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State Democratic Party calls for expanded investigation of Nickolaus 

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State Democratic Party calls for expanded investigation of Nickolaus
e-mail print By Mike Johnson of the Journal Sentinel
April 14, 2011 10:26 a.m. |(110) Comments

The Democratic Party of Wisconsin on Thursday asked the state Government Accountability Board to expand its investigation of Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus’ election procedures to include a review of the county’s vote totals from the Nov. 7, 2006, general election.

Democratic Party Chair Mike Tate says there is an apparent discrepancy in 2006 results posted on the county clerk website between the number of votes in the attorney general’s race and the number of ballots cast.

The results show 174,047 votes in the attorney general’s race, but only 156,804 ballots cast.

“This is an underreporting of 17,243 votes,” Tate says in a letter to Kevin Kennedy, the executive director of the Government Accountability Board, calling for an expanded inquiry. “I note with serious concern that this discrepancy is more than enough to have swung the statewide election against the Republican and for the Democrat.”

Republican J.B. Van Hollen defeated Democrat Kathleen Falk in that election by 8,859 votes. 

“Given the revelations of the past week, I request you investigate the data available on the Waukesha County Clerk’s computer related to the November, 2006, election results in Waukesha County for the Attorney General’s race and please provide the public with an explanation for the discrepancy of more than 17,000 votes not tabulated in the ballot cast total reported by the Waukesha County Clerk,” Tate says in the letter.

The board launched an investigation after Nickolaus on April 7 said she had failed to save on her computer a tally of more than 14,000 votes reported from the city of Brookfield on election day, April 5.

She corrected the totals during the canvass, but the mistake, now being called the “Brookfield bombshell,” flipped the state Supreme Court race winner.

A week ago, challenger JoAnne Kloppenburg, an assistant attorney general, was ahead of incumbent Justice David Prosser by 204 votes.

With the Brookfield votes added, Prosser had surpassed Kloppenburg by more than 7,000 votes and reversed the statewide lead she held after election day.

Nickolaus’ snafu prompted observers to scrutinize election results from other years that she has posted on the county clerk’s website.

The Democratic Party call for an expanded investigation comes after a blogger on the Daily Kos on Tuesday pointed out the apparent discrepancy in Waukesha County’s 2006 election results.

The Daily Kos blogger also pointed out that votes in races for governor, U.S. senator, secretary of state and state treasurer also exceeded the ballots cast figure. 

Since the blog posting Tuesday, Nickolaus has twice posted clarifications on her election results pages and put asterisks after a number of election result reports on the web page.

Her clarification in part states:

“What does Ballot Cast mean in the summary reports?”

“Ballot Cast is the number of ballots that were fed through the election machines at the polling places and the results were collected using a modem in the office. It does NOT include any hand entered results.”

“Why would the ballots cast be lower than the number of people that voted in a specific race or contest?”

“The ballots case would be lower if a portion of the results were entered by hand.”

Some results are counted by hand because some municipalities do not have modems, Nickolaus told the Journal Sentinel via email.

Asked why the hand-counted ballots could not be included in the ballots cast total, Nickolaus replied, “We do not change the ballots cast.”

Although there is an apparent discrepancy in the Waukesha County results report, the Government Accountability website has results from the 2006 election that show 177,424 people voted in the election.

Meanwhile, Democratic members of the Senate and Assembly Elections and Judiciary committees are asking committee chairmen to hold joint hearings regarding the election situation in Waukesha County.

They want an investigation into the results and conduct of election officials in the county.

In a letter to the committee leaders, the lawmakers say the events surrounding the Supreme Court election have “raised questions about the integrity of the outcome and shaken trust in our electoral system.”

They say the hearings would “help restore people’s faith that their votes count and our electoral system is free and fair.”

http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/news/119845209.html




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