Local news in Wisconsin is reporting that JoAnne Kloppenburg has filed for a full statewide recount.
Details to follow.
Updates: Unfortunately I did not get to watch the news conference live. From what I read, it was a real tinfoil hat moment. I’ll post video as soon as available.
Here’s a report from Politico:
Charging that voting “anomalies” were “widespread,” the liberal challenger in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race filed papers Wednesday afternoon requesting a recount in the close election that has her trailing a conservative incumbent by less than 0.5 percent….
“Today, my campaign is asking the Government Accountability Board to conduct a statewide recount,” Kloppenburg said at a news conference. The announcement was met with applause and cheers of “thank you.” She’s requesting the recount “in part to determine what the proper outcome of the election will be and to ensure that elections form this point forward will be fair.
“I do not make this decision lightly … I have weighed the options and I have considered the facts,” Kloppenburg, currently an assistant state attorney general, said. The tight margin — small enough to trigger a provision allowing the state to pay for the recount process — means that “the importance of every vote is magnified and doubts about every vote are magnified as well,” she said.
The reports of widespread anomalies are bogus. As reported yesterday, in Waukesha county a GAB review found only a handful of anomalies, some of which would be in favor of Prosser.
Kloppenburg is beclowning herself, and proving how lucky Wisconsin is not to have her as a Supreme Court Justice. But then again, she’s not paying for it, so what does she care. More theater.
Although statistically close to impossible, Republicans need to gear up to protect the election results. You can donate at the Prosser Recount Fund.
More Updates: The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel editorial board already has weighed in, denouncing Klopenburg’s Folly:
We understand what motivated Assistant Attorney General JoAnne Kloppenburg to ask for a recount in the election for a seat on the state Supreme Court. It’s tough to lose a close election, especially one you thought had been won, especially one in which a county clerk misplaced an entire community’s votes.
But we still think Kloppenburg’s request is a mistake. What happened in Waukesha County was a serious error, but it appears to have been just an error, and one that has now been rectified. The recount is costly and will only serve to further exacerbate Wisconsin’s political divisions. It will leave a bad taste; that’s a sad legacy for Kloppenburg. The difference in the balloting is 7,316 votes. Although that’s less than 0.5% of the 1.5 million votes cast, it’s still a big margin to overcome. Odds are that a recount won’t change a thing. Kloppenburg should take the high road in this case and concede the election.
Here’s the video. “Folly” is too kind a word. How about “delusion”:
http://www.wfrv.com/v/?i=120311179
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Comments
It is true. She will only please the left with this move, politicizing the judicial process even further, which will continue to drive independent voters away from the Democrats.
What a LOSER.
Game over lady.
Are there any Democrat politicians left in this country who have even the tiniest shred of class?
I wish some in the Republican party had done the same in a few elections in the recent past.
Can You say Al Franken?
Loser
Another three weeks of 'The Democrats/Left/Kloppenburg Loses' in the press.
Foreshadowing of the Obama polls and vote in '12, perchance?
I posted this over at Althouse's blog…
I'm posting from Florida, not Wisconsin, so I may be mistaken. Correct me if I'm wrong.
As I understand it, the Chief Justice, who is very liberal, will appoint a judge to hear any election recount cases.
If that judge gets appealed, it will go to WiSC, where the reclusal of Prosser will mean the court could very well end up hung at a 3-3 vote.
If that happens the tie breaker is the Secretary of State LaFolotte (sp?).
If that's true, and considering all the FUD they tossed around regarding Waukesha not properly giving the AP the unofficial numbers (a.k.a., the crime of the century), then I think they're actually going to go for the steal.
They'll do it not by conveniently finding votes, but by chiseling away Prosser's votes via the legal process.
Good luck guys, you're going to need to have to fight like hell to ward that off.
Are there recall elections for judges? If ambisinistral's scenario plays out and K gets seated, the electorate could very well be in the mood for yet another recall bid, given all the Dem abuses of the system to overturn elections that don't go their way.
