Last night I called on JoAnne Kloppenburg to concede. I don’t think she listened.
Kloppenburg’s only chance of winning is to knock out several thousand legitimate votes by challenging “ballot security” based on gaps and openings in ballot bags.
But I also noted that this was just a game. The actual recount numbers, particularly in the city of Brookfield, showed that any supposed “ballot security” flaws did not affect the vote count. There was no ballot bag stuffing or other tampering with ballots.
And now there is proof of Kloppenburg’s craven gamesmanship, because Kloppenburg has ignored almost identical ballot bag issues in Dane County, which unlike Waukesha County, went heavily in her favor.
In Madison, notes Steve Eggleston, there were similar gaps and openings, but neither Kloppenburg nor Prosser objected:
Dane County’s minutes of the recount provide a rather interesting read. There were several torn ballot bags in the city of Madison, several instances of ballot bag seal numbers missing from the inspectors’ reports, ballots from two reporting units in two different municipalities that were initially missing from the recount room (both stacks of which favored Prosser in what were communities that were overwhelmingly carried by Kloppenburg, and which did not affect the pre-recount net margins once added), and an instance where an absentee ballot not cast at the municipal clerk’s office lacked a witness signature yet was counted both at the polls on election day and by the recount canvass board. I don’t need to tell you that there were no objections from the Kloppenburg campaign over any of this.
Stop now, JoAnne, while you still have some small measure of dignity.
You are on the verge of becoming a verb.
——————————————–
Related Posts:
Brookfield Falls To Prosser Forces Again, Kloppenburg To Mount Defense At Cities of Speculation And Conjecture
Kloppenburg Should Concede Tonight
Kloppenburg Still Raising Money For Recount
Follow me on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube
Visit the Legal Insurrection Shop on CafePress!
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
First two things that come to mind are:
1) If there was a question about Kloppenburg's fitness for office, stuff like this should settle it, and;
2) Who is financing and/or driving this for Kloppenburg?
As a non-attorney, it sure seems to me that if Kloppenburg could have challenged any or all of these counties for the same violations but didn't and that the recount results confirmed the original election results, isn't there a common sense legal principle or argument that would head this nonsense off at the pass? Isn't there a legal principle that allows the public good to be protected by the obvious?
It's not like Kloppenburg is on trial for first degree murder arguing "reasonable doubt". This is just pure legal gamesmanship that serves no discernible public good. All sides in this election should be declaring that it's over and for the sake of decency that Kloppenburg accept the obvious that she lost.
How is it that Republicans' lawyers have learned NOTHING over all these years of ballot fraud and ballot re-re-recounting fraud?
Dino Rossi, Norm Coleman, Algore just to name the prominent ones. Good grief. If I'm a lawyer for a republican in a recount there is NOTHING I give up. I concede NO GROUND. I attack EVERY SINGLE conceivable weakness. I create weaknesses. I make life a living HELL for my opponent and his lawyers. What do you mean Prosser didn't press his advantage in Dane County? WTF is THAT action?
What, do these Republicans think there is some honor in winning pretty? Or winning gracefully? BULL. There is ONLY WINNING. We can't stoop to the level of our dishonorable opponents, but there can be NO RETREAT. There is no advantage too big to press further. No weakness of our opponents that is to small to ignore. There can be NO HOLDING BACK.
And what could possibly be preventing the RNC from hiring a permanent team of 5 or so election law experts who do nothing but act as a recount SWAT team. Their salaries would be paid by the RNC and they could save millions in paying large left wing law firms to represent republican candidates.
Do believe The Klop, is in need of an antibiotic treatment, maybe several.
Seems she has a highly resistant strain of______________(fill in the blank).
Are the Republicans waiving their right to raise the Dane County issues if Klop brings litigation attacking Wauk. ballots on the same issues? If there is no waiver, then I am OK with their tactic. If there is a waiver, then I agree with Luke's comment.
This isn't about winning. I also don't think Kloppenberg is running this show. These shenanigans are part of plan to delay Prosser joining the Supreme Court for as long as possible. Without Prosser the court is balanced (deadlocked!) at three conservative and three liberal judges. Some current Dem/union friendly decisions of lower courts that would be challenged at the Supreme Court won't even be heard by a deadlocked court.
Kloppenberg will be the ultimate loser in this but, I don't think that matters to the people who are pushing the recount ( and recount and recount and court challenges and …)
Ms K. declared victory with a couple hundred vote lead, and won't concede defeat with a 7000 vote deficit…and you say she can now quit and keep a small measure of dignity?
How much is a small measure of zero?
Klopp can't concede because it's not about HER you see, it's all about the children and the unicorns and the magical wizards driving hi-speed trains inside Joe Biden's skull. She's got to do it for THEM.
Absolutely loved your last statement, "You are on the verge of becoming a verb." Since you referenced it to the verb "bork" perhaps we can provide the definition for Kloppenburg.
