No Runny Eggs

It may be short on actual names attached to the attributed version, but Christian Schneider put up the most-complete timeline yet of a version of the events surrounding the incident between Justices David Prosser and Ann Walsh Bradley, extending from before the incident itself to the leak of the news to Soros-funded “media”, over at National Review. Let’s see if I can do the Cliff Notes’ version:

- The week prior to the incident, three of the justices were prepared to issue an order on the case of Act 10. Prosser wanted to delay some to avoid the appearance of rushing as oral arguments occured on 6/6, and apparently reached a deal with Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson that the order would be issued on 6/14.

- On 6/13, no notice that an order would be forthcoming had been made, so at 5:30 pm, Prosser and the other conservative Justices went looking for Abrahamson to get an explanation. They found her in Bradley’s office.

- Prosser remained outside the office and got into a heated discussion with Abrahamson over the issue of timing of the release of the order.

- Bradley rushed out to confront Prosser, with one source saying she was shaking a fist in his face and another saying they were “nose to nose”.

- Prosser pushed Bradley about the shoulders to get her out of his face, and in the course of that, contacted her neck. At the same time, another Justice was attempting to pull Bradley back from Prosser.

- On 6/15, 2 days after he had been notified of the incident by Bradley, Capitol Police Chief Charles Tubbs talked to all 7 Justices, including the not-present Justice Patrick Crooks, about violence in the workplace. No further action appears to have been made by the Capitol Police, which has jurisdiction in the Capitol building and thus the Supreme Court offices, and to date, nobody has pressed criminal charges.

I do recommend, as always, reading the entire piece. There are a bunch of details I left out of the above summary.

Revisions/extensions (10:10 pm 6/28/2011) - Two people who have been following the ins and outs of the Supreme Court longer than I have weighed in on just how long the Court has been dysfunctional, and who the constant in the dysfunctionality is.

John Mercure of WTMJ-AM interviewed former Supreme Court Justice William Callow (he served between 1977 and 1992 and still is an active reserve judge) on his show this afternoon, and Callow fingered Abrahamson as the chief troublemaker.

Meanwhile, Rick Esenberg, in a comment on his Sunday morning take, remembered that the majority of the court had endorsed Abrahamson’s opponent…in 1999.

I note two things – the second-longest serving Justice (Bradley) joined the Court in 1995, and three current Justices were not on the Court in 1999.

Also, welcome Memeorandum readers.

Over at his new gig at the Wisconsin Reporter, Kevin Binversie put up the most-exhaustive take yet on the Supreme Rumble. I’ll give you the last three paragraphs to whet your whistle:

There are a lot of factors here, all of which are along the lines of stupid and petty. So stupid and petty, you’d think we were dealing with toddlers and not some of the most respected legal minds in the state of Wisconsin.

Yes, Prosser has a temper and a short fuse. This is a well-known and documented fact since his Assembly days. However, what’s lost in a lot of the coverage is the apparent sycophantic defense Walsh Bradley has for Chief Justice Abrahamson if the “she charged him version” of the events is true.

The battle of factions within the Wisconsin Supreme Court is well-known in both the state’s legal and political circles; but now it’s to a point that public back-stabbing and reports of physical altercations only help feed growing concern the court is teetering into professional dysfunction. Somewhere, someone has to be the adult in the room; but from the look of things, we’re a long way from that with the justices of the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

The battle of the factions really started to boil over when Justice Michael Gabelman defeated appointed Justice Louis Butler in 2008. Since then, Abrahamson, Bradley and Patrick Crooks have done everything they could to remove Gabelman from the Court, going so far as to ignore the recommendation of the Wisconsin Judicial Commission that an allegation of false political advertising against Gabelman in that campaign did not warrant action by the Court, which prompted the “intemperate” remark from Prosser behind closed doors and leaked from a Bradley e-mail.

In case you’ve been in a cave all weekend, there was a physical altercation between Justices David Prosser and Ann Walsh Bradley a week and a half ago as all but one of the Supreme Court justices were in Bradley’s chambers discussing the timing of the release of the order affecting Act 10, the budget repair/collective bargaining law. What is known is Prosser made some remarks directed at Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson after she suggested that the release would be delayed until after the end of June (this despite a majority ready to issue an order), Bradley demanded Prosser leave her chambers, and contact about Bradley’s neck ensued. The under-reported version of the events from anonymous sources (as far as I can tell, the only media reports that include that version come from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and that version is “mysteriously” missing from the AP coverage widely reported nationwide) claim Bradley charged Prosser with fists raised and that the contact was defensive on Prosser’s part, while Bradley is belatedly publicly claiming Prosser put her in a “chokehold”, matching the first “anonymous” claims.

I’ll send you over to Althouse for a steady stream of updates, including the less-than-fully-acknowledged wholesale ReWrite™ of the original Soros-funded Wisconsin Watch piece after the MJS turned up the version that included a charging Bradley. I do have a heap of questions on this:

- Why was this discussion happening in Bradley’s chambers? Bradley is neither the Chief Justice (Abrahamson, who was present, is) nor an author of any part of the set of orders/concurrences/dissents. I don’t claim to know standard operating procedure at the Wisconsin Supreme Court, but it would be logical that, especially when the Chief Justice is involved in discussions, the discussions would happen in the Chief Justice’s chambers.

- Why did Bradley choose to intervene in a verbal dispute between Prosser and Abrahamson? The last time I checked, Abrahamson was able to handle herself in the verbal arena. If Bradley felt the need to intervene, both Prosser and Abrahamson should have been asked to depart the room.

- If it was a “chokehold”, why has the only action by the Capitol Police been, as of this morning, been to have the chief, Charles Tubbs, meet with all 7 justices (including the not-present Patrick Crooks)? I know we’re talking about the Capitol Police and Chief Wiggu…er, Tubbs here, but how long does it take to interview 6 Justices and perhaps an equal number of staff (note; I have not seen anything that states that anybody other than the Justices were present)?

WITI-TV has reported that the Capitol Police anticipates releasing a statement today, though that has not come as of yet. The Journal Sentinel is quoting anonymous sources that the Capitol Police will be handing over the investigation to the Dane County Sheriff’s office.

- The $64 million question from Darleen Glick – (D)o you think that a woman like Bradley, who seriously considered calling the cops because Prosser used a profanity about another justice would not call the cops if she was the victim of an unprovoked, physical assault in front of witnesses? More properly, that question would be one of pressing charges as at some point the Capitol Police was notified of the incident.

On the other hand, Milwaukee County Board Chairman Lee Holloway has physically assaulted fellow board members on multiple occassions, and no police report was filed.

Revisions/extensions (1:48 pm 6/27/2011) - Almost immediately after I posted, Tubbs turned over the investigation to the Dane County Sheriff’s office (same link).