I tend to agree with the commenter from Florida…and I'm in Wisconsin. The Lefties wouldn't do this if they didn't think they could pull it off. They have something up their collective sleeves. Now, it's possible this is just to keep the base energized for the recall elections or to de-legitimize Prosser like they did Bush with the "stolen election" meme. But the have something in mind. We must be vigilant.
Respectfully I disagree with ambisinistral and Deekaman. The point isn't to steal the election. They are too far apart. The point is to delegitimize Prosser. Any vote he makes will be instantly greeted as illegitimate because he only won through vote fraud.
The second, and probably bigger reason, is to continue to use this issue to fundraiser for the unions. Although it will be paid for, they'll still need money for lawyers (the unions' lawyers) and will send out letter after letter seeking money and trying to whip up their base and keep this issue alive through any recalls and/or the 2012 cycle.
I don't believe Kloppenburg's cronies think they can win this one. Rather, I agree with Deekaman's second scenario: the chance to keep alive the phony "selected, not elected" narrative among their die-hard sore loser base is worth a big pile of cash to the unscrupulous wing of the Democrat party. They're prepping the battlespace for 2012. De-legitimizing Prosser is just a bonus for them.
Let's see … first she immediately (some cynics might say waaaaaay toooo prematurely) declared victory with a scant 200 or so vote lead when only preliminary totals were in. Chutzpah!!
Now, when Prosser has a verified lead of over 7,000 she calls for a recount. Chutzpah!!
She's attempting one of those rare double-chutzpah flips with a triple-media-matters spin.
They're not going to pull it off in the recount itself, even if they get a judge to make it a manual recount. However, their ace in the hole is the courts, where the inevitable post-election judicial appeal will be heard by a reserve (i.e. retired) judge appointed by Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson. Abrahamson, who employed Kloppenburg as a clerk back in the day, has a vested interest in the outcome. Further, one of the reserve judges she can choose, Louis Butler, not only has a rather "peculiar" view of the law (hence the nickname "Loophole Louis"), but has a bone to pick with we the voters because we tossed him off the Supreme Court back in 2008.
In all honesty and to be completely fair, if the election had gone the other way and Prosser was asking for a recount, conservatives and libertarians wouldn't be complaining about it, and we would be seizing on any and all allegations of anomalies or fraud.
There is a difference between being partisan and being a partisan hack. Finding fault with one's opponents for doing the same thing you would do in their shoes is simply dishonest.
Kloppenburg needs to stop taking calls from Al Franken.
On another note – the Professor's "Video of the Day" is OUTSTANDING!
Reminds me how much I loved Renaissance!!
I wonder if they have a ton of absentee ballots just waiting to be "found?"
Let me guess, this does NOT present an opportunity to challenge any of the ballots on the basis of the voter not being registered to vote in the State of Wisconsin, right? If it did, I'd bet Kloppenburg would lose 10,000 of her votes just in Madison.
Leftist SOP. Keep up the agitation, keep up the pressure no matter how rotten it makes you look.
Skeetman,
I tend to agree that I think 7,500 votes is a bridge to far, that doesn't mean they won't try it. Watch for Dane and Milwaukee Counties doing a recount at lightning speed, and then objection after objection after objection to Prosser votes elsewhere. If you see that, games on.
We've already seen one of their judges assume veto power over a bill, so it wouldn't surprise me too much if they were pretty liberal in OKing those objections. It all depends who is the tie-breaker of a 3-3 WiSC vote (assuming they would have three solid liberals votes). If it's Lafollette then it could get dicey.
IANAL, but I would be very, very wary of the appeals to the recount.
