UPDATE: Nickolaus rejects calls for resignation.Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus issued a statement Tuesday afternoon rejecting calls that she resign.
"I will serve the remainder of my term," Nickolaus said. "I understand why people are upset and I am taking this matter seriously. Again, I am sorry for my mistake."
"I have immediately begun the process of reviewing my procedures," with the Government Accountability Board and Waukesha County auditor, she said.
The statement comes the same day a Waukesha County Democratic Party leader called on Nickolaus, a Republican, to resign immediately in light of her performance in reporting results from last week's election and the fallout since.
Read Nickolaus' statement:STATEMENT OF WAUKESHA COUNTY CLERK KATHY NICKOLAUS REGARDING CALLS TO RESIGN
Waukesha, WI - "I will serve the remainder of my term. I understand why people are upset and I am taking this matter seriously. Again, I am sorry for my mistake. I have immediately begun the process of reviewing my procedures. I have also asked the Government Accountability Board and the Waukesha County Auditor to assist my office in a review and implementation of improved practices and procedures to make sure the process is more transparent and this mistake does not happen again. I will use the remainder of my term to restore the voter's confidence in me."
________________
Victor Weers, Waukesha County DEMOCRAT party leader, wants Kathy Nickolaus to resign.
Read his complete news release: "Waukesha Democrats: Time for Kathy Nicholaus to resign."
Good grief. Weers could have taken the time to spell Kathy NICKOLAUS' name correctly. It's misspelled four times.
From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:A Waukesha County Democratic Party leader has called on Republican Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus to resign immediately in light of her performance in reporting results from last week's election and the fallout since.
Party Chairman Victor Weers said in a news release Tuesday that not only has the clerk's vote-counting and reporting process produced problems, but "Ms. Nicholaus (sic) has willfully ignored pleas to repair her broken reporting process in an open and technologically reliable way."
He said, "We must have a county clerk that we can trust to do this important work of the people with competence, security and openness. Waukesha must have a new county clerk now."
Nickolaus plans to respond this afternoon.
A staff member in Nickolaus' office said Nickolaus planned to make an announcement this afternoon, but the staff member did not know exactly when Nickolaus would be making a statement.
Nickolaus made a huge mistake.
I understand why she might want to step aside immediately, to get out of the spotlight and take shelter. I'm sure the union thugs and other assorted loons are harassing her.
However, I don't think she should be forced out against her will, especially by pressure from a guy who can't spell her name.
Democrats don't ask their own to resign when they make honest mistakes and not so honest mistakes. They reelect them.
Ted Kennedy.
Eugene Kane, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, writes about the importance of trust in a relationship. It's been said that once trust goes out of a relationship, it's pretty much over.
What does that say about the state of Wisconsin politics these days?
At a public hearing on Gov. Scott Walker's two-year budget at State Fair Park on Monday, I talked to several people in attendance who didn't trust the Joint Finance Committee's decision to hold the event during daytime hours, when many working people were at their jobs.
Some suspected it was all a GOP plot to keep attendance low in the Milwaukee area for a hearing that was likely to draw thousands more if held at night.
Members of the Joint Finance Committee apparently didn't trust that local residents who registered to speak could keep their comments brief. A timekeeper kept reminding citizens about the 2-minute speaker's limit, including by holding up a sign when there were just 30 seconds remaining.
It's fair to say, after an election where both sides found reason to grumble, the mistrust factor is off the charts.
Democrats don't trust Walker when he says his budget-repair bill was designed to balance the budget and wasn't meant to kill public unions. Republicans don't trust Democrats, who they think are set on trying to paint the governor's proposed cost-cutting moves as disastrous to the state.
After last week's election, many voters weren't ready to trust the stunning news that 14,000 votes were mistakenly left out of the vote total in the state Supreme Court race in Waukesha County.
They didn't trust the electoral process enough to accept that it could have just been human error by a county clerk.
The main reason they felt that way was because they figured if the situation were reversed, the other side wouldn't trust them, either.
Kane acts as if the breakdown in trust in the relationship between the Democrats and Republicans in Wisconsin is a relatively recent development.