With the passage of the 5 pm deadline today to file to run in the recalls of Democrat Senators Dave Hansen, Jim Holperin and Bob Wirch, the timeline for elections has been set, assuming none of the 9 challenges by the incumbents are successful in voiding the recall election. Barring that, here’s the timeline for Recall Mania, with the note that the three “placeholder” candidates advanced by the Democrat Party of Wisconsin in districts currently held by Republicans to ensure primaries did not file economic interest statements and thus won’t be on the ballot):

July 12 - Recall Democrat “primaries” (DPW-endorsed candidate listed first, RPW protest caniddate second) in the 2nd Senate District (Nancy Nusbaum vs. Otto Junkerman), 8th Senate District (Sandy Pasch vs Gladys Huber), 10th Senate District of Shelia Harsdorf (Shelly Moore vs Issax Weix), 14th Senate District (Fred Clark vs Rol Church), 18th Senate District (Jessica King vs John Buckstaff) and 32nd Senate District (Jennifer Shilling vs James Smith).

July 19 - Recall Republican primaries (pending filing of economic interest statements by all involved) in the 12th Senate District (Kim Simac vs Robert Lussow), 22nd Senate District (Fred Ekornaas vs Jonathan Steitz) and 30th Senate District (John Nygren vs David VanderLeest). The potential Democrat primary in the 30th between incumbent Dave Hansen and Josh O’Harrow evaporated when O’Harrow failed to file signatures by today Also, if one or more of these candidates fail to file statements of economic interest by Friday, the July 19th date will become a general election against the incumbent(s) in the affected districts, Democrats Jim Holperin in the 12th, Robert Wirch in the 22nd and Dave Hansen in the 30th, all with no third-party/independent candidates on the ballot.

August 9 - Recall general elections in the Senate districts currently held by Republicans – Robert Cowles in the 2nd, Alberta Darling in the 8th, Shelia Harsdorf in the 10th, Luther Olsen in the 14th, Randy Hopper in the 18th and Dan Kapanke in the 32nd. There are no third-party/independent candidates on the ballot.

August 16 - Recall general elections in the Senate districts currently held by the Democrats (assuming there were primaries held on July 19th).

WisPolitics also reports that the Government Accountabillty Board will file a motion with Dane County Judge Richard Niess, already set to hear challenges from Hopper and Kapanke, and also the judge that allowed the attempted consolidation of all the elections, to consolidate all the challenges to the recall election orders into a single case. While the RPW attorney welcomed the move, the DPW attorney was skeptical of including the challenge of the three Democrats in the consolidation. I wonder how much of that skepticism was because it would likely take that case out of Maryann Sumi’s courtroom.

Revisions/extensions (7:51 pm 6/21/2011) - To answer PaulM’s question in another post, unless an incumbent is certified as having been defeated, he or she continues to serve as a state senator until the expiration of the term at the beginning of January, 2013. Of course, the Senate, once it ends its current session at the end of this month, isn’t in session again until September.

If you’re looking for learned, legal-scholarly opinion on the majority opinion that restored Act 10 to law, I’ll send you over to William Jacobson at the soon-to-be-off-Blogger Legal Insurrection. Of course, there is some football-spiking involved.

I’ll provide the obligatory clip from “Billy Madison”, which sums up what the majority told Maryann Sumi yesterday quite well…

Disclosure – I am not a lawyer. Further, I do not have access to the records of the Goodland case from 1943, so I cannot answer how the Supreme Court, and if memory serves, the appeals court before it, dealt with the timing issues related to the striking down of the circuit court’s attempt to block publication of an act. Therefore, there is a possibility this analysis could be in error.

In case you missed the news, the Wisconsin Supreme Court, as part of taking the case of Wisconsin Act 10 on original jurisdiction, vacated and voided ab initio all orders and judgements issued by Dane County Circuit Judge Maryann Sumi in the original case that had blocked implementation of the act as Sumi exceeded her authority set by both the state constitution and the Supreme Court by enjoining publication of the act.

Predictably, Democrat Secretary of State Doug La Follette thinks he can delay for at least a bit longer its enforcement because, based solely on the first of Sumi’s orders, he changed the designated publication date from March 25 to a date uncertain. Meanwhile, Assembly Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald (R-Horicon), speaking on Mark Belling’s show on WISN-AM shortly after the ruling, and Sen. Mary Lazich (R-New Berlin) believe Act 10 is now law. For his part Department of Administration Secretary Mike Huebsch says his office will begin implementing the act “when appropriate”. Let’s see if I can sort some of this out.

While the order from the Supreme Court does not directly address the date of publication, from which, in normal circumstances, the effectiveness of an act stems, it can be inferred from both the order and the statutes that the act is considered by the Court to have been published on March 25, and by Wis. Stat. §991.11, which states, “Every act and every portion of an act enacted by the legislature over the governor’s partial veto which does not expressly prescribe the time when it takes effect shall take effect on the day after its date of publication as designated under s. 35.095 (3) (b),” and by the order yesterday voiding all of Sumi’s blocking orders, it is currently in effect.

I’ll leave the distinction between the three possible effective dates (March 26, June 14 or June 15) to the professionals as that can and probably will have legal consequences for those local units of government who cut deals with public unions on and after March 26. I will, however, push on with the publication date.

Paragraph 10 of the order comes closest to addressing whether the act is already published, and indeed is the only paragraph of the order itself that mentions either the office of the Secretary of State or the person who holds it:

10 Article IV, Section 17 of the Wisconsin Constitution vests the legislature with the constitutional power to “provide by law” for publication. The legislature has set the requirements for publication. However, the Secretary of State has not yet fulfilled his statutory duty to publish a notice of publication of the Act in the official state newspaper, pursuant to Wis. Stat. § 14.38(10)(c). Due to the vacation of the circuit court’s orders, there remain no impediments to the Secretary of State fulfilling his obligations under § 14.38(10)(c).

Let’s review what that section, which covers the duties of the Secretary of State says:

Publish in the official state newspaper within 10 days after the date of publication of an act a notice certifying the number of each act, the number of the bill from which it originated, the date of publication and the relating clause. Each certificate shall also contain a notice of where the full text of each act can be obtained. Costs under this paragraph shall be charged to the appropriation under s. 20.765 (1) (d).

Do note the “after the date of publication” part of the time limit to publish the notice, and the requirement to include the “date of publication” in the notice, in § 14.38(10)(c). Also, do notice the specific language in the order saying that La Follette had “…not yet fulfilled his statutory duty to publish a notice of publication of the Act…”. The inclusion of that specific language, and not any language that refers to the publication of the act itself, strongly suggests that the majority believes that the act was already published by state law.

The Supreme Court, as stated above, voided ab initio all of Sumi’s orders, including her first temporary restraining order on March 18 enjoining La Follette (and only La Follette) from any further action in the process of publication and implementation of Act 10. To put it in English, that means that in the eyes of the Court, none of Sumi’s orders ever were valid.

