Wisconsin's Lawless State Government

[Edi]

It's not difficult to imagine what the Republicans would be saying if it was a Democrat similarly defying a court order enjoining something the Republicans didn't like. They certainly would not be sniffing about the legislators being immune to laws. They simply think laws don't apply to themselves.

[Broken]

While the Republicans continue to simmer and steam that they are the only true Americans and the rest of us have no right to judge them or condemn their outrageous power grabs, the voters are starting to take even more action beyond the massive protests. Organizers say they already have enough signatures to force the recall vote on one of the GOP State Senators although they are going to take a week to sort the signatures to make sure all the t's are crossed and i's are dotted.

[Simon_Jester]

Also, hopefully, to establish a margin of error. Best to work on the assumption that some fraction of the signatures will be struck from the record, on dodgy or inadequate reasons, and still have enough to do the job.

[Koolaidkirby]

While the Republicans continue to simmer and steam that they are the only true Americans and the rest of us have no right to judge them or condemn their outrageous power grabs, the voters are starting to take even more action beyond the massive protests. Organizers say they already have enough signatures to force the recall vote on one of the GOP State Senators although they are going to take a week to sort the signatures to make sure all the t's are crossed and i's are dotted.

out of curiosity, would this not make it the first time an entire caucus has been subject to a recall? (if these recalls are all successful) Recall elections seem to be fairly rare, but I'm not familiar with many parts of American government.

[TheHammer]

While the Republicans continue to simmer and steam that they are the only true Americans and the rest of us have no right to judge them or condemn their outrageous power grabs, the voters are starting to take even more action beyond the massive protests. Organizers say they already have enough signatures to force the recall vote on one of the GOP State Senators although they are going to take a week to sort the signatures to make sure all the t's are crossed and i's are dotted.

out of curiosity, would this not make it the first time an entire caucus has been subject to a recall? (if these recalls are all successful) Recall elections seem to be fairly rare, but I'm not familiar with many parts of American government.

You are correct that recalls don't occur very often, and certainly not en masse like this. It's pretty rare than an entire state legislature would piss off the whole electorate of a state to the point where something like this would occur. But lead by an arrogant governor, apparently the rest of Wisconsin's republicans felt that they could do whatever they wanted despite the sentiment of the voting public.

[Crossroads Inc.]

Meanwhile, the Republicans continue to seem to go "LA LA LA we can't Hear you!!" in response to judges order.

Wisconsin union rights law on hold for 2 months




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AP – Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) answers questions from the media after reading to Anna Greenman's third grade …

By TODD RICHMOND, Associated Press – Fri Apr 1, 9:17 pm ET

MADISON, Wis. – A week ago, Wisconsin Republicans thought they'd won the fight over the state's polarizing union rights bill. They'd weathered massive protests, outfoxed Senate Democrats who fled the state and gotten around a restraining order blocking the law by having an obscure state agency publish it. They even started preparations to pull money from public workers' paychecks.

But the victory was short-lived. A judge ruled Friday that the restraining order will stay in place for at least two months she while considers whether Republicans passed the law illegally. It was the second blow to Republicans in as many days after the same judge declared Thursday that the law hadn't been properly published and wasn't in effect as they claimed.

Republicans now must either wait for the case to wind its way through the courts or pass the law again to get around complaints it wasn't done properly the first time. One GOP leader said Friday he didn't see much point in that.

"We passed the law correctly, legally the first time," Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald said in a statement. "Passing the law correctly and legally a second or third time wouldn't change anything. It certainly wouldn't stop another activist judge and (a) room full of lawyers from trying to start this merry-go-round all over again."

The law would force public employees to pay more for their health care and pension benefits, which amounts to an 8 percent pay cut. It also would eliminate their ability to collectively bargain anything except wage increases no higher than inflation.

Republican Gov. Scott Walker has said the law is needed to help schools and local governments deal with cuts in state funding he expects to make to address an estimated $3.6 billion shortfall in the next two-year budget. His spokesman referred questions Friday to state Department of Administration officials, who declined to comment.

Democrats have said the bill is meant to weaken the public employee unions that have been some of their strongest campaign supporters. Its introduction in mid-February set off a month of protests that drew up to 85,000 people to the state Capitol and sent Senate Democrats scurrying to Illinois to block a vote in that chamber.

Republicans eventually got around the Democrats' boycott by removing fiscal provisions from the bill so it could be passed with fewer senators present.

Dane County Circuit Judge Maryann Sumi has been considering a lawsuit that claims Republican lawmakers violated the state's opening meetings law when they met to change the bill. The lawsuit filed by Dane County District Attorney Ismael Ozanne says the state's open meetings law requires 24 hours notice of a meeting but Republicans provided barely two. Republican legislative leaders say proper notice was given under Senate rules.