From Recounts: Balancing the finality of an election against the will of the electorate
"Appealing recount results to the circuit court
A candidate has the right to appeal the results of a recount in circuit court within five days of the completion of the recount.25 If the recount is held in a voting district that spans more than one judicial district, the chief justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court appoints a circuit court judge (a reserve judge, if available) to hear the appeal.26 Any appeal of the recount results is heard by the circuit court judge, without a jury, in an expedited fashion.27
An appeal of a recount is the only means by which a candidate may go to court to contest any part of the recount or election. A party appealing the recount results must establish, through evidence, that: 1) a mistake, fraud, defect, irregularity, or illegality was committed during the voting, canvassing, or recount process; 2) the offending conduct led to votes being improperly included in or excluded from the election results; and (3) the number of disputed votes exceeds the margin by which the prevailing candidate won.28
The circuit court will affirm the county board of canvassers’ determination, unless the court concludes that the board of canvassers erroneously interpreted state law or any finding of fact by the board is not supported by substantial evidence.29
The court’s review of the recount is limited to the evidence offered to the board of canvassers during the recount, unless the evidence was unavailable to a party exercising due diligence.30 Put another way, a party who fails to object or offer evidence of a defect or irregularity during the recount waives the right to object or offer such evidence in court, unless the evidence was unavailable to a party exercising due diligence or the evidence is newly discovered.
In voting districts that span more than one judicial district, an appeal of the circuit court’s decision is assigned to District 4 of the Wisconsin Court of Appeals.31"
Lee: If Prosser was down by 7300 votes, I'd be mocking him for going for a recount, too. As it is, Kloppy is doing an excellent job of demonstrating what a poor loser she is, and, by extension, what poor losers and classless buffoons the Democrats are.
There are recall elections coming up. I think that this whiny BS is going to hurt the Democrats in the recalls.
Among other things, a hand recount in Waukesha county will prove to every sane individual that there was no fraud in the election, and that Prosser won fair and square. Which will make the leftie whiners just look as lunatic as they actually are.
The announcement was met with applause and cheers of “thank you.”
Rumors notwithstanding, the 'cheers and applause' was not coming from the MSM assembled in the room.
"Kloppenburg is befooling herself"
Sir, I beleive the correct term is "beclowning" herself. See Tim Blair for details. Heh.
if the election had gone the other way and Prosser was asking for a recount
In fact, if the election had gone the other way by 7300 votes, Prosser's man enough to understand he lost.
We wouldn't be having the discussion.
Professor, sorry, off topic, but when I talked to my uncle and told him you posted his song, I asked him when we were going to take that road trip and he said, "Oh, that was in February! It's already over."
My grandfather, James Musil, my uncle, James Musil Jr., and their biggest club, JD's were inducted, along with Alice Cooper and some others. I wanted to meet Alice at the party at his place after the awards! Stupid Uncle!
If you watch the short video at the bottom, you'll see one of your favorite bands, The Turtles, on the marquee.
Does she have any other outfits?
J/S: "We understand what motivated Assistant Attorney General JoAnne Kloppenburg to ask for a recount in the election for a seat on the state Supreme Court. "
Do they? Do they really? Because what it is all about is Democratic fundraising and organizing. They're using Wisconsin taxpayer money to drum up support for the party.
It shows she is an activist, by-any-means-necessary ideologue who would have used her position on the court not just to invalidate the laws restricting collective bargaining of PEUs, but to legislate from the bench pursuant to the Left's half-century-old game plan. I hope those who predict the 7,000-vote margin exceeds the theft margin are right, but if the GOP thinks these people are not going to use every legal dirty trick they can sling at the "recount," they will once again risk losing due to their underestimation of the perfidy of the Left.
@LTC John – yes, you are right. I've corrected it. Although, she is making a fool of herself.
You are misguided if you think the Dems will not fight hard(dirty)to win. Washington state and Minnesota should be instructive. Prosser's group will need lots of money.
I wonder if they have a ton of absentee ballots just waiting to be "found?"
Of course, that's what they've been doing the past week or so: "finding" those absentees.
