UPDATE, September 28, 2011: No criminal misconduct found in Nickolaus' actions
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UPDATE, April 12, 2011: Victor Weers calls for Kathy Nickolaus to resign.
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Everyone makes mistakes. EVERYONE.
Most mistakes are relatively private. They certainly don't require a press conference. Others happen on a huge stage.
Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus had to acknowledge a big, big mistake.
From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:
David Prosser gained 7,582 votes in Waukesha County, after a major counting error of Brookfield results was detected, County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus announced in a stunning development this afternoon.
Nickolaus says the reason for the big change is that data transmitted from the City of Brookfield was imported but that she failed to save those results to the database. Brookfield cast 14,315 votes on April 5 -- 10,859 of those votes went to Prosser and 3,456 went to JoAnne Kloppenburg.
"The purpose of the canvass is to catch these kind of mistakes," Nickolaus said. She called it human error that is "common in this process." "I apologize," Nickolaus said.
What can you say about Nickolaus' mistake?
It was an error that was caught and corrected. That's the purpose of the canvassing process.
It's important to note that Ramona Kitzinger, the Democrat observer and Democrat vice chair of Waukesha county, had no objections whatsoever.
Ramona Kitzinger, the Democratic member of the county board of canvass, defended the process. She agreed with Nickolaus that the board "went over everything and made sure that all the numbers jived 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," Kitzinger said.
Kudos to Kitzinger for doing the right thing and being honest rather than playing politics.
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UPDATE, April 11, 2011: I retract the kudos to Kitzinger.
11 comments:
And I'm sure if this were a Dem. county clerk in a Dem. county you would be equally convinced and forgiving.
Yes, Sure, Just Like Florida, 2000
Did you watch the press conference?
These votes weren't "found."
They weren't reported. They weren't included in the total on election night.
Do you think that no one in the city of Brookfield voted?
Come on.
Don't you trust Ramona Kitzinger?
I feel sorry for Kathy Nickolaus. No doubt she'll be threatened and her home will be targeted. That poor woman!
I feel sorry for her also. I wish I could have seen the press conference. I had been waiting and waiting... and could not get to it.
Ah, well, is it over now?
God blss!
I would like to see everyone of those 14,000 votes verified against a paper ballot. "Forgetting" to save the votes on her computer could just have been intentional to give her time to see the rest of the state's returns and then electronically alter the results in order to produce a desired result. This is enough of an anomaly, and comes through so conveniently for one side in the last minute to deserve very stringent scrutiny. Given Ms. Nikolaus's history of involvement with fraudulent manipulation of election data in 2002, any honest person should find great reason for suspicion in this case.
Dan Vrakas invites anyone to look at the votes and verify them.
This was definitely just a mistake. I'm sure the fact that, 2 days after an election, Nickolaus found just enough votes to swing the election results with a margin just large enough to prevent an automatic recount was just a fortunate coincidence. The fact that she was overseeing the reelection of her old boss probably has nothing to do with it, and I'm sure that keeping election data on personal computers is standard procedure. Nothing to see here, folks. Move along.
What is about "Dan Vrakas invites anyone to look at the votes and verify them" that you don't understand?
Examine the ballots. Go ahead.
Action, not hysterical rhetoric.
And on your way there to examine them, check in with Ramona Kitzinger, also. Then, let me know how 10,000 + voters truly voted SOLELY for the Supreme Court race, even though another major race was on the ballot, ok?
Thanks fo checking that for me.
HUH?....Want me to believe this .....is her maiden name Hitler or is she just paid by the Kock Brothers?.......Please, put her at the head of the tea party!
Examining the ballots is exactly what a lot of angry people want to do. It's called a "recount".
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