La Follette, who on March 14 had designated March 25 as the publication date, subsequently sent notice to the Legislative Reference Bureau informing them that, pursuant to that TRO he rescinded the publication date and would not issue a new one until a later date.

Since the TRO no longer has, and indeed never did have, any legal standing, the question is whether La Follette had any statutory authority to change the publication date days after designating one. A quick review of the timeline is in order:

• On March 11, Governor Scott Walker signed Act 10, thus enacting it, and deposited it in the Secretary of State’s office for publication.
• On March 14, La Follette, pursuant to § 35.095(3)(b), designated to the Legislative Reference Bureau March 25, the last date allowed by statute, as the date of publication of the act.
• On March 18, Sumi issued her first TRO enjoining La Follette from publishing the act. Also on that date, La Follette used that TRO as the justification in an attempt to change the March 25 date of publication to a date uncertain.
• On March 25, the Legislative Reference Bureau, pursuant to § 35.095(3)(a), published the act on the last date allowed by statute with a note that, due to the TRO, La Follette was enjoined from publshing the act.

There is a further limitation to the Secretary of State’s ability to designate a date of publication beyond the 10 working day requirement in § 35.095(3)(b). § 14.38(10)(a) reads, “No later than the next working day following the deposit of an act in his or her office, provide written notice to the legislative reference bureau of the act number and date of enactment, and the designated date of publication of the act under s. 35.095.”

There is, as far as I can tell, no statutory language that gives the Secretary of State any authority to, after the working day following the deposit of an act in his office, change the designated date of publication, much less to a date beyond 10 working days after the date of enactment.

In this case, since La Follette designated March 25 as the date of publication on March 14, the working day after the act was deposited in his office, and the Supreme Court voided the judicial justification for a date-of-publication change after March 14, La Follette’s attempt to change the date of publication on March 18 is without any legal basis.

(H/T – JSOnline’s All Politics blog)

The Legislative Fiscal Bureau has run the numbers on the current version of the FY2012-2013 budget, as put together by the Joint Finance Committee, and they are projecting something that has not been achieved in at least the last 16 years – a projected structural surplus in the succeeding budget. Of course, this assumes that, outside of already-mandated changes in both state and federal law, the situation that exists in FY2013 carries over to FY2014 and FY2015.

As a convenience, I’ve reproduced and somewhat expanded the bottom-line table, comparing the structural deficit (termed “General Fund Amounts Necessary for a Balanced Budget” in Table 6:

After a marathon session that lasted, including numerous breaks, nearly 9 hours, the Government Accountability Board certified a sufficient number of signatures against all three Democrat Senators against whom recall petitions were submitted for filing, setting up recall elections for all three, or at least primaries if more than one Democrat, one Republican, or one Constitution Party candidate files to run, on July 19, one week later than the same for the 6 targeted Republican state Senators. By and large, the Board rejected Democrat attempts to toss signatures gathered by several out-of-state circulators based on what they termed “fraud”, as the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports that, in addition to the individual challenges recommended by GAB staff, a grand total of about 230 signatures collected by one of the circulators in question would not count.

The final number of certified signatures against the three Democrat Senators, per WisPolitics, are 15,540 signatures for the recall of Dave Hansen (D-Green Bay), 19,255 for the recall of Jim Holperin (D-Conover) and 17,138 for the recall of Bob Wirch (D-Pleasant Prairie). Each is more than the number required, which was 13,852 for Hansen, 15,960 for Holperin, and 13,537 for Wirch.

It is unknown whether the Democrats will follow the six targeted Republicans into court in an attempt to stop the recall, but they do have until next week Thursday to do so. The Wisconsin State Journal reported that Republican Senators Alberta Darling (R-River Hills), Shelia Harsdorf (R-River Falls) and Robert Cowles (R-Green Bay) filed suits yesterday to do just that, joining Dan Kapanke (R-La Crosse), Randy Hopper (R-Fond du Lac) and Luther Olsen (R-Ripon), who filed last week. As of yesterday, no date had been set in any of hte 6 Republican cases.

Meanwhile, the Republican Party of Wisconsin is lining up “protest ‘Democrat’” candidates to run in all 6 districts where Republicans are targeted in order to stretch the recall election itself to August 9, 4 weeks after the July 12 election date set for the 6 Republicans. This has the Democrats, who in Wisconsin had one of their operatives run as a “Republican” in a failed attempt to squeeze newly-independent Assemblyman Bob Ziegelbauer out of office last year, and nationally have with varying degrees of success encouraged third-party runs in attempts to seize Republican-held seats, crying “foul”. A minor point of order for those of you not in Wisconsin – the parties do not control any aspect of the primary process. They can neither get a candidate placed on the ballot automatically (outside of a recall situation where the incumbent is automatically on the ballot) nor prohibit a candidate from running for or holding office as a “member” of their party.

Revisions/extensions (7:14 pm 6/8/2011) – Speaking of Hopper, one of the main reasons he’s in particular trouble in a district that should be a safe Republican one is that he left his wife for a live-in girlfriend, but forgot to finalize the divorce before the recall circulators showed up at his soon-to-be-ex’s door. I agree with James Wigderson that the RPW needs to cut its ties with him, but they should do it in a primary just in case he forgets to declare himself a non-candidate. If memory serves, that 10-day deadline, along with the 4-week filing deadline for ballot access in the election, is fast approaching.

R&E part 2 (7:18 am 6/9/2011) - The MacIver News Service has a lengthier report of the hearing, including a tidbit on the telemarketing firm hired by the Dems to establish their “fraud” case that I had not known. Several Brown County residents had filed suit after the firm had called them multiple times, with the suit dismissed only after the calls had stopped.

That also leads me to another flashback – the same firm usurped the good name of a Green Bay medical facility in its first several hundred calls.

Waukesha County has filed its certified recount numbers with the Government Accountability Board, while Iowa County snuck in a revised set of certified numbers a bit before that point. With all 3,602 reporting units recounted, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is reporting Justice David Prosser has beaten challenger JoAnne Kloppenburg by 7,006 votes, 310 votes less than the pre-recount 7,316-vote margin. The Associated Press (via WLUK-TV) has the totals as Proser 752,697, Kloppenburg 745,691. Final numbers from the GAB are not yet available, however; therefore, I don’t have an updated spreadsheet just yet.

The Journal Sentinel further reports that, since the GAB expects to certify the results on Monday, Kloppenburg will have until May 31 to file a judicial appeal, which will be heard by a reserve (retired or defeated for re-election) judge of Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson’s choosing. Kloppenburg’s campaign says that decision will come after they review the evidence, while Prosser’s campaign issued a statement that said it was not warranted. Quoting from the statement, “As an attorney, Ms. Kloppenburg would know she has a ‘right’ to go to court, and as an attorney she should recognize it’s not the right thing do.”