To kloppenburg: to demand perfection in the otherside while overlooking flaws in your own.
Or
To waste taxpayer's money on case you can't win, but are spiteful enough to pursue.
"Klop": to infect & distort the election process. Carriers of this disease typically confined to the Democrat population.
And what could possibly be preventing the RNC from hiring a permanent team of 5 or so election law experts who do nothing but act as a recount SWAT team.
Luke has nailed it. We learned, during the brutal contest over vote-counting for Al Franken's election, that the Democrats had imported THEIR crack vote-sniping team from the 2004 Washington gubernatorial election.
If the Republicans haven't got, or don't get, such a team primed and ready to go, their brains couldn't prime the carburetor of a pissant's motor scooter. Because this savage after-election contest (no thanks to Al Gore) is now a permanent feature of American politics.
It's too late, Professor. She no longer has any dignity left.
After all this messing around I hope that Wisconsin doesn't get the Klop.
Nosmo, if Wisconsin does get "the Klop", they can always use a good dose of Prossercillin. cheers
I warned that the Democrats would finish their votes early in Madison and Milwaukee so they could dodge challenges while filing a mess of their own else where.
The Democratic Senators fled the State to avoid a vote. They the flooded the caitol building to try to intimidate the legislators. Since then we've seen threats against businesses and harassing calls against citizens who signed recall petitions.
Why would anyone think Kloppy wasn't going to go to the wall trying to steal thisl election? Where is the prior decency and restraint?
If ey can control the courts they can greatly diminish the chances of the Republicans from enacting their laws. Perhaps more importantly — they can greatly influence the redistricting fight.
Don't underestimate the degree to which they are willing to play hardball.
Rick, if memory serves, a judicial appeal can include items not challenged during the recount. Of course, since the appeal would go to what will amount to a kangaroo court, its inclusion at that point would be to highlight the lack of equal protection of votes from differing locales in preparation of a federal appeal.
Of course, I'm not a lawyer, so don't quote me.
Thanks, steegg:
I guess it would be in the nature of a cross appeal, brought by the Prosser side to counter an appeal by Klop.
I wonder if the democrat plan is to delay this as long as possible, get a ruling from a kangaroo court as you mention, then have a slow enough appeal process so that it gets to the supreme court after Prosser's current term expires. If that happens, the supreme court could split 3-3, which could result in the affirmation, by failure to reverse, a lower court decision in favor of Klop, no matter how outrageous it is.
I may be missing something here.
Nothing destroys any pretense of Kloppenburg at being electable as a judge – unbiased, fair, taking all facts into account – better than this desperate partisan attempt to overturn the 7000-vote lead of her opponent by all means necessary.
This woman is corrosive partisan bias on stilts, and has proven herself unfit to serve as a judge in any jurisdiction.
@Pasadena Phil May 10, 2011 9:41 AM . . . and @Rick May 10, 2011 10:55 AM . . .
I posted a comment on another post here suggesting that right after the "tears" were discovered in the bags in Waukesha County, it crossed mind that Kloppenburg could have been raising the issue in a weak way, hoping to draw Prosser into vehemently arguing against any altering of the outcome in Waukesha by throwing those bags of ballots out, only to have the issue come up in Dane and/or Milwaukee counties where more tears would be discovered, and where some real ballot stuffing could have taken place.
I do not know how strongly she raised the issue (from a legal perspective) in Waukesha, or whether she sought a specific ruling from the judge overseeing the recount, or even noted it for the record . . . so that she could presumably raise it as an issue in any appeal. Nor do I know whether the Prosser campaign noted the matter of torn bags in Dane County for the record, though it seems very clear they did not make a public relations stink about it — which would be two entirely different things.
There is a doctrine, not one strictly in law, but rather one sounding in equity, that could possibly be raised here if one or the other of the parties concludes that none of the available strictly legal remedies are inadequate to prevent a substantial injustice from occurring.
In general, equity demands that parties seeking equitable relief may only do so if they themselves have "clean hands." In other words, a party can only get equitable relief, if they are themselves without fault.
I do not even pretend to know the extent such a "clean hands" doctrine may or may not be applicable as viable defense in the State of Wisconsin in similar circumstances, but the problem with the application to this situation is that each case (Waukesha and Dane) would be dependent on proof (evidence), and therefore each one is quite independent of the other.
They are just separate matters.
Moreover, I strongly suspect that there are also substantial considerations of federal voting rights that would come into play and have to be overcome long before any court would give any consideration at all to throwing out bags of votes in either one or both of the counties.
Kloppenburg is merely trying to lay a bogus foundation for being able to publicly claim that the election was "stolen" from her in Waukesha County.
She has demonstrated that she is such a loser on so many levels that it is actually getting difficult to keep track of them all!