Kloppenburg requests recount

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Assistant Attorney General JoAnne Kloppenburg has requested a statewide recount of the ballots cast in the Supreme Court election 15 days ago. She also asked the Government Accountability Board to have a special investigator look into the actions of Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus.

On Election Night, it appeared that Kloppenburg had won the election by 200 votes, but Nickolaus forgot to include Brookfield's votes in her original tally. When those votes were added in, incumbent Justice David Prosser took a 7,500-vote lead. After all the counties were canvassed, Prosser had a 7,316-vote victory.

Wisconsin taxpayers will cover the cost of the recount because the margin of Kloppenburg's defeat was less than 0.5%.

The next step is for Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson is to appoint a judge to hear whatever legal concerns are raised about individual ballots during what's expected to a long recount process.

Earlier this week, Prosser and his campaign advisors said the incumbent's margin of victory was such that Kloppenburg would not have much of a chance of overtaking him. They called the recount frivolous and said they would do what they could to stop it.

Should Prosser's victory be upheld, the Supreme Court's 4-3 conservative majority would remain in place.

Observers had predicted an easy win for Prosser, but that was before public union supporters got behind Kloppenburg with the hope of making it easier to kill the law that limits collective bargaining.

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