The reason Iowa County revised their canvass was they were informed by the GAB that 4 ballots, all for Kloppenburg, were “improperly rejected” by the board for not having proper signatures. According to the GAB, ballots lacking proper signatures can only be rejected if either there were more ballots than voters or the issue was uncovered in absentee reconciliation. Since neither happened, Kloppenburg was awarded those 4 votes.

Revisions/extensions (9:25 pm 5/20/2011) - The GAB has released the certified Waukesha County numbers. However, I have not updated my spreadsheet after reviewing both the daily tracking spreadsheet and the various county-certified spreadsheets. In a few other counties, there are still some unexplained differences between the daily tracking spreadsheet, the county-certified spreadsheets, and the minutes from the recount, where only two of three were the same. Notably, not all of the differences were between the daily tracking spreadsheet and the minutes.

In sum, the differences don’t change Prosser’s margin of victory much. If one uses the numbers from the county-certified spreadsheets found on the county-by-county certified numbers/minutes page, Prosser’s margin of victory changes to 7,004. If one adjusts the numbers from the county-by-county certified numbers page for the instances where the canvass and minutes (where available) do not agree by substituting the numbers from the minutes (and the daily tracking spreadsheet) for the numbers on the certified spreadsheets, Proser’s margin of victory changes to 7,005.

It’s too late for me to update the spreadsheet tonight to reflect any of this. I should have it up tomorrow.

R&E part 2 (6:48 am 5/21/2011) - Typo corrected; thanks to DINORightMarie for the catch.

While the city of Waukesha has been fully recounted as of Friday night per Sarah Millard of Waukesha Patch, reconciling the poll books to the ballots occurred too late for the results to be reflected in today’s update from the Government Accountability Board. With 3,500 reporting units with at least reviewed results as of noon Monday, representing 1,445,559 votes, Justice David Prosser has an unofficial statewide 6,994-vote lead over challenger JoAnne Kloppenburg, a drop of 322 votes from his pre-recount 7,316-vote lead. There are two reporting units in the Village of Sussex with reported results that are currently under review (more on the main reason certain reporting units have been under review in a bit), and 49 reporting units in the city of Waukesha (out of 61) that do not have reported results.

Once the Waukesha and Sussex results are added, there will (or more properly, did remain as of the close of business Saturday; the canvassing board took Sunday off) approximately 36,600 votes left to count in 51 reporting units (really 50; the one city of Milwaukee reporting unit in Waukesha County is the ADM Cocoa plant with 0 residents).

The big news is the GAB put out a rather strong statement regarding whether holes in the ballot bag or missing security tag information is by itself a valid reason to toss the ballots contained therein:

Questions about the authenticity of ballots have arisen during the recount process due to holes in some ballot bags, gaps in their closure or issues with security tags. A hole in a ballot bag or a missing security tag is not enough evidence alone to discard the ballots inside. The ability to put a hand into a ballot bag is not by itself evidence of fraud.

The statement goes on to describe an internal review process the GAB instituted after the first-day issues with the reliability of the numbers reported on that day designed to catch, among other things, a post-election stuffing of the ballot bags (emphasis added):

G.A.B. staff has created an internal review process to check each ward’s recount totals against the original canvass totals to look for variances of plus or minus 10 votes. Any ward in which 10 more or 10 fewer votes are reported is flagged by staff for follow-up with the county clerk for an explanation of the reason. So far, we have found no significant, unexplained variances of vote totals. Staff will continue to review Waukesha County’s results as they come in each day until the recount is complete.

The last thing it does is address the certification of the election. Under normal circumstances, the GAB staff does its own canvass of the results. However, since this election is being recounted, the GAB relies on the certifications of the 72 counties, and once the deadline for a judicial appeal passes (or once judicial appeal is fully adjudicated), it certifies the winner.

Things continue to move along at a respectable, if slow, clip in Waukesha County. As of Thursday night, 116 reporting units (just over 50%) and just over 60,000 ballots remained to be counted and reported in the last portion of the Supreme Court recount still ongoing. Justice David Prosser’s unofficial statewide lead over challenger JoAnne Kloppenburg increased to 6,995 votes from the same point Tuesday. That is a net decline of 321 votes from the pre-recount 7,316-vote lead Prosser enjoyed.

Further good news on the speed of the recount came in a status conference held this morning by Dane County Judge Richard Niess. During it, Waukesha County Corporation Counsel Tom Farley said that the canvassers had made their way through nearly 80,000 of the 125,000 ballots cast in the election, and that the recount can be completed sometime between Friday, May 20 and Monday, May 23, several days before the Thursday, May 26 extension granted by Niess.

Once the recount is completed in Waukesha County, Kloppenburg will have 5 business days (not including Saturdays, Sundays or holidays) to decide whether she will go for the “Grand Theft Courts” strategy.

Things started to move along in Waukesha County the past couple days, even though the tracking spreadsheet may not necessarily reflect that. After the canvassing board and their tabulators moved to a larger room in the Waukesha County Courthouse, they began to set a decent pace despite a continued barrage of challenges, making their way through roughly 8,000 ballots per day.

As for the results thus far, through the end of business yesterday, the Government Accountability Board reported late this morning results from 3,461 of the 3,602 reporting units (the 3,408 units in the other 71 counties as certified), along with another 4 reporting units (all in Waukesha County) still under review. David Prosser’s unofficial statewide lead stood at 6,984 votes, a reduction of 332 votes from his pre-recount 7,316-vote lead.

That included 44,848 votes recounted and reviewed, out of an original 125.070, in Waukesha County, plus another approximate 3,700 reported to the GAB but not yet reviewed, from 53 of 192 reporting units. That does not include the approximately 25% of the city of Waukesha’s nearly-16,000 votes that have been recounted thus far; as the city counted its absentee ballots in a central location, the canvassing board is waiting until the entire city is recounted to report the results. In Waukesha County, Prosser gained a net 25 votes on his pre-recount lead.

Kyle Maichle e-mailed me this report this morning from the Courthouse (editor’s note; it was sent before yet another ballot bag challenge from the Kloppenburg campaign, this time for a “small hole” in the town of Merton):

First, the City of Waukesha has been counted since yesterday. According to their City Clerk I spoke with, they are being counted in no particular order. As of this morning they have already counted 15 out of the 60-plus reporting units there.

There have been no ballot bag challenges documented since May 5th in the official minutes.

As of this morning, they are counting the Towns of Lisbon and Oconomowoc in addition to Waukesha-City. Yesterday, the Towns of Ottawa and Mukwonago were completed.

How they are running today’s recount is that one half of tables is for the City of Waukesha while the other set is for other municipalities.

Sadly, given that the challenges continue apace, and given the arrival of a multitude of Kloppenburg volunteers at the Waukesha County courthouse this afternoon, it does not appear that the Kloppenburg campaign will be taking the advice of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel editorial board of not challenging the results of the recount in court.

