UH OH! Update on the Wisconsin Supreme Court Election Recount

The following is from the Journal Sentinel, by way of Fox Not-Really-News:

The Journal Sentinel headline read:

Nuns' votes tossed in court recount

18 Sauk County absentee ballots are missing witness signatures"

while Fox Propaganda ran with this: 

 "Democrat Gets Nuns’ Votes Tossed in Wisconsin Recount"

I fail to appreciate why it is acceptable for nuns or any other clergy not to follow absentee ballot procedures which prevent election fraud, particularly since this is the way they consistently cast their ballots rather than a first time confusion.

It seems distinctly odd to me that not only would the 18 nuns all make this same mistake, but that someone else, not one of the nuns, who was voting absentee would make that mistake as well, in the same bunch of ballots. That seems VERY unusual, in the context of what I saw during the manual recount in Minnesota.

More of an issue for me is why is it that this particular jurisdiction seems to have so very many voting irregularities, as it is the same one where previously the person in charge of this election had to be granted immunity while other Republicans were criminally charged and convicted of felonies.

THIS is the same location where those 14,000+ ballots appeared after it looked like the Democratic candidate had won. After having participated in the Dayton / Emmer Recount (the one the fiscal responsibility TALKING Republicans haven't paid for going on six months later), I can particularly appreciate what is involved here.

How do we know that there wasn't some funny business by the top election official, given her checkered background? It doesn't appear that anyone has contacted the cloistered nuns to inquire about the circumstances. But that might change, since the Democratic candidate, Kloppenburg, requested an investigation:

Kloppenburg's campaign has also requested a special investigator in Waukesha County, where 14,000 unreported votes were found two days after the election, giving Prosser his decisive lead.
Kloppenburg's request points out that Prosser was seen attending a private meeting with Walker the night after the election. That same day, Walker made public statements commenting that there might be "ballots somewhere, somehow found out of the blue that weren't counted before."

Hey, maybe the Governor was just kidding around, yanking people's chains.  Or maybe not.  IF this is true - and I don't know that it is, only that it should be examined, then there is some basis for concern about the integrity of the election process in this part of Wisconsin.  But I am making no accusations, only raising questions that appear to have more legitimacy than the ones raised in the Minnesota recount by Republicans with their thousands of false ballot challenges.

I am not suggesting for even a moment that these nuns were dishonest.  But it does strike me as unlikely that nuns who always vote absentee would make this mistake -- at all, much less this many times.  It raises questions for me, especially as there is a special drop off and pick up of these absentee ballots which presumably differs from how other absentee ballots are handled and processed.

I wonder if this cloister of nuns has a web site, or email? It might be fun on behalf of this Penigma post to inquire....

If there was ever a group who would not be expected to be communicative to the outside world it is cloistered nuns, making them an ideal group to use as cover for a dishonest person to do something improper with votes attributed to them.  I sincerely hope that further investigation is made to confirm they in fact voted absentee in this particular election, so as to confirm their voting rights were NOT violated by Republican voter fraud.

Because contrary to the fears expressed by conservatives about liberals and democrats and voter fraud, while overall voter fraud is rare, occurrences of it by conservatives are not.  The image that conservatives would like to portray, of rampant LIBERAL voter fraud is their own, unique, and utterly false urban myth; one that has instances of projection of conservative voter fraud onto others.

Certainly, if the votes had been in favor of the Republican candidate, I don't believe for a heart beat that Fox Nuts would have the slightest problem with these votes being challenged; quite the opposite.  Because they are not a news organization, they are promoters of propaganda, operating on a blatant double standard. I don't care who benefitted from these votes; what concerns me is the pattern of irregularity.

Unfortunately, the Wisconsin recount lacks the exemplary quality of the one run by MN Secretary of State Ritchie, as carefully detailed in this excellent blog post.

The News story:

The recount for the state Supreme Court race has come to this: Votes from nuns have been thrown out.
The twist in the race between Justice David Prosser and challenger JoAnne Kloppenburg came during the recount in Sauk County. There, ballots of Cistercian nuns from the Valley of Our Lady Monastery in Prairie du Sac were rejected.
The nuns live a contemplative, monastic life and support themselves by baking and distributing altar breads, according to their website.
On Friday, during the recount, it was noted that witness signatures were missing from 18 absentee ballots from the Town of Sumpter, where votes from the monastery are counted.
"Eighteen applications did not have a witness signature," said Alene Bolin, assistant corporation counsel for Sauk County. "I don't think all 18 were from the monastery. I think it has turned into, there were 18 nuns but I do remember one of the ballots was not from the convent."
"They're cloistered nuns," Bolin said. "So the clerk (Donna Ziegler) dropped off an envelope with all the absentee ballots and applications with them. On the day of the election, she picked them up and dropped them off at the polling place. The absentee ballots were opened there and counted. During the recount it was discovered that there was no witness signature."
Because canvassers were unable to match the actual ballots to the voter, they took all 24 absentee ballots from the Town of Sumpter and randomly drew 18, which were then set aside and not counted. Of those ballots, Prosser had 14 while Kloppenburg had four.

The Prosser campaign made two appeals to have the ballots counted, including early Wednesday, but they were turned down by the board of canvassers, Bolin said.

Waukesha County seeks extension

The Sauk County revelation came the same day that recount overseers in Waukesha County sought an extension of their deadline to complete a hand recount of some 124,000 ballots.
The recount began April 27 and only 20,386 were expected to be recounted by the end of the day Wednesday, according to a letter to the state Governmental Accountability Board from retired Circuit Court Judge Robert Mawdsley.
Mawdsley was selected to oversee the Waukesha County Board of Canvassers in the recount of votes cast in the county April 5.
With the extension, on May 9 - the current deadline - the recount would be moved from a smaller room to the cafeteria in the county's Administration Center, according to Mawdsley's letter.
The move would allow for twice the number of tabulators, who also would be able to tally multiple reporting units simultaneously, Mawdsley said.
Kloppenburg's campaign requested a recount after the official tally showed she lost to Prosser by 7,316 votes - less than 0.5% of the 1.5 million votes cast in the race.
The election initially appeared much closer - with Kloppenburg, a state justice department attorney - up by 204 votes, before Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus announced her initial, unofficial tally failed to include 14,315 votes from the City of Brookfield.