WRONG.
Conservatives have had reason to doubt the integrity of Wisconsin's elections for over a decade.
Democrats have shown they are untrustworthy and are willing to break the law to win.
In 2000, Constance Milstein used cigarettes to bribe the homeless in Milwaukee to vote for Al Gore. A Park Ave. philanthropist accused of bribing homeless people in Milwaukee to vote for Al Gore in November has agreed to pay a $5,000 fine to settle her case.
Constance Milstein was in Milwaukee on the weekend before the Nov. 7 election to help Gore's presidential campaign drum up votes in hotly contested Wisconsin when a TV crew filmed her giving out packs of cigarettes, worth $3.25 each, to homeless men who had cast absentee ballots.
Prosecutors said that in handing out 10 packs of cigarettes, Milstein violated a Wisconsin election law that makes it a felony to induce someone to vote by providing anything worth more than $1.
But Kurt Benkley, an assistant district attorney for Milwaukee County, said prosecutors did not have enough evidence to file a criminal complaint against her because some witnesses had alcohol problems and many were difficult to locate.
Instead, the state filed a civil complaint.
Tim Metz, Milstein's spokesman, said, "She never had any idea she was doing anything wrong."
Of course, there are more documented cases to not trust Democrats to operate within legal limits.
Democrats attempted to suppress the vote in the 2004 presidential election when party workers slashed the tires twenty-five rented vans intended to transport voters to the polls on Election Day 2004.
Remember?Michael Pratt, 33, and Lewis Caldwell, 29, were each sentenced to six months in jail while Lavelle Mohammad, 36, got five months and Sowande Omokunde, 26, got four months. Each was also fined $1,000. They will be eligible for work release and were allowed to surrender to begin their sentences within two weeks.
Pratt is the son of former Acting Mayor Marvin Pratt and Omokunde is the son of U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore (D-Wis.)
There's more:
Read the 67-page "Report of the Investigation into the November 2, 2004 General Election in Milwaukee."
And there's the case of DEMOCRAT State Senate candidate Donovan Riley. That was certainly an embarrassment for the Dems. Riley actually voted twice in 2000, in the same election on the same day in both Wisconsin and Illinois. His excuse? "My best recollection is that I was splitting my time between Wisconsin and Illinois, and it's possible I made a mistake."
That's not a "mistake." No one votes in one state and then crosses the border and votes again. Absolutely impossible. AND RILEY WAS A CANDIDATE FOR STATE SENATE!
Yes. Trust.
For me, that's been out of the political relationship in Wisconsin since the turn of the century, and with good reason.
Kane continues:Which brings us to the ultimate sign of mistrust for some.
Republicans in Madison are proposing a photo ID bill to combat voter fraud that has often been couched in terms of giving the public more confidence in the electoral process.
After what happened in Waukesha County last week, it's fair to say voter confidence is probably at a low ebb. And as some pointed out, a photo ID bill would have done nothing to prevent the fiasco.
Judging from my recent mail, there is apparently a hard-core group of readers who get outraged whenever election officials in Republican strongholds are accused of wrongdoing but have no problem claiming residents of the Democratic-leaning inner city routinely commit voter fraud.
Predictably, Kane whips out the race card.
I think the guy should start talking to more people and quit relying on his mail to measure public sentiment. Kane makes generalizations based on some wacko mail. He's been doing it for years, rehashing the same old tripe.
Donovan Riley isn't an inner city resident. Voter fraud is not an inner city issue. Why bring race into this discussion at all? It's a distraction. It deflects from the real problem.
Kane concludes:I think the results of last week's election demonstrated that most voters want their voices heard and will turn out in large numbers to exercise that right. We don't have to trust each other, but at the very least we have to trust that the system works.
Kane is right that the error made by Kathy Nickolaus would not have been prevented by voter photo ID.
But, it's an illogical leap for Kane to suggest that means such a system isn't useful in helping to clean up Wisconsin's elections.
I want to know how many people voted illegally on April 5th. How many same-day on-site registrations were bogus?