Since everybody rested on Sunday, there isn’t an update for Day 12. Today was supposed to be the end of the recount, but due to the multitude of stalling tactics by the JoAnne Kloppenburg campaign in Waukesha County, the deadline for that county was extended to May 26. The other 71 counties completed their portions of the recount by today, and the Government Accountability Board completed certification of the returns from 70 of them. With those 70 counties (containing 3,353 of the 3,602 reporting units), the 55 reporting units in Sauk County (the one county complete but not yet certified) and the 47 reporting units in Waukesha County recounted as of Saturday night, 95.92% of the reporting units have completed their recount of 1,411,609 votes (about 94% of the votes). That, along with the pre-recount totals in the 147 reporting units in Waukesha County not yet recounted, puts David Prosser’s lead over Kloppenburg at 6,977 votes.

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.

There was, however, an objection from the “non-partisan” Kloppenburg campaign on another ballot. In Madison’s Ward 59, the canvassers ruled a ballot that had a write-in for “Democratic one above” as a “scattering”; the Kloppenburg campaign wanted it counted for her.

WTMJ-AM’s Charlie Sykes got a hold of the latest Kloppenburg fundraising letter, sent out on Sunday. It strongly suggests she will avail herself of a judicial appeal of the results despite cutting less than 0.03 percentage points off of Prosser’s pre-recount 0.48-percentage-point lead. She would have 5 business days from the end of the recount to do so, which means that if Waukesha County takes until May 26, she could do so anytime before the end of the day June 3.

Updates will come a bit more slowly now that Waukesha County is the only one still counting. The GAB will issue an update of their unofficial tracking spreadsheet once daily, and while I may not necessarily do a full post daily, I will try to both summarize things on Twitter and keep my tracking spreadsheet up to date.

Sorry about missing the Friday evening update; I decided to start switching my tracking spreadsheet to the certified results by county for the 60 counties, representing 2,329 reporting units and 801,991 votes, that have had their portions of the recount canvassed and certified by the Government Accountability Board as of Friday night. Between those counties and another 638 reporting units that have had their results reviewed but not yet certified (a total of 2,967, or 82.37%, of reporting units), 1,172,096, or just over 78%, of votes, have been recounted as of 6 pm Friday night. Combining that with the pre-recount canvassed results from the remainder of the reporting units, David Prosser’s unofficial lead over JoAnne Kloppenburg stands at 7,054 as of Friday evening, a drop of 262 from the pre-recount total.

The main reason why it took me the entirety of Saturday to do that integration is because 55 of those 2,329 reporting units that have been certified have changes from the running-total spreadsheet that was released by the GAB Friday evening. The net changes from that unofficial spreadsheet are Prosser -5, Kloppenburg +5 (or a net lead change of -10), and scattering -21.

In addition to the 60 counties where the recount has been certified, another 8 of the 72 counties have turned in recount results for all of their reporting units as of Friday evening. That leaves Dane, Milwaukee, Racine and Waukesha Counties as the last 4 counties left to complete their recounts. The GAB expects that Dane, Milwaukee and Racine Counties will be done by Monday, and they will be in a Dane County courtroom Monday morning to seek a court extension of the deadline for Waukesha County.

Speaking of Waukesha County, they finally finished the recount of the city of Brookfield a bit after 6 pm Saturday. I don’t have the recounted totals, but the number of challenges raised by the campaigns, mostly the Kloppenburg campaign, climbed to over 400.

Barring news reports from one of the four counties that were not done as of Friday evening, I don’t anticipate doing another update until Monday. Indeed, the GAB has not updated anything Saturday, and does not anticipate doing so Sunday.

Revisions/extensions (9:19 pm 5/7/2011) - I’ll be closing that poll on the left side of your screen at 7 am Monday.

R&E part 2 (5:11 pm 5/8/2011) - The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that Prosser added a net 2 votes to his lead in the city of Brookfield.

R&E part 3 (5:17 pm 5/8/2011) - WISC-TV reported that Dane County finished its portion of the recount late Saturday night, but they did not include what the changes versus the pre-recount canvass were.

R&E part 4 (6:35 pm 5/8/2011) - Charlie Sykes posted the ward-by-ward results from the city of Brookfield.

Hot Air commenter parke had this to say on the Green Room version of this post:

So, one way to look at this would be that an initial election result where, say one candidate won by 200 votes in this election, wouldn’t really amount to a hill of beans as far as being definitive. Thank you Joanne for establishing that point for us. It sure would make anyone who would claim complete victory by 200 votes look really foolish. And to think we wouldn’t have this insightful look if it weren’t for the efforts of Joanne.

Now isn’t that ironic.

There’s 4 days left in the statutory deadline, though the Government Accountability Board will file a request in a Dane County court on Monday for an extension on behalf of Dane and Waukesha Counties. Dane County has requested a one-day extension, and at least as of Thursday afternoon, Waukesha County had not given an estimated end date.

With 2,862 reporting units (79.46%) and 1,124,236 votes (just under 75%) recounted and reviewed as of 6 pm Thursday, David Prosser’s lead dropped by 220 votes from the pre-recount 7,316-vote lead to 7,096 votes. With a further 12 reporting units reporting results to the GAB but not having their numbers reviewed, 64 of Wisconsin’s 72 counties have now finished their portions of the recount.

Despite a continued hyper-challenge strategy employed by the Kloppenburg campaign, Waukesha County managed to finish recounting votes in 10 of the 24 wards in the city of Brookfield today (unfortunately, after the GAB released its 6 pm vote update), which brings that county’s completion total to just over 17% of the wards and close to 23% of the votes. The first of many challenges on the day began before the first bags of ballots were opened, as the overstuffed bags had begun to rip open from handling. The 6 plastic bags, from the first 3 wards and tied closed with a single red security tie, contained approximately 2,000 ballots. Lisa Sink at Brookfield Patch has an exhaustive multimediia report, including pictures of both the bags and several people dropping in to protect their votes, and video of the board of canvassers’ discussion and ultimate acceptance of the ballots.

A second early challenge, also dismissed by the canvassing board, involved the use of excess blank absentee ballots to compensate for the depletion of regular ballots on election day in Brookfield’s Ward 1. The funny thing is, up until today, I hadn’t heard, or at least I don’t remember hearing, of Brookfield running out of ballots, though I did hear of other, outstate locales running out.

In 71 of Wisconsin’s 72 counties, the recount is, or at least appears to be, on track for an on-time finish. With 2,717, or 75.43%, of the reporting units, and 1,044,530, or just under 70%, of the votes recounted and reviewed by Government Accountability Board staff as of 6 pm Wednesday, David Prosser has gained 271 votes from his pre-recount total, while JoAnne Kloppenburg has gained 481 from her pre-recount total. That represents a net loss of 210 votes for Prosser from his pre-recount lead of 7,316, bringing the unofficial full-state lead down to 7,106 votes.

