be easily verified because Nickolaus does not break down individual municipalities on the county clerk's website.
According to the Associated Press, update at 4:00 PM, ET, April 6, 2011, all 198 of Waukesha's wards had reported. Prosser outpolled Kloppenburg 81,255 to 29,332. At this time, the only evidence that AP didn't have the right numbers is the word of Kathy Nickolaus.