Lee Reynolds said…
There is a difference between being partisan and being a partisan hack. Finding fault with one's opponents for doing the same thing you would do in their shoes is simply dishonest.
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That's pretty impressive mental gymnastics there Lee. First you provide a supposition that Republicans would demand a recount when their candidate was behind by 7,300 votes. You can cite no actual example, so it's all in your head.
Then, having constructed this fictious counter-example, you chide conservatives for being dishonest in engaging in an act you theorized would happen.
Prove me wrong. Give me an example in which conservatives demanded a recount when the gap was so large. Just give me one. Otherwise, you're just spouting hot air.
What will actually happen is a further undermining of the faith in free and fair elections.
Perhaps they may find irregularities among the Kloppenburg ballots. The video is interesting. That woman doesn't have a public speaking voice.
I think that the Prosser should have paid as much money as possible to allow Kloppenburg to talk on TV prior to the election. I can't see how anyone would vote for a person who sounds like Kindergarden Teacher Ratched.
She sounds like someone talking down to us as if we are children.
Any delay caused by the recount, delays the implementation of the collective bargaining law which makes the recall elections more likely to be a deciding factor in the passage/repeal of said law.
"The reports of widespread anomolies are bogus."
Yeah I mean it's not like 7000 votes were found afterwards, right? Oh wait.
Yes they probably are in fact legitimate votes. And yes that's still one *hell* of an anomaly.
Tialoc
The votes weren't "found", they were not reported to the ASSOCIATED PRESS on election night. As a courtesy. Brookfield had the votes on its city website. Heck, even the Huffington Post had the proper count for Brookfield on election night.
ThreeSheets 7:33 PM: The point isn't to steal the election. The point is to delegitimize Prosser."
Exactly correct.
Holy cow. I live in Mass. and have thought that electing judges is a crappy way to go, but it can't be worse than getting the appointments we get in these parts. Maybe it can be worse. Wisconsin: looks like you dodged a bullet in not having this clown on the top bench. Is selecting judges the Achilles heel of our democracy?
It's anomaly, with an a.
Not anomoly, with an o.
Hier stehe ich. Ich kann nicht anders.
Donate money, boys and girls. I agree with the fellow from florida, backed up by watching chicago and philadelphia politicians make things happen that didn't, well, really happen.
If JoAnn's 'advisors' didn't think this was within their reach to do, they wouldn't have asked for the recount. Let her now magically win and it's the governor who will be tarred with the same brush.
I don't understand.
Klopp went on TV while the body was still warm to declare victory.
Between now and then, the only "anomaly" that I've heard about was the 7,000 vote swing.
And that's been dissected, resected and verified, right?
Does the editorial board employ editors?
especially one in which a county clerk misplaced an entire community’s votes.
She did no such thing.
What happened in Waukesha County was a serious error,
No, it wasn't. At no point was any ballot lost or miscounted. At no point was it misreported to any election agency. All that happened was that the AP was not given correct numbers from an unofficial count that the County clerk maintains as a courtesy – which is not official and which she is not required by law to do.
I think if I were her I'd tell the AP to go scratch the next election night and that they can wait until the official count is done. And as pointed out in numerous locations, the AP should have caught this mistake themselves.
It may not be folly after all. She needs her base for her next election.
To everybody else she is a sore loser, wasting taxpayers' money for a hopeless recount; to her base, she is a fighter. She is fighting for her next election.
If by "anomalies" they mean voting against union influence in the courts of Wisconsin, then yes, there were widespread anomalies.
I just wish the state could present these unions and the fleebaggers a bill for the millions this tawdry spectacle has cost the taxpayers, just to see the results of the November election hold firm. Free speech in this case was only free to those who would gladly deny it to everybody else and subvert the operations of government.
Of course this is all about whipping up the base to get more funding … they have to replace all that mandatory union-dues funding they are now going to lose, somehow …
… heh.
Interesting that the left considers the reports of the press more "official" than the actual, legally-required reporting.