Between those reporting units that have been recounted and reviewed and those which have been recounted but not reviewed, 61 of the 72 counties have completed their recount with just 5 days left in the statutory deadline. The GAB has created a page that contains individual county spreadsheets of the recount for those counties where results have been “certified” and, as they receive them, the minutes from the recount in those counties.

9 other counties appear to be on track, through either percentage of reporting units recounted or percentage of votes recounted, to be done by Monday. Milwaukee County, while it does not appear to be statistically possible to be done on time, is actually much further along than it appears; more than half the suburbs have been recounted, and the reason why the city of Milwaukee is currently reported as not reporting is the absentee ballots in every ward were counted at a central location on election day and thus must be counted separately from the ballots cast on election day.

That brings me to Waukesha County. As of Wednesday evening, only 10.31% of the reporting units, representing 17,549 votes, have been recounted and reviewed, with another 2,837 votes not reflected in the current GAB spreadsheet. Because the sum of those two numbers are barely 16% of the 125,070 votes canvassed by the county, and because of scrutiny not experienced by any other county including numerous challenges, The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that Waukesha County has asked the GAB to extend the Monday statutory deadline. If the plan wins approval in a Dane County court, Waukesha County plans on moving to a larger room once May 9th passes and doubling the tabulation staff, which would allow it to recount multiple reporting units at the same time.

In the meantime, the city of Brookfield, whose forgotten-on-election-night results are widely regarded as the major reason for the statewide recount, will have its recount started in the Waukesha County Courthouse Thursday morning. Waukesha County is providing a live-stream of their recount process, for those of you who wish to watch. I’ve heard rumblings that the rate of challenges will increase once the ballot bags for the city of Brookfield are brought into the room, and that more than the “usual” number of observers will descend on the Waukesha County Courthouse, so things could get “interesting”.

Staying with Brookfield and Waukesha County, WITI-TV reported that the first version of the spreadsheet sent by the city clerk, Kris Schmidt, to the county on election night could not be imported into the county system because of extra columns added by the city to allow it to double-check the votes. A second version was sent four minutes after Waukesha County clerk Kathy Nickoulas informed Schmidt the first one was unacceptable. The remaining mystery is why that second version was not imported into the county system on election night.

As for the type of nitpicking the Kloppenburg campaign has been doing, they successfully challenged 18 of the 24 absentee ballots in the Sauk County town of Sumpter, most of them from a convent, because they broke heavily for Pross…er, lacked witness signatures on the application. 14 of the 18 that were in the drawdown (random removal) were for Prosser, while the pre-recount canvass for the town had Kloppenburg carrying the town 96-83. The Prosser campaign, in an e-mail received by WTMJ-AM’s Charlie Sykes, claimed that the GAB has not consistently enforced the witness signature requirement, and that even after the town clerk testified that the ballots that were delivered by her to the nuns were valid, the Sauk County board of canvassers rejected the 18 ballots a second time.

Revisions/extensions (7:09 am 5/5/2011) - I had the wrong link to the Waukesha County requests extension story. It’s fixed now. Sorry about that.

For the most part, things are moving along quite nicely in the recount as the halfway point came and went yesterday. According to the Government Accountability Board, over 69% of the reporting units, representing 64% of the votes cast, have completed the recount. With 2,511 “cleanly” reported/reviewed reporting units, (69.71%), one not “cleanly” reviewed, and 19 reported but not reviewed, out of 960,083 recounted votes, David Prosser lost 178 votes off his pre-recount 7,316-vote lead over JoAnne Kloppenburg, bringing the current unofficial lead to 7,138.

The reason why I say there is a reporting unit that was not “cleanly” reviewed is it appears the GAB fouled up the totals as listed on the spreadsheet from 6 pm last night for the town of Stone Lake, in Waushara Washburn County. The pre-recount county canvass had that town’s vote totals as 101 for Prosser, 82 for Kloppenburg and 1 “scattering”. However, the recount spreadsheet had the vote totals as 1 for Prosser, 101 for Kloppenburg, 84 “scattering”. Pending a “clarification” from the GAB, that is not included in the above vote totals.

As for the speed, WITI-TV reported that the GAB wants an estimate of finish time from each county clerk (or in the case of Milwaukee, the County Election Commission) by the end of business today, so they know whether they need to go to a court to get an extension of the Monday deadline. They further reported that it appears the city of Milwaukee will be done with the recount on Friday, the remainder of Milwaukee County will be done by Saturday, and Waukesha County will likely need an extension. With a note that the 19 municipalities and nearly-229,000 votes in Milwaukee County includes the city of Milwaukee, and the clarification that Sue Edman is the city of Milwaukee Election Commission executive director, here’s the report…

Kyle Maichle provided video of the Waukesha County board of canvassers dealing with one of the early issues there, the issue of the missing inspector’s report on a ballot bag in the Town of Delafield on Thursday…

Meanwhile, there were special elections in three Assembly districts (two in the Milwaukee area, one just north of La Crosse) yesterday to fill seats vacated by three Republicans who took jobs in Governor Scott Walker’s administration. WisPolitics reports the Republicans easily took the two Milwaukee-area seats, while Democrat Steve Doyle took the La Crosse-area seat. There are two items of note going forward:

• The fact that Doyle won in an Assembly district that is part of Sen. Dan Kapanke’s (R-La Crosse) Senate district does not bode well for his survival of his pending recall election. While former Assemblyman, and now Department of Administration secretary, Mike Huebsch held the seat from 1994 until he became the DOA secretary, the district had been trending more Democratic in the “top-line” races in recent years.
• The Assembly partisan split is now 58 Republicans, 40 Democrats, and 1 independent who, up until mid-summer last year, was essentially a DINO. Indeed, Bob Ziegelbauer (I-Manitowoc) voted for the budget repair bill that limited public union collective bargaining privileges. That is important because that means the Assembly Democrats still can’t follow the example of the Fleebag Fourteen Senate Democrats and run away to prevent action on fiscal matters.

Revisions/extensions (12:04 pm 5/4/2011) - Aaron Frailing of the GAB e-mailed me to say the information for Stone Lake was transposed when the staff entered it into the GAB worksheet. That correction would mean an additional reporting unit reported/reviewed and an additional 2 votes for Kloppenburg compared to the pre-recount totals. It also makes Prosser’s unofficial lead 7,136.

The learning curve continues.

