April 18, 2011

"Wisconsin's Election Snafu Is a National Wake-Up Call."

Says John Fund.

Meanwhile:

Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice David Prosser's campaign consultants pressured his challenger to forego a recount in their messy race Monday, warning that such efforts would be costly and frivolous.

48 comments:

I'm Full of Soup said...

Didn't we get that same wake-up call in Florida in 2000? And our elected overlords promised to fix it? So I am sure they worked hard these last ten years and fixed it. John Fund must be mistaken. Heh.

Unknown said...

Fund says this is avoidable through transparency.

That would foil Dr Evil's Secretaries of State Project.

The whole idea is to create a climate where the Lefties can steal any election they want.

Doesn't Fund understand that messing with Dr Evil's well-laid plans will get him a trip to SPECTRE Island where only Double-Aught What's-His-Face can save him?

Dose of Sanity said...

1. I'm hoping Kloppenburg concedes.

2. Why did Prosser and his team make statements like this? Why make it harder for Kloppenburg to step down. Extend the olive branch - don't hit them with it.

garage mahal said...

"Judge challenges state elections law, calling it frivolous".

MadisonMan said...

If it's costly and frivolous, why does the law exist?

chickelit said...

Would someone (FLS?) please explain what is unfair and wrong about voter ID?

I see two main countervailing effects:

(1) Those inclined to cheat would find it harder.
(2) Fraudulent ID would lead to increased cheating.

As a model for voting, consider employment. Lax employment ID standards became a problem when large enough numbers of bona fide citizens thought it was OK to ignore them. Could this also happen with voting?

traditionalguy said...

Prosser deserves to double down of Kloppy. Let her sweat it out for a while: if she demands a recount and loses then it ends her future career, but if she gracefully concedes, then she will live to run again.

Anonymous said...

Bleep!! Wisconsin in 2011 was nothing like Florida in 2000. Wisconsin was an error reporting an unofficial number of already counted ballots. Florida was hand recount of machine readable ballots in an attempt to change the results. Florida in 2000 proves that we had to go to machine counting of ballots because hand count error rates were unacceptable.

chickelit said...

If it's costly and frivolous, why does the law exist?

Same reason divorce contests can be costly and frivolous: lawyers bill hourly.

I'm Full of Soup said...

Chickelit asked:
"Would someone (FLS?) please explain what is unfair and wrong about voter ID?"

But this would be an unfair burden on the old, the lazy, the poor, the really dumb and the rest of the DEM voting bloc!

David said...

This was a non event mistake, easily caught, rectified promptly and fairly. In fact Wisconsin election procedures are designed to identify and correct just this kind of error. The real news is that the counting system worked just fine.

The real problem is eligibility verification. I'm all for allowing people to register at the polling place on the day of the election, but only if that is coupled with a identification process that is workable and is enforced.

Sprezzatura said...

I had no idea that Prosser had campaign consultants.

As a loyal Althouse reader I knew that Kloppenburg was a political tool who represented disgraceful and inappropriate politicization of the supreme court.

And, wasn't it her campaign who said that she'd compliment, mirror, and not obstruct the Ds?

P.S.
Hopefully Justice Prosser can strike down this costly and frivolous recount law (as long as doing so compliments, mirrors, and doesn't obstruct Walker and the Rs).

David said...

Why isn't it in the Republican interest for Kloppenberg to demand a state supported recount? Perhaps they are just trying to lure her into that briar patch?

garage mahal said...

The real problem is ID's. Too many people voting twice!

David said...

pb, you fat hunk of Moby, that's absurd.

garage mahal said...

Why isn't it in the Republican interest for Kloppenberg to demand a state supported recount?

The GAB is currently investigating "voting irregularities" in Waukesha County going back to 2004. There've been quite a few. Nickoluas pleas immunity from a money laundering scandal. Smoke=Fire.

Craig said...

The Brookfield Triangle. Didi didi didi didi. "You're traveling through another dimension -- a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind."

Chef Mojo said...

@garage:

Smoke=Fire.

Well, yes and no.

Smoke=Cigarette.
Smoke=Stage effects at an REO Speedwagon reunion concert.

Given the significance of the terrible fraud in Waukesha Co., I'm gonna go with:

Smoke=garage farting into the wind.

wv: reari: That about sums garage up...

Harry Phartz said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Harry Phartz said...

I have actually monitored the 2008 and 2010 elections in South Florida (Palm Beach, Broward, Miami-Dade) as an election attorney for the GOP. It is now a well run operation. There was surprisingly little for us to do, and it wasn't for lack of observation. I would suggest that people not jump to the conclusion that just becasue Florida was horribly run a decade ago, it is still so.

Anonymous said...

Voter fraud:...to be addressed.

Votee fraud:...not so much.

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer just veto'd a Bill requiring candidates to prove their eligibility.

SteveR said...