At present, I don't trust the present system to prevent fraud.
Because of our policies, Wisconsin is a voter fraud haven.
Fairness is what matters. That means one person, one vote.
Whatever steps are necessary to achieve that need to be taken.
Ramona Kitzinger, the Democratic vice chair of Waukesha County and Waukesha Board of Canvassers member since 2004, stepped forward during Kathy Nickolaus' news conference last Thursday to declare:
[The board] went over everything and made sure that all the numbers jibed up, and they did.
I'm the Democratic vice chair of Waukesha County, so I'm not going to stand here and tell you something that's not true.
Today, Ramona Kitzinger has more to say.
SURPRISE!
She's singing a different tune. Statement & Account of Ramona Kitzinger, Waukesha Board of Canvassers member since 2004:
Monday, April 11, 2011
(Waukesha County Democratic Party)On Tuesday night, I received a voice message from someone in the office of Clerk Kathy Nickolaus informing me of a Wednesday canvass meeting, which I returned the next morning and said I would be able to report into the canvass by noon, which I did. Normally the canvass would begin at 9am on Thursday, as has been the general practice for many years. No one explained why they were beginning the canvass on Wednesday, just to please report immediately.
Before this telephone call, I had not been contacted as the designated Democratic observer, and I saw no public notice of the abnormal canvass time. The phone call simply instructed me to report by noon to begin the canvass, which I did. The canvass then proceeded as normal, with no glaring irregularities or mention of a possible 15,000 vote error in Brookfield City.
On Thursday, I then showed up as per normal procedure at 9am and the canvass again went normally and concluded sometime between 4pm and 5pm. During the course of the day, the issue of minor vote corrections in New Berlin and Lisbon came up, but again nothing of a historic nature or reflecting glaring irregularities. In fact, the matter of vote totals in Brookfield City came up specifically during the course of Thursday's canvass. In retrospect, it seems both shocking and somewhat appalling there was no mention of discovery of this 15,000 vote "human error" that ultimately had the potential to tip the balance of an entire statewide election. How is this possible?
Once the canvass had been completed and the results were finalized, I was called into Kathy's office along with Pat (the Republican observer) and told of an impending 5:30pm press conference. It was at that point that I was first made aware of an error Kathy had made in Brookfield City. Kathy told us she thought she had saved the Brookfield voter information Tuesday night, but then on Wednesday she said she noticed she had not hit save. Kathy didn't offer an explanation about why she didn't mention anything prior to Thursday afternoon's canvass completion, but showed us different tapes where numbers seemed to add up, though I have no idea where the numbers were coming from. I was not told of the magnitude of this error, just that she had made one. I was then instructed that I would not say anything at the press conference, and was actually surprised when I was asked questions by reporters.
The reason I offer this explanation is that, with the enormous amount of attention this has received over the weekend, many people are offering my statements at the press conference that the "numbers jibed" as validation they are correct and I can vouch for their accuracy. As I told Kathy when I was called into the room, 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.
So, 80-year-old Ramona is "very, very confused."
She doesn't "understand anything about computers."
Ramona doesn't "know where the numbers Kathy was showing [her] ultimately came from."
Poor confused, elderly Ramona.
She stepped up to the microphones in front of the cameras and made a statement last Thursday that the Democrats didn't like at all.
Today, Ramona is stating that she's a confused old lady who doesn't understand anything about computers and, ultimately, anything about the counting of votes.
She had "no idea where the numbers were coming from."
In other words, disregard what little old lady Ramona said at the news conference. She didn't realize what she was saying. She's very, very confused.
Alas, the Democrats have to throw her under bus.
If Ramona is so clueless, why is she the Dems' observer?
Actually, I'm surprised it took this long for the Democrats to get Kitzinger to publicly recant her remarks.
Question: How hard and long must Democrats twist an 80-year-old lady's arm before she breaks?
Dear JoAnne Kloppenburg, Kloppenburg supporters, Michael Moore, Tammy Baldwin, Leftist conspiracy theorists, and union thugs,
NO VOTES FOR JUSTICE DAVID PROSSER WERE "FOUND" IN BROOKFIELD.
