Corrected vote total gives incumbent justice big lead in Wisconsin

WAUKESHA, Wis. (AP) - A conservative incumbent surged to a commanding lead in Wisconsin's hotly contested Supreme Court election Thursday, after a predominantly GOP county's clerk announced she had incorrectly entered vote totals in the race seen as a referendum on Republican Gov. Scott Walker's divisive union rights law.

Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus said more than 14,000 votes weren't reported to The Associated Press on Tuesday due to "human error."

"This is not a case of extra votes or extra ballots being found," Nickolaus said. "This is human error, which I apologize for."

Nickolaus said the most significant error occurred when she entered totals from the city of Brookfield, a suburb of Milwaukee, but they were not saved.

Before the announcement, it was assumed 68-year-old conservative Justice David Prosser's race against liberal assistant state attorney general JoAnne Kloppenburg was headed for a recount.

But Waukesha County's corrected totals gave Prosser a 7,500-vote lead, which is likely to stand if none of Wisconsin's 71 other counties makes significant adjustments while reviewing their ballots.

Opponents of the law that takes away nearly all public employee collective bargaining rights had hoped a Kloppenburg victory would set the stage for the high court to strike it down.

Prosser campaign director Brian Nemoir had no immediate comment but said a statement would be released soon. Messages left with Kloppenburg's campaign were not immediately returned.

The count was corrected on the first day that counties were in the process of verifying unofficial vote totals reported Tuesday.

The race was so close, despite 1.5 million votes being cast, that the lead flipped back and forth repeatedly on election day and in the days after as preliminary totals were checked and updated.

Walker told The Associated Press before details of the new votes were announced that voters will demand transparency.

"The overriding principle has got to be that every vote that was legally cast in Wisconsin needs to be counted," Walker said.

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 is a former Republican staff member in the Assembly Republican Caucus and the Waukesha County Board has criticized 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.

Nickolaus was given immunity from prosecution in a 2002 criminal investigation into illegal activity by members of the assembly Republican Caucus. She worked for 13 years as a data analyst and computer specialist for the caucus.

She resigned from her state job in 2002 just before launching her county clerk campaign.

The corruption probe took down then-Assembly Speaker Scott Jensen, a Republican; Senate Majority Leader Chuck Chvala, D-Madison; Sen. Brian Burke, D-Milwaukee, co-chairman of the powerful Joint Finance Committee; Assembly Majority Leader Steve Foti, R-Oconomowoc; and Rep. Bonnie Ladwig, R-Racine. They all reached plea deals.

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."

Kennedy said it was unfortunate the clerk didn't double check the data before releasing it to the press.

"Mistakes are never simple, they usually compound themselves, but these are the kind of mistakes we see happen, we just don't see them of this magnitude," Kennedy said.

Nickolaus said she didn't notice an absence of votes because her figures showed a 42 percent voter turnout, which exceeded the 30 percent turnout the county typically sees in spring elections.

"That was an amazing amount of votes," she said. "So I had no reason to believe I was missing anything."

Associated Press writers Scott Bauer in Madison and Dinesh Ramde in Milwaukee contributed to this report.

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