Wisconsin 2011 is in no way similar to Florida 2000. Not even close. Anybody who loses confidence in the system based on that election outcome is simply not paying close enough attention.

In any case, election reform starts with voter ID. Objections to requiring are easily overcome.

bagoh20 said...

"Mexico—which has a national photo ID requirement for voting—spends roughly 10 times more per capita than the U.S. and has virtually eliminated charges of voter fraud or incompetence."

Is he actually using Mexico as an example to emulate? I know as many Mexicans as I do Americans, and I doubt they would agree with him. Nothing in Mexico is fair and definitely not transparent, except the bodies with holes in 'em. If this judicial election took place there, the winning judge would be the one still alive. No recount needed.

LakeLevel said...

John Fund appears to be a member of the new Journolist. The tell is that he is completely on lefty talking points in the first four paragraphs. He satisfies his editors that he is not a lefty dufus with the rest of his story that he (and the new journolist rules) know that almost no-one reads.

Freeman Hunt said...

That poor people don't have ID is a myth for liberals who don't know any poor people.

Bob Ellison said...

John Fund seems like a nice fellow, but he suffers from the same misapprehension about elections most Americans have: that each vote is holy. In a near-perfect tie, with one vote deciding the winner, which was the holy vote?

Anonymous said...

John Fund is a lefty? That takes the cake even for this echo chamber of paranoia.

Anne M Ford said...

"Politico
Wis. court election courts disaster
By: Richard L. Hasen
April 6, 2011 04:57 PM EDT

With a razor-thin 204-vote lead, Democratic state assistant attorney general JoAnne Kloppenburg has declared victory over Republican incumbent David Prosser in the race for Wisconsin state Supreme Court justice.

A recount in this race, which some view as a referendum on Gov. Scott Walker's anti-union policies, seems inevitable, and it is not clear who will ultimately take the seat on the Wisconsin bench. But if this expensive and nasty race ends up in protracted litigation, it could undermine public confidence in both the judiciary and Wisconsin’s electoral process, especially if, as I expect, supporters of Prosser raise ugly allegations of voter fraud."

Yup, the cries from the lefties of voter fraud begin. I assume the referendum on Walker question has been answered once and for all.

vbspurs said...

Chickelit wrote:

Would someone (FLS?) please explain what is unfair and wrong about voter ID?

I see two main countervailing effects:

(1) Those inclined to cheat would find it harder.
(2) Fraudulent ID would lead to increased cheating.


As a former Clerk of a voting precinct, this topic is particularly galling to me.

One election, a voter (a young black girl) came without her ID to vote the first time, which is against the law in Florida. I told her she had several hours to go back to her home, find her voter's registration, and come back to vote, no problem at all. Cut an hour later, when her mother sweeps into the precinct, accusing me of racism. She actually was on the cell phone to the Elections Dept to denounce me, when in walks her daughter sheepishly bearing her ID card in hand. I escorted her to the machines myself, and congratulated her on being a good citizen. The mother never apologised or anything.

Such is the life of voting precinct staffers who are merely preventing voter fraud on a massive scale by asking for a simple document to verify identity.

vbspurs said...

Please note that in the State of Florida, you need a picture ID with your signature on it, to verify identity. Amongst the IDs we can accept (according to the handbook polling station workers get) is...a Costco card.

A. COSTCO. CARD.

Come on.

JSU said...

"A. COSTCO. CARD.

Come on."

I know -- talk about class discrimination!

Anonymous said...

"Extend the olive branch - don't hit them with it."

Shove that olive branch down their fucking throats.

Let her ask for a recount. It will only prolong the embarrassment as members of the Democrat Party come to terms with the fact that they're in a party of LOSERS.

Remember what Barack Obama counsels: "Get in their faces. Punch them back twice as hard. Punish them."

Anonymous said...

"John Fund seems like a nice fellow, but he suffers from the same misapprehension about elections most Americans have: that each vote is holy."

Here is what John Fund is bitching about: The AP can't write a fucking story.

The Associated Press is the organization that made the mistake of telling Kleptoberg she won. How does the world's premiere news gathering agency (ha!) fail to detect that an entire town's ballots results are missing?

Lack of proper planning and piss-poor news gathering. That's all that happened.

No real news organization would have released those returns UNLESS it wanted Kleptoberg to win.

And since we know the AP wanted Kleptoberg to win ... that sort of explains how they (snort!) failed to note (snort!) that the entire returns of that town were not among the vote totals.

The AP tried to steal the election.

Toad Trend said...

"On the morning of April 6, liberal challenger JoAnne Kloppenburg declared victory by a margin of some 200 votes. But the next day Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus announced that she had excluded some 14,000 votes from the city of Brookfield when she gave her final tally to the Associated Press on election night."

Eliminate the necessity to report the results to the press until the County Clerks/Executives have a chance to confirm all votes have been tallied.

Did Kloppenburg rely on the AP to make her decision to announce victory?