Sumi heard testimony Friday from people who said they heard about the meeting only minutes before it began. They said they arrived to find long lines at the Capitol's entrances and by the time they reached the room where the meeting was held, police wouldn't allow them in.

Rich Judge, chief of staff for Assembly Democratic Leader Peter Barca, testified that someone dropped off a petition at Barca's office the night of the meeting that was signed by nearly 3,000 people who claimed they had been denied access.

Brian Gleason of Madison testified he reached the Senate parlor, where the committee hearing was being held, about 20 minutes before the meeting was scheduled to begin. He found a crowd of about 150 people and a line of police standing shoulder to shoulder denying access.

"Frankly, I was angry," he said. "At that point, the train going into the Senate parlor was already closed to me."
Sumi gave the attorneys until May 23 to make additional arguments, delaying a decision for nearly two months and possibly longer. Even when she does rule, one side or the other is likely to appeal in an attempt to get the case to the Wisconsin Supreme Court. The state has already appealed her restraining order to the high court, but it has not said whether it will hear the case and is under no deadline to do so.

Two other, separate lawsuits also have been filed, which could further drag out the matter.
Anger over the bill also has prompted recall efforts against 16 state senators, including eight from each party. On Friday, Democrats announced they had collected enough signatures for a recall election against one of the Republicans.

So yeah, further proof Republicans have no concept of the rule of law, except when it is in their favor.

[SirNitram]

As I predicted: They won't simply do it legally this time, because like any zealot, they refuse to admit mistakes.

[Patrick Degan]

Well, the first of the Wisconsin fascists targeted for recall will soon be facing the wrath of the voters:

The recall campaign against Sen. Dan Kapanke, R-La Crosse, announced Friday members had acquired the necessary amount of signatures to trigger a special election, becoming the first of the 16 campaigns to do so.

The Democratic Party of Wisconsin and volunteers collected 21,700 signatures, well above the roughly 15,000 signatures needed for a recall election, according to DPW spokesperson Graeme Zielinski. The campaign filed a recall petition with the Government Accountability Board on March 2.

The signatures were collected in half the time allotted, a testimony to the momentum of the movement against Gov. Scott Walker. Hundreds of volunteers turned out to help the campaign in Kapanke’s district, with thousands helping out statewide in other recall campaigns.

“This is a historic moment for grassroots history in Wisconsin,” Zielinski said. “Coalitions of Republicans, Independents and Democrats got together in the Coulee region to fight back against Gov. Walker’s attack on the middle class.”

After the signatures are delivered to the GAB, the board has 31 days to verify the signatures. A recall election could be held in as little as six weeks later if the signatures pass review.

The Kapanke effort is the first of 16 recall campaigns to reach its quota. Currently recall efforts are targeting eight Democratic senators and eight Republican senators.

The recall effort against Sen. Randy Hopper, R-Fond du Lac, is close to gathering enough signatures as well, but will not be releasing signature numbers before they have reached the quota, Zielinski said.

Hopper felt his vote for the collective bargaining bill was the right thing despite the recall effort against him, spokesperson Jeff Harvey said.

“These efforts are nothing more than union bosses and special interests groups attempting to undermine our attempt to bring responsibility to Wisconsin,” Harvey said. ”He believes it’s the right thing to do, and we’re ready to put Madison on a sound fiscal track.”

Hopper and his office are preparing for the recall election campaign, Harvey said. Volunteers and members of Hopper’s campaign have been going door to door and making calls within his district in preparation, Harvey added.

I love this:

“These efforts are nothing more than union bosses and special interests groups attempting to undermine our attempt to bring responsibility to Wisconsin,” Harvey said. ”He believes it’s the right thing to do, and we’re ready to put Madison on a sound fiscal track.”

Translation: "Who do these peons think they are?"

[TheHammer]

Republican rode a wave of anti incumbent sentiment, along with Democrat indifference to the gains they made in the last election. Unfortunately, rather than doing the smart thing and flying under the radar they have essentially lit a fire under unions nation wide, and promptly dumped gasoline on it. Once the people of Wisconsin got a taste of "Republican Leadership", you basically could say good bye to the Democrat indifference as they were reminded that even though they may not be getting everything they want from their leaders, it could always be worse.

[Patrick Degan]

With 1050 of 3630 wards reporting, the Prosser-Kloppenburg race for Wisconsin state supreme court is in a virtual dead-heat: Prosser leads by a two-point margin, 51-49%, but this of course is well within the margin for error. Voter turnout was estimated to be around 60% today.

[Patrick Degan]

News update: with 38% of wards reporting, Prosser edges ahead 52-48%, a 19,000 vote lead.

