Prosser gains "lost" votes, leads (?) State Supreme Court race

Waukesha Co Clerk "finds" 14,000 additional votes, including net gain of 7,000+ for Prosser

New developments in the battle for the Wisconsin Supreme Court race leaves sitting Justice David Prosser in the lead, but under very curious circumstances.

Almost 29 hours after the initial results from around the state were released, Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus announced that more than 14,000 votes hadn't been included. The net result of those votes was a 7,000+ gain for Prosser, giving him the lead (should the results indeed hold up).

From Blogging Blue:

Having watched the news conference where the “discovery” of these missing votes was announced, I can’t help but wonder why it took something in the neighborhood of 29 hours after these votes were “discovered” for Kathy Nickolaus to make the announcement regarding the votes. What’s more, how is it that Christian Schneider of right-wing Wisconsin Policy Research Institute broke this story before anyone else? What inside information was Schneider given?

Questions abound about the entire situation, including Nickolaus' background with both her time as County Clerk as well as her employment history with Prosser himself.

Nickolaus had worked under Prosser while he had been Speaker of the Assembly from 1995 through 1996. She had also brushed aside complaints from the Waukesha County Board regarding her storing election results on a personal computer in her office rather than on a network:

The issue came to a head when Nickolaus removed the election results collection and tallying system from the county computer network this spring and installed it on standalone personal computers in her office. She has said they are backed up with redundant systems.

Director of Administration Norman A. Cummings said Nickolaus has been uncooperative with attempts to have information technologists review the system and confirm the backups.

Also an issue for some was just HOW could someone lose an entire city's votes? Questions of whether Nickolaus had really forgotten to save the information or not were raised by a tweet by Charles Brace:

Experts: Microsoft Access saves automatically, so Waukesha clerk's "didnt save" idea is ludicrous

Waukesha County has had its fair share of voting glitches as well (PDF).

Is it POSSIBLE that what Kathy Nickolaus is telling us is true? It is -- in fact, a Democratic member of the Waukesha County board of canvassers said they would vouch for Nickolaus' "discovery." But it's a situation that deserves the full scrutiny of the public -- Nickolaus has been known to have been involved in state scandals before, having been granted immunity for playing a part in the state caucus controversy.

It's terribly convenient for these results to come out more than a full day after the initial returns told us that JoAnne Kloppenburg was the winner, and not Prosser. It's not an impossible situation -- to err is human -- but the background of the person performing the error and the exact timing of the situation justifies the open records request that the Kloppenburg campaign is filing.