R&E part 2 (1:09 pm 5/4/2011) - Normally I don’t do more than tweet the noon GAB update, but since there were multiple reasons (including my own typo; Stone Lake is in Washburn County, not Waushara), I’ll do a quick one summary here (my spreadsheet won’t reflect the changes until this evening and the 6 pm GAB update):

• 2,648 of 3,602 reporting units reported/reviewed (73.51%), with another 21 reported but not reviewed
• 1,009,143 votes recounted/reviewed (a gain from a pre-recount 1,008,273)
• Net change from the pre-recount numbers: Prosser -104
• Unofficial current Prosser lead: +7,212 (down the 114 from a pre-recount 7,316)

R&E part 3 (1:22 pm 5/4/2011) - I need to note that the towns of Larrabee and Royalton in Waupaca County were taken off the “recounted/reviewed” list as of noon. On Monday, they were reported as having a net 89-vote gain for Kloppenburg via recount.

The big news of the day is the catch of two errors committed by town clerks in a pair of Waupaca County towns, one of which should have been but wasn’t caught in the county canvass. The Government Accountability Board relayed the explanations from Waupaca County Clerk Mary Robbins (note; Robbins misstated the final vote total for JoAnne Kloppenburg in the town of Larrabee – it was 138 after the recount according to both press reports and the 6:07 pm 5/2 GAB spreadsheet; the latter link will not be to the 6:07 pm 5/2 GAB worksheet after noon on 5/3):

Town of Larrabee – discrepancy in count. I have attached our recount notes in regards to the Town of Larrabee. They use both the Edge machine and the Optech Eagle. The Town of Larrabee original tally sheet from the April 5, 2011 election showed a 0 vote count on the Eagle on their tally sheet. (minutes attached) Board of Canvass did not think they could open the ballot bag to count at their April 7th Board of Canvass, we should have done that. The clerk was called (Arlene Kratzke) and she said she just forgot to transfer the numbers onto the sheet. The Board of Canvass should have caught this mistake the tape was attached and I apologize, we must have just read the sheet and didn’t check the tapes, we normally always check the tapes. The call in sheet, also, only shows 70 for Kloppenburg, the tape shows 167 (sic), the actual hand count shows 168 (sic) for Kloppenburg.

Town of Royalton – discrepancy in count, Kloppenburg original count was 80, Recount final count was 95 votes for Kloppenburg. They use the Edge machine and paper ballots: Original Tally was 80 votes, the Edge machine tape showed 40 ballots, that total matched the tape, they counted the Edge tape 3 times. The hand counted paper ballots were 40 on the original tally sheet (I think they just put 40 in both columns by mistake) Tabulators, counted 3 times for Kloppenburg. The 15 ballots were paper ballots, the recount team counted these ballots 3 times. Clerk had no explanation other than the election officials forgot to count a stack of ballots cast for Kloppenburg when they reported and put all paper ballots into the bag or the person writing the tallies just copied the 40 twice. Since these were paper ballots a recount is the only way these would have been found.

Of note, David Prosser also gained a single vote in the Larrabee recount, while he lost 7 in the Royalton recount.

Overall, things shifted a bit further in Kloppenburg’s favor. With 2,128 reporting units (59.08%) and 806,888 votes (just under 54%) recounted and reviewed, Prosser lost 148 votes of his pre-recount 7,316-vote lead to bring the unofficial lead down to 7,168. A further 61 or 64 reporting units (depending on whether one believes the 64 listed in the summary on the GAB site or the 61 listed on the GAB spreadsheet) have reported, but have not been reviewed.

The GAB has also mentioned a couple of other tidbits in its summary of the day:

• 24 of the 72 counties have completed their recounts.
• Milwaukee County will appear to be a bit behind for a while yet because the absentee ballots in the city were counted at a central location on election night, and because of that, the separate count of those ballots were not yet completed.

I stopped at the recount location for Milwaukee County this afternoon and briefly talked with one of the election officials. He told me that they were “approaching halfway”, and that they hoped to be done by either next week Monday (which would be the day the recount is to be done by state law) or Tuesday.

Meanwhile, Lisa Sink over at Brookfield Patch reports things are continuing to go very slowly in Waukesha County. Only about 11,000 of the 125,000+ votes had been recounted as of midday.

Revisions/extensions (7:28 am 5/3/2011) - It’s time to crush the dreams of some Kloppenburg supporters. Let’s take the most-generous interpretation of the vote shift I can give you, and look at just the net 169-vote shift away from Prosser and to Kloppenburg in the votes recounted and reviewed by the GAB between Sunday afternoon and Monday evening. That involved 129,058 votes, which means that net 169-vote shift represents a 0.131% net shift to Kloppenburg. Taking the rate of additional votes over the course of the just-over-24-hour period (0.185%) into account would mean there would be an estimated 692,508 votes left to count (691,230 pre-recount votes left, plus an estimated 1,278-as-yet-uncounted net vote gain). Multiplying the estimated remaining votes by the unrounded net gain Kloppenburg enjoyed between Sunday afternoon’s numbers and Monday evening’s numbers would get Kloppenburg a net 907-vote gain out of the remaining ballots, which would put her total recount gain at 1,055. However, since Prosser entered the recount with a 7,316-vote lead, he would leave it with a 6,261-vote post-recount win.

If one uses the net 0.184% net gain Kloppenburg has received and the 0.0945% total vote gain since the start of the recount, her final net gain would be far less. Out of the estimated 691,894 votes remaining, Kloppenburg would gain a net 128-vote gain, bringing her total recount vote gain to 276 and giving Prosser a 7,040-vote post-recount win.

The only news yesterday was the count itself. Shortly before the Government Accountability Board released updated numbers, the Associated Press (via WISC-TV) reported on the fact that, with just under 1/3rd of the 13 days allowed by state law to complete the recount, 1/3rd of the reporting units had results reported. The 4:15 pm release from the GAB upped that to 1,847 of 3,602 reporting units completed and reviewed, and with 677,830 votes as-recounted, David Prosser extended his pre-recount lead over JoAnne Kloppenburg by 21 to an unofficial 7,337 votes.

I do have to note the current (at least as of 4:15 pm yesterday) version of GAB’s spreadsheet has what appears to be an error in the bottom-line totals; they reported 693,592 votes as recounted, with similar “errors” in each individual vote total. As every number on their spreadsheet is hand-entered, that may well include numbers from reporting units that were not individually reported on said spreadsheet.

Again, both the GAB and I stress that those results are both unofficial and do not reflect all the reporting units that have completed recounts. For example, media reports had Eau Claire County as having completed its recount on Friday afternoon, yet the results released by the GAB yesterday afternoon did not have all of the results from Eau Claire County entered.

With that said, it is the “easy” half that is done. The canvassing board in, say, Milwaukee County can’t farm out some of their work to the canvassing board in, say, Green Lake County, even though the latter board already finished their work. Indeed, in terms of ballots recounted, Milwaukee and Waukesha Counties, out of those counties that have reported any results, are the only two which are significantly in danger of not completing the recount by next week Monday.