More questions than answers.

Anonymous said...

"Did Kloppenburg rely on the AP to make her decision to announce victory?"

I'm a former newspaper reporter, editor and publisher and have covered over the course of my career every type of election possible - from local dog catcher up through to the presidential elections.

Well before each election, the media begin planning for how we'll handle election night returns.

We build a computerized database of registered voters in every district of the state (assuming state-wide elections such as this one).

We know how many registered voters there are in each political party, and the voting history for each of the preceding three elections.

We know precisely how many people can be expected will cast ballots in any given election, based on previous voting history and population patterns. It's how we get an early handle on whether fraud is occurring in an election. And to help us decide when to call the election for a given candidate.

(Note: This is done primarily because we have very early deadlines to meet in order to get the election results to your door by 7am the next morning.)

My experience with leading candidates is that they do this also. The candidates need to know whether to challenge results, and so they're planning well in advance to spot such fraud also.

It is simply impossible, unless you're trying to steal the election, to blatantly miss the fact that the 14,000 votes of an entire town are missing from your vote totals.

Kleptoberg is:

a) a fucking idiot
b) was trying to steal the election by declaring a victory before the returns were certified.

The Associated Press is not part of our election process. No media are. It doesn't matter WHAT the Associated Press says or does after an election. Remember President Dewey?

Until the election returns are certified by the Secretary of State, no candidate should declare victory without understanding that there is a good possibility they will shortly be eating their own foot.

Toad Trend said...

@Ut

"Until the election returns are certified by the Secretary of State, no candidate should declare victory without understanding that there is a good possibility they will shortly be eating their own foot."

This is my understanding of how things are supposed to work, as well. If she/her campaign handlers relied on media for results, I say that was a critical mistake. Wait for the election results to be certified, period.

Sal said...

If it's costly and frivolous, why does the law exist?

And what, with all that Dem. fraud, he should be screaming for a recount. Whatever...

Carefully chosen, that word. "frivolous." It must have a legal meaning.

Original Mike said...

"That poor people don't have ID is a myth for liberals who don't know any poor people."

Perhaps the institutionalized patients, brought to the polls by mental health care workers, don't have IDs. And the homeless who are voting for cigarettes. They probably don't have ID either.

KCFleming said...

Obama and the Democrats want us to have a national ID to use the internet, but somehow requiring the ID for voting is beyond the pale.

The only reason to oppose voter ID is because it will make voter fraud less likely.

All other objections have been answered many times over. (The IDs can be made free of cost, etc., etc.)

Fen said...

Just saw Fund on FOX. What an idiot. You'd think he would do a little research before running his mouth.

He's actually claiming that the clerk lost the ballots.

Geez, even the local papers had the "lost" ballots counted on election night.

Drew said...

I thought the only mess here was that figures were incorrectly reported to the AP, and everyone assumed the AP was correct. Assuming the AP is correct is the problem.

Drew said...

That poor people don't have ID is a myth for liberals who don't know any poor people.

The lefties I know characterize the poor as people who are thisclose to complete lawlessness and anarchy unless we bribe them with government handouts. I now assume that these lefties don't actually know any poor people.


wv = aneong. Hello to you, too.

Fen said...

I thought the only mess here was that figures were incorrectly reported to the AP

Yup.

Original Mike said...

"Geez, even the local papers had the "lost" ballots counted on election night."

Journalists really are a worthless lot.

Drew said...

Journalists really are a worthless lot.

That's the take-away, innit?

Carol_Herman said...

He's still Mr. Peepers.

It's like finding out David Souter has to be defended (after Kelo), because he wasn't appointed to the bench by a democrap.

After 10 years of actually holding the seat on the supreme court bench, no one can find anything useful he said in any opinion whe wrote. However, behind closed doors he called a partisan old lady "a bitch." (I guess she supressed giving him good cases to opine on?)

That it will cost taxpayer's money? UES!

That it shows how Milwaukee cut into the numbers so instead of .5% ... they shaved off less than 03% ...

I am so unimpressed!

But if you want politics to stay stuck at the 50-yard-line, put up putz's like John McCain and Bob Dole.

Or come up with a reason why Pressor wouldn't be better off as a comedian, playing Mr. Peepers.

Original Mike said...

@Drew - It's not a novel observation. In fact, we're piling on at this point.

I really do wonder, though, is it laziness or what? It's oft-remarked, and I have experienced it myself, that whenever you read a news report on a topic you know well (like about your profession), it's always riddled with errors.

I'm sure they get all the other stuff right, however.

RonF said...

What "snafu"? The situation wasn't all f**ked up at all. The votes were officially counted and officially reported quite properly, as evidenced by the fact that the canvass didn't change the vote totals in any significant fashion.

The only thing that was notable was that an informal count provided to the press as a courtesy was in error. But that's not official and doesn't affect the election results at all.