As we await the one remaining county yet to complete its canvass, comes this heartening news via JSOnline:
In the wake of the state’s hotly contested Supreme Court race, a sharply divided Milwaukee Election Commission voted along party lines Thursday to prohibit its own members from speaking to reporters or seeking aid from law enforcement agencies on the commission’s behalf.
Robert Spindell, the lone Republican on the three-member panel, angrily accused majority Democrats of trying to muzzle him, while the two Democratic commissioners insisted they were trying to prevent chaos from individual commissioners “going rogue.”
Because nothing says “confidence in election results” like a muzzle.
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Is there a procedural advantage to the democrats by delaying the Milwaukee report as long as possible? I thought we had read that Tuesday, April 12, was the day that time began to run on the right to require a recount, but I have not seen anything about that for at least a week.
Professor, your prior post on this topic was put up a few days ago, on the 13th of April. The answer to the question you posed by your title, was definitely "no."
Not that they didn't try, mind you! They apparently kept adding the same columns of figures in Milwaukee, over and over again, hoping against hope that they would somehow come up with a different answer than the one they had come up with for a week.
Late on Wednesday of this week, two reporters for the Journal Sentinel, Mike Johnson and Laurel Walker, filed this story which was somewhat curiously tucked away in a less accessible corner of their website. It was NOT prominently featured on the main page, where they were posting several the other post-election stories, ones containing bogus accusations, and Democrat partisan demands for investigations, all aimed at the Clerk of Waukesha County for having discovered a reporting error (to the AP) and then checking and correcting it.
That tucked-away little story about Milwaukee specifically stated that Thursday, April 14th would be the day Milwaukee would definitely file the final results of the canvassing from the judicial election, the one that had been held back on April 5th. Here is exactly what that story said in the first few grafs:
"With every vote being scrutinized in the state Supreme Court race in the wake of the so-called "Brookfield bombshell," the Milwaukee County Election Commission is expected to complete its canvass of vote totals and send the results to state officials on Thursday.
Milwaukee County Election Administrator Lisa Weiner said Wednesday that commission workers were proofing and double-checking their work related to the April 5 vote.
Weiner and Deputy Election Administrator Suzette Emmer said no significant discrepancies have been found during the canvass.
Although Milwaukee County's canvass remained incomplete late Wednesday, its current Supreme Court race totals when tallied with other counties' totals reported to the state's Government Accountability Board show that incumbent Justice David Prosser continues to lead challenger JoAnne Kloppenburg by about 7,300 votes."
Using the corrected results from one week of canvassing, results that had only one day previously been posted on the GAB site for Milwaukee County, an additional swing of over 7,300 votes would have represented a huge change in the previously tallied votes for Prosser and Kloppenburg.
To be precise, Milwaukee County ALONE had to come up with tallies showing an additional plurality of 7,323 votes swinging to Kloppenburg, for her to even end up in a tie with Prosser.
ALL counties reporting, other than Milwaukee:
Prosser Kloppenburg Other
652,981 | 615,965 | 980
Corrected Milwaukee tallies, as of a few days ago, again as they were posted on the GAB (see line 2236):
Prosser Kloppenburg Other
99,339 | 129,032 | 558
TOTALS: All other counties, plus the corrected Milwaukee County numbers, as posted on the GAB just a few days ago:
Prosser Kloppenburg Other
752,320 | 744,997 | 1,538
Difference: 7,323
(The Wisconsin Politics Election Blog you cited in your prior post used the original Milwaukee numbers, the uncorrected tallies that were originally posted by Milwaukee County on election night, April 5th. That is how they came up with a difference of only 7,305 votes.)
No wonder Milwaukee now wants to use the muzzle!
As of this writing, Milwaukee County has not been posted. An extreme interpretation is that the Left is engineering a degree of fraud unprecedented at the WI state level. A mundane interpretation is that Prosser's lead is close to the point at which the state pays for a recount, so they're being extra careful.
@gs,
Correct. And as of noon, still no report. But I don't believe for a second they are going to try to steal it.
There is just too much information already out there about the initial Milwaukee County vote, and the modest changes that resulted from several days of canvassing, ones that were included in the running GAB totals, now posted on the internet, from a data base of GAB updated information. Until a few days ago, it was posted on the website of the GAB! It made it very clear that Kloppenburg was down by over 7,300 votes.
They also know that many of us downloaded that same GAB posting. The canvassing numbers for Milwaukee County had been included therein, thus accurately reflecting several post-election days of Milwaukee County officials carefully conducting their canvassing and sending a number of such minor corrections to the GAB.
So, even if those Milwaukee officials were so disposed, they KNOW that if they now suddenly tried to swing more than a 7,323 vote swing to Kloppenburg, one or more of them would become easy candidates for jail time.
"Robert Spindell, the lone Republican on the three-member panel" has also been a witness, no doubt, to a number of behind the scenes tid-bits of information that could seriously embarrass the Milwaukee officials at this point.
Consider the high liklihood that Milwaukee County had absolutely completed their canvassing, and that were fully confident in their numbers as of several days ago, but that they have held out from reporting those final canvassing results to the GAB for purely political reasons. That would explain why they're trying to "muzzle" him now.
What political reasons? To help Kloppenburg "save face," and to give a bevy of state Democrats an opportunity to keep shreeking foul, over and over again, about the reporting error of the Waukesha County clerk, the one she herself found, double checked, corrected, and then went public about to explain.
Also, look at this sentence in this post about the Wisconsin commissioners:
"According to the commission, there have been no significant changes in the vote totals."
Note this reported statement from the Waukesha Democrat county chair in his personal attack directed at the Waukeshaw Clerk:
"We must have a county clerk that we can trust to do this important work of the people with competence, security and openness."
Hmmmmm . . . he ought to look next door in Milwaukee County!
What does that say in relation to the Milwaukee County Clerk, and their Democrat Commissioners, who after a week and three days, still have not figured out how to successfully add a simple column of figures with confidence, and are actually now actually taking votes to try to muzzle the lone Republican commissioner?
Some competence! Some openness!
What can the Commission do if the Republican speaks out? And why are there two democrat commissioners when the repubs won the last election. One could see having two dems and one repub when the legislature and exec were in democrat hands, but now that all three are in repub hands the Gov should demand the resignation of one of the commissioners or demand the legislature increase the number of commissioners by two and appoint two republicans.
@showbiz111 I said the "Wisconsin commission" at the end of my last comment . . . when I should have specifically said the Milwaukee Election Commission because they were the group, through their rule adoption proceedings yesterday, tried to silence the lone Republican member of the commission. The Professor had it right in his post, above, and I had described it correctly in my prior comment, above.
The election came down to the vote tallies yet to be reported to the GAB by Milwaukee County. But now that all counties are counted, Prosser ends up with a 7,316 vote lead.
Kloppenburg will have to concede.
Over the course of the entire canvassing period (beginning with their first report to the GAB), it looks like Prosser picked up a net 11 votes statewide as a result of the counting in Milwaukee (up from 7,305, while over the course of only the past few days, Prosser lost a net 7 votes (down from an overall 7,323 vote advantage) which was where he stood on Tuesday.
In otherwords, the Milwaukee Election Commission likely knew yesterday or the day before what the "final score" was, but for political reasons, held up the report.
I would love to have those clowns try that kind of stunt with me.