Two days after leaders from the Democratic Party of Wisconsin claimed Kathy Nickolaus was tampering with votes in the State Sen. Alberta Darling recall election, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s PolitiFact gave the Democrats a “Pants on Fire” ranking for their comments.
Frustrated that their candidate, State Rep. Sandy Pasch was losing the election to the Republican state senators, stating “She is once more tampering with the results of a consequential election and in the next hours we will determine our next course of action. For now, Wisconsin should know that a dark cloud hangs over these important results."
Politifact notes that the county clerk doesn’t count the ballots and includes interviews from the Menomonee Falls clerk and Nickolaus, who both said the election results were posted on the county’s website within minutes of Nickolaus receiving the tallies from the Menomonee Falls clerk.
Menomonee Falls Patch has full coverage of the recall election, including its community.
WTMJ-4 reported Wednesday that the Democrats are not going to apologize for their statements. Nickolaus told the TV station she doesn’t think they will apologize and that the comments were “disappointing.”
The comments from the Democrats, though, were not just limited to the news release, which was removed from the party’s website hours after being posted.
“We believe there’s dirty tricks afoot,” Graeme Zielinski, spokesman for the Democratic Party, told members of the media, including Whitefish Bay Patch.
Nickolaus forgot to report the results from the City of Brookfield in an unofficial report to the Associated Press on election night in April. The results caused Assistant Attorney General JoAnne Kloppenburg to declare victory. Instead, when the votes from Brookfield were reported to the Government Accountability Board, incumbent Justice David Prosser was declared the winner following a lengthy recount.
The incident had Democrats across the state calling for an investigation into the election night snafu and Nickolaus. Protesters immediately marched around the Waukesha County Courthouse demanding an investigation and for Nickolaus’ resignation. Nickolaus is an elected official.
That would have been unacceptable and inexcusable. About an hour after Mike Tate said what we all were thinking, Nikalaus released her results. So you can understand why he said what he said. This woman has had election irregularities and always waits until everyone else has reported before she turns in her results. The only reason she still has a job is the GOP cultists in her county all understand that she can make things happen. I mean really, if she was as dumb as she tries to act she would have been out of her position years ago. But the GOP keeps her installed for some reason despite her "mistakes" and "human error". She is up to no good. I don;t think she did anything wrong here, but I think she was making sure she didn't have to do anything.
I just hope she doesn't lose track of my marriage certificate. That could get ugly.
Hindsight is 20/20. What would have been best for him to say is "we are comitted to working for everyone, and will do everything to make Wisconsin better. By reaching out across the aisle we can bring some sanity back to this fine State." Knowing how divided and passionate the people are on both sides, a true gentleman would have made an effort to calm the crazies. The best man is the first to offer an olive branch.
We still are civilized people, we should be anyway.
That said, why, with Waukesha County using the same machines as the rest of the precincts statewide, does it take us so much longer to assemble accurate tallies? I live here (not in Darling's district, so I wasn't part of the recall)and it's embarrassing.
I was watching 3 different sources and none mentioned anything about releasing vote tallies the next day. If you are talking about certification, that is done the next day. Menomonee Falls covers a large area of geography compared to the population- it has always taken time for the results to come in. Regardless of her past mistake- Mike Tate's comments were in poor taste at best. I think he did a huge disservice to his party, as most democrats were disgusted with him also.
None of the networks mentioned posting a day late- and Patch was on top of everything too.
You should be more careful with your words. You've just committed prosecutable Slander!
http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2011/apr/17/kathy-nickolaus/waukesha-county-clerk-kathy-nickolaus-says-errors-/ I think if this was turned around and the Republicans suddenly won an election with 8000 "lost votes" as happened in the Judges election, that Nikalaus should have made sure this one went very smoothly and without concern. I don't think she does her job very well.