[Patrick Degan]

And the race is now locked dead-even: with 68% of wards reporting it's 50-50%. David Prosser (inc) 528,080 Joanne Kloppenburg 527,174

[Patrick Degan]

Latest update: with 78% of wards reporting it's still dead-even percentage-wise, though Kloppenburg has now pulled slightly ahead by a bit over 7000 votes

[Patrick Degan]

With 90% of wards reporting as of 11.22pm CST, the margin of votes is now down to around 3471.

Recount ahead.

[Patrick Degan]

Now 97% of wards reporting and only 1684 votes separate Kloppenburg and Prosser.

[Patrick Degan]

Now 98% of wards reporting and Prosser's slipped back into the lead by 2000 votes over Kloppenburg.

[Patrick Degan]

With 99% of wards now reporting, the race has narrowed down to only a 565 vote difference.

[Highlord Laan]

If the incumbent wins, there needs to be an immediate move to recount, and, of course, an open and completely impolite investigation into the possibility of voter fraud on the Republitard's part.

It'd do the bastards right.

[Phantasee]

I think that it doesn't matter who wins, most places have a rule that results with a small difference like this are automatically recounted.

[TheHammer]

As of this moment, Klopenburg appears to have won by 300 some odd votes. But as others noted, that will definitely be subject to recount.

However, not subject to recount is another and perhaps more direct indicator of how Wisconsin feels about Scott Walker right now. Jeff Stone - Essentially, Walker's hand picked replacement to take over his old seat as Milwaukee County Executive essentially had his ass handed to him by count of 61 percent to 39 percent...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/0 ... 45324.html

[Patrick Degan]

Those ballot boxes just sorta, y'know... fell off the truck:

Thursday, April 7, 2011
7:46 PM: Kloppenburg campaign statement

Statement from JoAnne Kloppenburg campaign manager Melissa Mulliken:

"Wisconsin voters as well as the Kloppenburg for Justice Campaign deserve a full explanation of how and why these 14,000 votes from an entire City were missed. To that end, we will be filing open records requests for all relevant documentation related to the reporting of election results in Waukesha County, as well as to the discovery and reporting of the errors announced by the County. We are confident that election officials in Waukesha County will fulfill these requests as quickly as possible so that both our campaign and the people of Wisconsin can fully understand what happened and why. Just as Assistant Attorney General Kloppenburg has run to restore confidence in the court, Wisconsin residents also deserve to have full confidence in election results."

[Patrick Degan]

And for more on the background details:

A clerk in Waukesha County, Wisconsin is set to release a new vote tally giving conservative judge David Prosser nearly 8,000 more votes than expected and tipping the balance of the election back to Prosser from Kloppenburg. There’s only one problem. The clerk’s office in question may not be the most reliable in the state of Wisconsin:

Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus’ decision to go it alone in how she collects and maintains election results has some county officials raising a red flag about the integrity of the system.

Nickolaus said she decided to take the election data collection and storage system off the county’s computer network – and keep it on stand-alone personal computers accessible only in her office – for security reasons.

"What it gave me was good security of the elections from start to finish, without the ability of someone unauthorized to be involved," she said.

Nonetheless, Director of Administration Norman A. Cummings said because Nickolaus has kept them out of the loop, the county’s information technology specialists have not been able to verify Nickolaus’ claim that the system is secure from failure.

"How does anybody else in the county know, except for her verbal word, that there are backups, and that the software she has out there is performing as it should?" he said. "There’s no way I can assure that the election system is going to be fine for the next presidential election."

Cummings stressed that the voting process at local polling places is not in question. However, municipal clerks send their election night results by dial-up modem to the county clerk, where they are tabulated and stored. That prompted Cummings’ concerns.

It is strange that we should suddenly find over 7,000 missing votes in a county that uses a different system than the rest with little to no oversight of the results. There may not be any fraud at all, but it does raise questions. It’s also a little odd that you have the clerk, Nickolaus, claiming that her system is secure from failure and then somehow magically turning up over seven thousand votes that were missing due to a computer error.

So I’m not sure if we enter recount territory or an investigation of these votes or if it’s just quitting time for Kloppenburg. This is all eerily reminiscent of Florida circa turn of the century.

And to quote the article referenced in the above Forbes.com blogpiece:

Waukesha — Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus' decision to go it alone in how she collects and maintains election results has some county officials raising a red flag about the integrity of the system.

Nickolaus said she decided to take the election data collection and storage system off the county's computer network - and keep it on stand-alone personal computers accessible only in her office - for security reasons.

"What it gave me was good security of the elections from start to finish, without the ability of someone unauthorized to be involved," she said.

Nonetheless, Director of Administration Norman A. Cummings said because Nickolaus has kept them out of the loop, the county's information technology specialists have not been able to verify Nickolaus' claim that the system is secure from failure.

"How does anybody else in the county know, except for her verbal word, that there are backups, and that the software she has out there is performing as it should?" he said. "There's no way I can assure that the election system is going to be fine for the next presidential election."