THEY WERE REPORTED ON ELECTION NIGHT.
Will reality put to rest all the Left's wailing and gnashing of teeth over the outcome of Wisconsin's Supreme Court election?
Of course not.
Patrick McIlheran, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, writes:The left is, understandably, upset that the victory they imagined JoAnne Kloppenburg to have was all a counting error by a Waukesha County functionary with a poor reputation. You can see where they’re thinking conspiracy – the reality is too painful for them to confront.
Media Trackers points out, however, that the accurate Brookfield vote count – not the zero that Kathy Nickolaus apparently included in preliminary results – was already reported publicly.
They were reported by Patch, the hyperlocal online news site, in this case by reporter Lisa Sink, who wrote on election night:
“As expected, Brookfield city voters ran up a good turnout in the state Supreme Court race and gave incumbent Justice David Prosser nearly 11,000 votes.
“Unofficial, unaudited results showed 76 percent of city residents who voted picked Prosser, with 24 percent voting for challenger JoAnne Kloppenburg.”
Those numbers fit the corrected numbers Nickolaus is citing now. In other words, they weren’t made up afterward.
It's really kind of sad that some on the Left are so out of touch with reality.
They are in denial. And the problem is they don't come out of it. They stay in denial. Nothing convinces them. Reality is irrelevant. If THE FACTS don't fit, the Leftists ignore them.
Gore defeated Bush. Kerry defeated Bush. Kloppenburg defeated Prosser.
Same old, same old.
Sad.
UPDATE, April 14, 2011: Rick Ungar, Forbes, gets "facts" wrong.________________
Tammy Baldwin contacted U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, calling for a federal investigation into Wisconsin's Supreme Court election and the votes in Waukesha County.
Here's the full text of Baldwin's letter, from WKOW:April 8, 2011
The Honorable Eric H. Holder, Jr.
Attorney General of the United States
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, D.C. 20530-0001
Dear Attorney General Holder:
For our democracy to endure, we, the people, must have faith in its laws and system of justice, including faith that our elections for public office are fair and free from any manipulation or tampering. Following this week's election for the Wisconsin Supreme Court, numerous constituents have contacted me expressing serious doubt that this election was a free and fair one. They fear, as I do, that political interests are manipulating the results.
The following information was reported by the Associated Press with additional reporting by the Wisconsin State Journal staff, on Friday, April 8:
---On Wednesday morning, April 6, with 100% of precincts reporting, according to the Associated Press, JoAnne Kloppenburg appeared to beat incumbent David Prosser for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court by a slim (204 vote) margin out of 1.5 million votes cast.
---Late Thursday afternoon, April 7, the Waukesha County Clerk, Kathy Nickolaus, announced at a press conference that she "failed to save on her computer and then report 14,315 votes in the city of Brookfield, omitting them entirely in an unofficial total she released after Tuesday's election." Nickolaus blamed this on "human error."
---These new votes would give Prosser a roughly 7,500 vote lead in the race – almost exactly the number needed to deny an automatic, government-funded recount.
---Nickolaus said she discovered the error on Wednesday, April 6. She said she entered the numbers into the system and failed to hit "save." She further explained that when she came in to upload the information for the statewide canvass, she noticed all of the fields and columns for the City of Brookfield results were blank.
---The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that last year, Waukesha County officials raised objections to Nickolaus' practice of storing election data on computers in her office rather than on the county's computer network. Nickolaus said this practice was aimed at keeping the data more secure. However, this practice prevented the county's information technology specialists from verifying the system was fail-safe, the county's director of administration said at the time. Auditors later recommended that Nickolaus improve security and backup procedures.
---The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel also reported that Nickolaus, who worked for seven years as a data analyst and computer specialist for the Wisconsin Assembly Republican Caucus, headed up an effort to develop a computer program that averaged the performance of Republicans in statewide races by ward. During some of that time, David Prosser served as Assembly Speaker, meaning he was essentially Nickolaus' boss.