2000 — networks call Florida incorrectly, left refuses to believe networks made a mistake
2004 — "exit polling" over samples Democrats in Ohio, leading leftists to believe Kerry won the state while the actual ballots prove otherwise
And now this.
Considering the money it will cost her backers, and the sequestered "networking," the car trunk full of ballots has been found and the incinerator operators too. I will be surprised if the election goes to her opponent. WI 2011 is battle training for USA 2012 and there are no restraints on chaos (Democratic Party) operations. Chaos is chaos. How is chaos sublimated? War is theoretical before it is kinetic. If the theory is accurate and the execution determined, the kinetics succeed and are a whole lot of fun. Glorious is a common description.
This is a folly. She lost and she will lose the recount. The Chief Justice is not going to interfere. She maybe a lib, but she is not stupid. This is over and Prosser will be seated.
This action of hers is well beyond the mere pursuit of ordinary process, and has entered into a highly provocative political realm. Particularly because it arose out of a judicial election, Kloppenburg risks turning off significant segments of the Wisconsin voting public.
Apparently unwilling to accept the investigative results of the GAB with regard to Waukesha, she is even demanding an investigation of the circumstances be undertaken by an "independent" investigative body. That implicitly suggests she thinks the GAB investigation was either incomplete or somehow tainted.
She is also now also taking on the state’s largest newspaper, the liberal-leaning Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, which editorialized against her decision to go this route because of the difference in the vote totals.
Kloppenburg lost. But sadly she seems incapable of recognizing that reality, and is willing to risk sabotage of the system. Recall the reporter asking her why she was immediately declaring victory back on April 6th, with a mere 204 vote lead, and without any canvassing having taken place.
Her answer showed that even then she was in a state of denial. Giddily having declaring that both she and her supporters were "ecstatic" she said, in her, "because I say so" manner:
"No. We ran a campaign that was focused on being positive and respectful, and, and, winning . . . and we did win and we're confident that the margin will hold."
But it did not hold, as we now know. During that April 6th presser, the reporter strongly suggested it might happen. He said that even a small math error could easily flip 204 votes. But Kloppenburg dismissed the possibility out of hand, and went right ahead, thereby ultimately making a fool of herself.
Now she seems incapable of letting go. I honestly thought she would sleep on it and eventually find a way to save face. I guessed wrong. Sometimes when you expect people who are trained to be reasonable to act reasonably, they throw a tantrum instead!
By her reactions, she has not only demonstrably proved she lacks judicial temperament; she lacks the sort of sound judgment that the public has a right to expect from any public servant who is in a position to make reasoned and cautious decisions. That should apply to an Assistant Attorney General too.
Wisconsin has dodged a bullet. Unfortunately, however, Joanne Kloppenburg is still shooting!
Yesterday she actually even began spinning the outlines of a conspiracy theory of pre-knowledge and perhaps even involvement by "conservative bloggers" in the numbers game that arose out of the Waukesha reporting error. Ann Althouse shot that one down immediately and then she followed up convincingly here!
Will any other Wisconsin Democrats try to talk Kloppenburg down off her high horse? A smart one would. No one can intelligently believe that provoking a permanent state of turmoil in an election process is good politics — especially a judicial election where the margin is comfortable.
Some say because she has the right to ask for a recount, that is a justification for seeking one. But politics is the art of the possible. Just because you have the "right" to do something does not mean you should just go ahead and do it! The Apostle Paul wisely noted in a letter to the Corinthians, "All things are lawful for me; but not all things are expedient."
To JoAnne Kloppenburg, however, that distinction would be inapt. She has gone ahead and irresponsibly thrown the monkey wrench. So the Republicans should go ahead and expose it for what it is – an inappropriate attempt to sabotage the system.
Funny.
Apparently they've trimmed the recount back to only 31 Counties. They must have realized that dog wasn't hunting.
@ambisinistral – that's only for hand recounts, they're doing all the other counties by machine recount.