Cummings stressed that the voting process at local polling places is not in question. However, municipal clerks send their election night results by dial-up modem to the county clerk, where they are tabulated and stored. That prompted Cummings' concerns.

The County Board's Executive Committee is scheduled to step into the fray at its meeting Monday. The clerk's office is scheduled for a complete audit beginning in March 2011, but the County Board may seek an earlier look at the elections system, said Mark Mader, the board's chief of staff.

Mike Biagioli, the county's manager of information technology, sees risk in Nickolaus' action.

"What happens if something goes wrong on election night? We don't support her at all on election night. She was pretty clear about that. If something goes wrong, what do you do?" he said. "I would love to be able to go in and verify that everything is OK."

Nickolaus said that she has the statutory responsibility for elections "and it's my duty to make sure it's as secure as possible. The administration, IT (information technology), believes they should be able to get into it whenever they like. So whatever they decide, they make changes to the network and it affects my office."

Cummings said, "Nobody's trying to do her elections for her." He said, however, that he was troubled that Nickolaus talks about the computer equipment, software and data as if it is hers, although it was purchased with county funds.

Backup debated

The tug-of-war between Nickolaus and administration is evident in a March 8 memo from Cummings to Nickolaus in which he said hardware and software on the clerk's computers were "obsolete, not repairable and unsupportable." Without improvements, he worried that the elections system could be "inoperative and irrecoverable."

Nickolaus and Cummings both said the problem stems from when Waukesha County moved its network from an old, outdated Novell server - the processing unit that multiple personal computers tap into for shared services - to a Microsoft platform. Among other things, the conversion saved the county $500,000 a year, Cummings said.

Nickolaus' election system, however, depended on the old platform, so technicians restored a lone Novell server for her use, without a backup.

Biagioli said a major upgrade to the election system was recommended, but Nickolaus has said it's unnecessary.

In March, Nickolaus said, she moved the data off that server and into her own stand-alone system. She has a backup on a second computer, she said. In addition, she said, as she programs for elections, she does frequent backups during the day.

Nickolaus said she was a programmer for 15 years before becoming county clerk. And she said her staff knows how to operate the system, so "if I get hit by a bus, this election is going to run just fine."

Several years ago, Nickolaus discontinued reporting election results on her county website for individual municipalities, as was done under the prior clerk. She said that change had nothing to do with the problems with the county servers or with her taking her system off the network.

Rather, she said, it is not her responsibility and that local clerks can post results on municipal websites. She said she doesn't have the staff to enter all the data that's required for such reporting.

Sorry, but these votes are terminally suspect. If they cannot be verified to any reasonable degree as accurate and true, they should not count.

[Patrick Degan]

And it turns out that Kathy Nicolaus has a nice little history with her former boss, then-state assemblyman David Prosser:

Nickolaus was given immunity from prosecution in a 2002 criminal investigation into illegal activity by members of the Republican Assembly caucus where she worked as a data analyst and computer specialist. Prosser, who as speaker of the Assembly in 1995 and 1996 controlled the same caucus, was not part of the investigation. Nickolaus resigned from her state job in 2002 just before launching her county clerk campaign.

The corruption probe took down five legislative leaders, all of whom reached plea deals.

...as well as a nice little history of previous election mismanagement in Waukesha County:

The surprise discovery of votes that could give Prosser the win and quash any recount before it starts already had liberal groups crying foul. Nickolaus has also been criticized by the Waukesha County Board for her handling of past elections and lack of oversight in her operations.

"There is a history of secrecy and partisanship surrounding the Waukesha County Clerk and there remain unanswered questions," Scot Ross, director of the liberal group One Wisconsin Now, said in a statement.

An audit of Nickolaus' handling of the 2010 election found that she needed to take steps to improve security and backup procedures, like stop sharing passwords. The audit was requested after the county's director of administration said Nickolaus had been uncooperative with attempts to have county experts review her systems and confirm backups were in place.

The Government Accountability Board, which is in charge of overseeing Wisconsin's elections, will review Waukesha County's numbers to verify the totals, said agency director Kevin Kennedy.

"We will conduct our own review of issues because we want to make sure that we are tracking every entry she made into our system," Kennedy said. "We're concerned when data is missing from a total. We'd like to make sure there is much better communication between their office and our office."

The upshot: Kathy Nickolaus, first hired for an IT consultancy job by David Prosser and who ended up an immunised witness in a corruption probe of Prosser's own caucus, ends up elected to manage elections in a key county, takes that county off the state system, and bungled the oversight of the election last year that helped put Scott Walker and his merry band of fascists in control of the state government and seems to have bungled another key election which just happens to benefit her former boss, David Prosser.

What a coincidence.