Last updated on June 7th, 2012 at 03:37 pm
In an election as close as this recall is set to be, every vote counts.
High turn out has been reported in both Democratic strong holds Milwaukee and Dane County, but turn out is also in Republican leaning (2-1) Waukesha County. Waukesha County is also the home of Kathy Nickolaus and under her tutelage, has a reputation for exceptionally high voter turnout, especially during the Supreme Court election.
You might remember her from the torn ballot bags and found votes in the Supreme Court election.
Kathy Nickolaus waited so long to tell the election canvassers about the “found” votes, never giving them a chance to review the ballot bags or any paper trail of the votes, but rather minutes before a press conference regarding the found votes, showed them a computer print out showing the found votes. Nickolaus also called the canvassers to work early, without any notice or explanation of the earlier than normal canvassing time. Kathy’s long history of data analysis and her practice of inputting vote tallies by hand in addition to refusing to upload the results to the county computer servers (preferring to keep them all on her computer in an office where she has all employees using the same log in and password) has given rise to a lack of trust in election results from her district. Nickolaus attributed the found votes to “human error” claiming she forgot to hit “save” after inputting them to Microsoft Access.
Or leaving the Democratic canvasser for the Supreme Court race in the dark about the found votes for two days.
Or the long, trailing voter rolls that she left tacked to the walls for the media to sort in the April 3rd election.
You probably figured anyone that incompetent would be gone by now, especially with her history of being granted immunity in yet another criminal investigation involving computers and Republicans (to be fair, Democrats were also investigated in that scandal, but none of them are County Clerks in Democratic strongholds who consistently manage to kill voter confidence and find votes for the Democrat).
You also may have heard Waukesha County Executive Dan Vrakas swear that Kathy wouldn’t be anywhere near this election after she was ordered to step aside or resign just last month.
But if you believed that all of that would be enough to get rid of Republican friendly Nickolaus’ hold on the Republican strong hold, then you would be wrong.
Kathy Nickolaus was asked to step down but she didn’t. She has promised she won’t run again, but no lame duck for Kathy. By step aside, she meant she would still be in charge. See?
Kathy Nickolaus is hanging on to her job for all she’s worth. Kathy has a protégé working for her, Kelly Yaeger, who inspires the same low level of confidence as Kathy, even from high ranking Republicans. That’s not good.
Kathy is running around the Waukesha County clerk office ignoring a journalist from the Journal Sentinel Online, and her protégé is following suit. Kathy was apparently dealing with issues and reporting to the Democratic Party watch person. Sure looked like she was running the election.
Told that Nicholaus was running the show, Vrakas said, “It’s absolutely not true. She agreed to step aside and hand off her duties to Kelly, and that has occurred.”
See, Kathy did it again. This time, she announced that she would pass her duties off to her protégé and not seek reelection. However, she also apparently claimed authority for elections while in office. Isn’t that handy, just in time for the recall of Republican hero Scott Walker?
It’s Republicans screaming voter fraud, but we have once again, Kathy Nickolaus — renown for exceptionally high voter turnout and infamous for found ballots — in charge of the Republican stronghold in Wisconsin.
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