---In 2001, Nickolaus was granted immunity to testify about her role as a computer analyst for the Wisconsin Assembly Republican Caucus, then under investigation for using state resources to secretly run campaigns.
I share the concerns of my constituents that these reports raise serious doubts as to the integrity of the electoral process in Waukesha County and, by extension, our entire state.
To ensure that the April 5th election for Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice is free, fair, and transparent, and to uphold faith in our democracy for ourselves and future generations, I ask for your immediate assistance in investigating these election inconsistencies in Wisconsin.
Specifically, I urge you to immediately assign the Justice Department Public Integrity Section, which oversees the federal prosecution of election crimes, to investigate the questionable handling of vote records in Waukesha County, Wisconsin.
We, the people, must be assured that our votes are fairly counted and reported and our democracy remains intact and untainted.
Sincerely,
Tammy Baldwin
Member of Congress
Baldwin sends a letter to Holder. She's doing what her constituents want her to do. Whatever.
However, she does look goofy calling for a federal investigation.
This is not a national election. It's our election. Wisconsin officials can handle the matter. The federal government doesn't need to intervene or be involved in any way, certainly not at this point.
Justice David Prosser is being completely cooperative.
Of course, Team Kloppenburg - the Leftists, the unions, the Dems - don't want to acknowledge that reality.
Prosser didn't run out on Thursday and call a press conference to declare victory when he took a relatively enormous lead. He didn't pull the shameful stunt that Kloppenburg did, doing a victory lap, when she led by a measly 204 votes in the UNOFFICIAL vote tally.
Here's video of the allegedly apolitical Kloppenburg's sleazy, politically-charged performance:
It was utterly ridiculous for Kloppenburg to declare victory, an absolute disgrace.
Prosser isn't playing politics like Kloppenburg so foolishly did. Moreover, he's not standing in the way of election officials.
From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:Justice David Prosser's campaign said Saturday that it was open to a recount of votes in Waukesha County as the state Supreme Court race remained without a declared winner.
"If you need to do a recount in Waukesha (County) and Waukesha (County) alone to satisfy heightened interest, that's fine," said Prosser campaign manager Brian Nemoir. "We believe it will only affirm the margin of victory we now enjoy."
A federal investigation isn't warranted in this case.The Prosser campaign said Saturday a federal investigation was unnecessary.
"We don't believe there is need for that," said Brian Neimor, the campaign manager for Prosser. "It’s certainly well within their rights to ask for that. In the end, now that the canvassing results have been reported to the Government Accountability Board, it will be evident that the mistake that was made was a reporting error to the media. That hardly seems like a punishable crime."
Neimor said the campaign was open to a recount of the ballots in Waukesha County
...Kloppenburg's campaign manager Melissa Mulliken said, "from our point of view the process here is ongoing."
Obviously, the Prosser campaign considers the process to be ongoing as well. If not, Prosser would have trotted out in front of the cameras and declared victory, Kloppenburg-style.
I think it's completely legitimate to investigate exactly what happened on election night. That makes sense. No problem.
What's unfortunate is how Kloppenburg and her supporters are reacting, suggesting votes were "found" and using other misleading terms to create suspicion. The Leftist media are doing their part, as "willing partners" in the Democrat-Union-Media Complex, to ramp up concern among voters. Please, just report the facts.
I want Wisconsin elections to be clean. I want to be confident that my vote counts and certain that I'm not being disenfranchised due to fraud.
We know that the results of the November 2, 2004 General Election in the City of Milwaukee were tainted.
Read the report.What does the 67-page "Report of the Investigation into the November 2, 2004 General Election in Milwaukee" reveal?
---It is proof that voter fraud in Milwaukee is very, very real.
---It is proof that instances of voter fraud in Milwaukee in the November 2, 2004 election were not rare.
---It is proof that Milwaukee citizens are disenfranchised by a state government that permits same day, on-site, no photo ID voter registration.
---It is proof that Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett is clueless and/or crooked.
---It is proof that U.S. Representative Gwen Moore is clueless and/or crooked.
---It is proof that Democrat Wisconsin state representatives and senators are clueless and/or crooked.
