The recount in Wisconsin's Supreme Court election is scheduled to begin next week. The Prosser camp is bringing in "hundreds of volunteers, including some flying in from around the country," according to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. Meanwhile,
Kloppenburg campaign manager Melissa Mulliken said Friday that her group expects to use hundreds of volunteer observers, primarily Wisconsin residents, since some counties would have multiple tables where ballots are being counted at once. Mulliken said the goal was to have volunteers able to observe at least a large portion of the 1.5 million ballots.
JoAnne Kloppenburg needs more volunteers to represent her in the thousands of wards where votes will be recounted. Her observers can watch for lapses in proper procedure and challenge the decisions of the canvassers if necessary when the intent of the voter becomes an issue on any specific ballot. Even in the wards where optical scanners will be used, the ballots will be visually inspected before they are fed to the machine. Observers will be able to see those ballots and make note of who won each vote--information that will be invaluable if the machine total turns out to be different. (Ballots in the counties that use ES&S Eagle machines will be hand counted because of the agreement between the two candidates, but other machine-counted ballots are not going to be hand counted officially.)
Anyone who can participate in this recount should write to the Kloppenburg campaign immediately at KloppenburgVolunteer@gmail.com.
We hoped JoAnne Kloppenburg would ask for a statewide recount, and she came through for us. She's putting her political future on the line here and getting a lot of static about wasting taxpayer money in a futile recount. Let's do everything we can to show our appreciation and help her cover the whole state, not just "a large portion."