Huge update on the Wisconsin Supreme Court seat election, where initial numbers had Attorney General JoAnne Kloppenburg ahead of incumbent David Prosser in votes by 204.
Looks like those numbers were incorrectly reported and Kloppenburg may have given her little victory speech too soon.
A tally compiled by The Associated Press Wednesday and used by news organizations statewide, including the Journal Sentinel, indicated Kloppenburg was leading the race by 204 votes. Figures on Winnebago County's website are now different from those collected by the AP.
Winnebago County's numbers say Prosser received 20,701 votes to Kloppenburg's 18,887. The AP has 19,991 for Prosser to Kloppenburg's 18,421.
The new numbers would give Prosser 244 more votes, or a 40-vote lead statewide.
An editor at the AP said the news service became aware of the discrepancy in the past hour. The AP last checked figures with Winnebago County at 10:14 a.m. Wednesday, according to the AP. The county adjusted its figures at 2:27 p.m.
HUGE news.
I think it is safe to assume that when the final figures are in 1) It will still be a very close race and 2) there will be a recount.
Related news shows that accusations of fraud are already being reported.
[Update] Things are looking even better for Prosser than what was originally reported above. No longer is there a difference of a couple hundred votes. Now we are talking in the thousands.
From the County Clerk's website:
DAVID T. PROSSER, JR - 20701
JOANNE KLOPPENBURG - 18887
Write-in Votes- 52
[Update #2]
The mistakes in the originally election vote totals is being blamed on human error.
Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus apologized this evening for human error that she blamed for failing to include the city of Brookfield's vote totals in the tally she reported to the media Election Night.
The mistake and two other changes in the county helped net Justice David Prosser 7,583 votes over JoAnne Kloppenburg and swung the race dramatically in his favor.
Nickolaus said she failed to properly save a spreadsheet after inputting the Brookfield numbers Election Night, leading to the error. Once she ran the report to show the aggregate numbers for the county, she assumed incorrectly the Brookfield numbers were included.
She said the mistake was discovered yesterday during the canvass.
She stressed it was not a case of votes being found.
"I’m thankful that this error was caught early in the process and during the canvass," Nickolaus said. "The purpose of the canvass is to catch these kinds of errors."
Nickolaus said there were two other changes in municipal vote totals in the county.
In New Berlin, the initial total in one ward for Prosser was reported as 37 when it was actually 237.
In the town of Lisbon, both candidates had lower vote totals after the canvass.
I expect more will be reported about this throughout the night and tomorrow.
[Update #3] Talk about an immediate news firestorm!!!
More here, here, here and here.
Might not be a recount after all.. hell of a mistake to have made though.
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