---It is proof that Governor Jim Doyle, who VETOED a bill that provided for FREE voter photo IDs, is clueless and/or crooked.
---It is proof that the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Editorial Board is a shill for Democrats and complicit in the disenfranchisement of Milwaukeeans and Wisconsinites by consistently objecting to proposals to ensure the integrity of Wisconsin’s elections.
Most importantly, the "Report of the Investigation into the November 2, 2004 General Election in Milwaukee" is an invitation.
It is an invitation to all interested in stealing elections.
Give us your felons, your frauds, your fakes, yearning to vote free and frequently.
Some tidbits from the report:The majority of the issues cited in the report seem to be record keeping issues, which makes the possibility for voter fraud that much greater.
The report indicates 5,300 more ballots were cast than voters recorded, and it cites 1,305 unenterable on-site registration cards in Milwaukee as a possible reason for this voter gap.
Some of the onsite cards didn't have addresses in Milwaukee. Some weren't signed, and some didn't even have names.
...It states that 785 on-site registered voters had cards registered without dates of birth.
1305 people were found with "un-enterable" on-site registration cards due to valid addresses, names, identifications, signatures, voter numbers, illegibilities or lack of home in the City of Milwaukee.
41% of them voted.
55 people on the "un-enterable" list were found to live outside the city of Milwaukee on the date of the election. The investigation says that even if there was no criminal intent on any part of these people to vote incorrectly, it still proved that election inspectors were not following state laws properly in these cases.
One case involved someone from Chicago who registered to vote by simply placing on their registration card an address of a friend with whom they were staying on West Pierce Street in Milwaukee.
Another used a Journal Sentinel newspaper as proof of residency. Others placed suburbs of Wauwatosa and Greenfield on their address listing, but poll inspectors allowed them to vote in Milwaukee.
...Investigators discovered that 220 felons voted in the city of Milwaukee during the 2004 elections.
...The MPD investigation also found five felons who worked as election inspectors. It says that Kimberly Prude, one of the felons indicted by the U.S. Attorney's ofice, actually registered on-site voters. Additionally, the election commission gave the names of 18 convicted felons who worked as deputy registrars.
Shocked?
You shouldn't be.
The report recommends some simple solutions:
1. Eliminate on-site same day voter registration.
2. Require government-issued identification, such as a photo ID or a social security card, to vote.
Bottom line: My vote was stolen on November 2, 2004.
My civil rights are being violated by government officials refusing to take measures to prevent voter fraud in Wisconsin.
Jesse Jackson, will you march to demand my civil rights aren't violated again?
Wisconsin's November 2, 2004 election was dirty. It is highly likely that other elections have been and will be similarly soiled. Meanwhile, Wisconsin's Democrat elected officials are actively blocking attempts to clean up the mess while they whine about the Waukesha matter.
Without question, Wisconsin Democrat elected officials should not be allowed to disenfranchise all Americans by failing to ensure the integrity of election results in Wisconsin in national elections. They shouldn't be allowed to disenfranchise Wisconsinites in statewide and local elections.
The findings of the "Report of the Investigation into the November 2, 2004 General Election in Milwaukee" reveal that Wisconsin is a disgrace to the United States and democracy.
Most disturbing: Wisconsin Democrat elected officials, while maybe a bit embarrassed by the report, didn't do a damn thing to rectify the situation.
So when hypocrite Tammy Baldwin requests that the feds get involved in our Supreme Court election, I'm more than a bit troubled.
Investigate and verify the human error that resulted in the City of Brookfield's numbers not being included in the Tuesday night totals used by the Associated Press to compile UNOFFICIAL election results. I support that.
Also, address the issue of voter fraud.
Examine every same-day on-site registration and verify that the individual was qualified to vote in Wisconsin's election.
Require photo ID to vote in upcoming elections.
We don't need Eric Holder involved here, but we do need to do all we can to rid Wisconsin of voter fraud.
Write a letter about that, Tammy.
In a statewide election, fraud anywhere in Wisconsin is fraud everywhere.