Even with just the partial results, some statistical analysis on the change of votes is possible. In just the reporting units that have been recounted and reported by the GAB:

• David Prosser saw an increase of 187 votes, from the pre-recount canvassed total of 358,268 votes to a recounted 358,455 votes. That is a 0.0522% gain.
• JoAnne Kloppenburg saw an increase of 166 votes, from the pre-recount canvassed total of 318,527 votes to a recounted 318,693 votes. That is a 0.0521% gain.

Just as a reminder, Prosser’s pre-recount lead over Kloppenburg was 0.4881 percentage points.

Revisions/extensions (12:01 pm 5/2/2011) - Kyle Maichle reports there is a poll list (called “poll book” in his Twitter stream) “issue” in Brown Deer’s Wards 1-3 (yes, it is a single reporting unit despite containing multiple wards, and it is in Milwaukee County). That reporting unit went for Kloppenburg by a pre-recount 925-704 margin.

Despite an earlier declaration from the Government Accountability Board that there would be no result updates today, they are now planning on the usual noon and 6 pm schedule. In fact, the noon update came out just before I finished updating my tracking spreadsheet in preparation for this update, so I added those numbers in. With 1,310 of the 3,602 reporting units, or 36.37%, reporting and (informally) reviewed by the GAB as of 7:04 pm last night, David Prosser gained a net 35 votes on his pre-recount 7,316-vote lead. That is on 441,178 votes recounted, or a bit over 29% of the votes cast.

There has been shockingly little news in the media this weekend on the recount. Other than the multiple reports on the numbers as released by the GAB just after noon on Friday, two Madison media outlets reporting on the Verona lost-and-found ballots, and some outstate sources reporting their local counties are either done or almost done with the recount with very little to no drama, there wasn’t anything I could find in my sweep of media outlets.

WISC-TV in Madison did a story on those lost-and-found ballots, and there is a “slight” difference with the CapTimes story I relayed yesterday regarding the condition in which the lost-and-found ballots were. WISC-TV reported that, instead of the ballots, all of which were “write-in” ballots according to WISC-TV, being merely rubber-banded, they were in a sealed ballot bag. WISC-TV also reported that neither campaign objected to the inclusion of the ballots in the recount.

I’ll start this overdue update with the unofficial recounted numbers released at 6 pm last night from the Government Accountability Board. There are a pair of one-vote discrepancies in the current GAB spreadsheet where the hand-entered total number of votes is one higher than both the sum of the votes cast for the candidates and “scattering” (i.e. write-in) and the number of ballots reported as cast, likely entry errors because every number is hand-entered on the GAB spreadsheet, so I did not include those two reporting units in my tracking spreadsheet. Not including those two reporting units, David Prosser’s lead over JoAnne Kloppenburg in the 523 “cleanly” reported units (14.52% of all reporting units, representing 176,646 votes) increased by 32, to an unofficial 7,348-vote lead.

A quick housekeeping note on my tracking spreadsheet; except for Wednesday’s scrapped numbers, it will include the archived daily totals from the GAB on individual worksheets (date/time-stamp based on when the GAB uploaded their source spreadsheet both in the header and in the worksheet tab), and the most-current worksheet will be on the tab furthest to the left (it should also be the one that opens when one opens the spreadsheet).

The GAB also reported yesterday that 20 of the 72 counties have completed the recount as of 8:19 pm. They (and I) stress that not all of those counties have been entered in the running-total spreadsheet yet. Indeed, WEAU-TV reported that Eau Claire County completed its recount, with a net change of 9 additional votes for Prosser and 14 additional votes for Kloppenburg. The pre-recount margin in Eau Claire County was 15,919 for Kloppenburg and 11,416 for Prosser. Notably, Eau Claire County was forced to recount every vote by hand because the optical machines used by every municipality was the Optech Eagle.

The Prosser campaign launched a website that, among other things, is tracking results that combine what the GAB is reporting and what representatives of their recount team have observed. I cannot stress enough that these are both unofficial numbers and from a source that has a vested interest in what is reported, namely one of the campaigns. As of early this morning, according to the Prosser campaign, with 31.75% of the wards and 398,395 votes (26.61%) recounted, Prosser’s lead has grown by 52 votes from the pre-recount 7,316-vote lead.

Meanwhile, the big story of yesterday (or, at least what would have been the big story had it happened in Waukesha County instead of Dane County) was the separation of 97 ballots from a ballot bag in the city of Verona. Summarizing The CapTimes’ story, the discrepancy came about when the Dane County canvassing board discovered, while recounting ballots cast in the city of Verona, there were over 90 fewer ballots present than the number that had been run through the voting machines on Election Day. A search ensued, and the ballots, rubber-banded together, turned up in the office of the Verona city clerk. Despite the loss of the chain of custody on the ballots, precinct stamps and initials established their legitimacy and they were recounted. The once-missing ballots favored Prosser by 30 votes, even though Kloppenburg carried the city of Verona by a pre-recount 2,380-1,204 margin. That irregularity also, according to the CapTimes did not change that pre-recount margin.

The weekend will be at least a one-day period of work for most of the canvassing boards that have not completed the recount process. While state statutes state that, while recounting, canvassing boards cannot take more than one consecutive day off, the GAB will allow those boards who are “confident” they will complete their work by Friday, May 6 (three days before the statutory deadline) to take the entire weekend off. As for the GAB, they will post at least one updated set of vote totals today, but they will not post any tomorrow.

WisPolitics reports that Dane County judge John Markson has approved a plan put forth by the Government Accountability Board that will allow it to schedule recall elections for the first eight state Senators (Republicans Dan Kapanke, Randy Hopper, Luther Olsen, Shelia Harsdorf and Alberta Darling, and Democrats Dave Hansen, Jim Holperin and Robert Wirch) on what is anticipated to be July 12 by allowing an extension of the 31-day deadlines for the GAB to issue a certificate of sufficiency (or insufficiency) on the various recalls to a date, between May 31 and June 3, that would potentially allow the GAB to schedule the elections on a single day. I do have to note that if the GAB delayed the issuance of a certificate of sufficiency beyond May 31, that election date would be pushed to July 19.

Further, while the recall effort against Republican Senator Robert Cowles was not part of the court petition, the by-the-statutes timeline would also put his recall election on July 12. However, GAB director Kevin Kennedy said that the GAB would likely also seek an extension of the timeline for that case.

Had the judge not approved the GAB plan, the recall elections would have been scattered across the calendar. Kapanke’s election would have been on June 14, Hopper’s on June 21, Darling’s, Hansen’s, Harsdorf’s, Holperin’s, Olsen’s and Wirch’s on July 5, and Cowles’ on July 12. That would have allowed the Democrats to concentrate all their resources on single districts three different times, while it would also have put the bulk of the elections, and all of the elections against the Democrats, on a holiday week, specifically the day after Independence Day.

So much for the DPW “rolling recall” plan.