It looks as though it may be a while before we know the final results of the recent election for Wisconsin State Supreme Court between Prosser and Kloppenburg.
A recount was already expected because the initial vote count came down to a disparity of just 204 votes between the two candidates, but things became even more complicated after a county clerk "found" more votes that she had "misplaced."
Now the agency that certifies elections in Wisconsin is saying they will not declare a winner until a comprehensive probe has been completed.
(Reuters) - The agency overseeing Wisconsin elections will not certify results of Tuesday's state Supreme Court race until it concludes a probe into how a county clerk misplaced and then found some 14,000 votes that upended the contest.
Michael Haas, Government Accountability Board staff attorney, told Reuters on Friday the watchdog agency was looking into vote tabulation errors in Republican-leaning Waukesha County which gave the conservative incumbent a net gain of more than 7,000 votes -- a lead his union-backed challenger seems unlikely to surmount. [...]
"It's not that we necessarily expect to find anything criminal. But we want to make sure the public has confidence in the results,"
If you're expecting the public to have confidence in the results, I wouldn't get my hopes up, because I don't see how anyone could be instilled with confidence after learning that their votes were kept on an off-network personal computer in an Access database. That in itself should be considered criminal.
The county clerk who kept a record of votes on her personal computer is a long time associate of David Prosser, the Republican nominee. I'll let you draw your own conclusions.
In other related news -- the effort to gather signatures to initiate the recall of seven Republican state senators is moving along smoothly.