VIDEO: Union-Organized Protest Outside of Waukesha County Courthouse

The familiar chants of “Hey, hey, ho, ho, Scott Walker’s got to go” were traded in for “Hey, hey, ho, ho, Prosser’s got to go” Friday afternoon at the Waukesha County Courthouse.

Protesters rallied at the Waukesha County Courthouse with calls for a federal investigation on Friday, expressing their displeasure with the county clerk’s election snafu that excluded all votes from the city of Brookfield in the counts that were given to the media on Tuesday.

“I guess I am just a little bit appalled that the votes from Waukesha County were not counted with the rest of the votes that came in,” said Diane Palmer, a Brookfield resident. “There are certain things we rely upon in Waukesha County and that is good, efficient government.”

The AFL-CIO held a rally for "open and honest elections" where thousands of uncounted votes were discovered the day after polls closed. 

Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus announced the omission, which undercounted incumbent David Prosser's vote total and created the impression that JoAnne Kloppenburg had a narrow lead in the hotly contested state Supreme Court race.

Instead, with the found votes, Prosser has about a 7,000-vote lead. 

Following the roller-coaster of results, Kloppenburg supporters are calling for further investigation into what happened. Labor unions, including the AFL-CIO, backed Kloppenburg over Prosser, who is considered aligned with Gov. Scott Walker. 

A rally was also held in Madison at the State Capitol. The Waukesha protest had a heated but non-violent moment when a man carrying a sign that said “Thank you, Brookfield” asked the protesters to show their ID to prove their residency.

A Brookfield man who was protesting with the union members walked over to the “Thank you, Brookfield” man and they were standing within inches of each other as the protester showed the first man his Wisconsin driver’s license.

It wasn’t just the union member, though. A few people stood up for the county clerk, saying that the snafu was a mistake that was caught in the process.

“This is democracy in action. There is a process in place,” said Waukesha resident Chris Bauman. “This is just about the wrong numbers going to … (the) Associated Press. This isn’t about the number of ballots. Those ballots are there and they were counted. It was a clerical error.

“We have a process in place, and it has been followed. I support the process – that is democracy in action.”