Politics & Government

Democrats Calling for Hearings, Probes into Nickolaus' Election Results

The Democratic Party of Wisconsin asked state elections officials to review Waukesha County's results in the 2006 state Attorney General election amid questions about ballots cast.

The Democratic Party of Wisconsin today asked state elections officials to review the Waukesha County vote tally in the 2006 state Attorney General election, after a liberal blogger pointed out there were about 17,000 more votes recorded than ballots cast.

Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus posted an asterisk on the 2006 results on the county's web site, with a note that said votes that are hand-counted and not electronically cast through machines are not included in the ballots cast figure.

In a letter today to the state Government Accountability Board, state Democratic Party chair Mike Tate noted that in the 2006 election, Republican AG candidate J.B. Van Hollen defeated Democrat Kathleen Falk by 8,859 votes out of about 2.1 million votes cast.

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The Waukesha County results showed 156,804 ballots cast in the Nov. 7, 2006 election butΒ 174,047 votes cast in the AG race.

"This is an under-reporting of 17,243 votes," Tate wrote. "I note with serious concern that this discrepancy is more than enough to have swung the statewide election against the Republican and for the Democrat."

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Tate said the discrepancies "undermine the public's confidence in elections."

Nickolaus' additional note posted on her results posed a question and answer:

"Why would the ballots cast be lower than the number of people that voted in a specific contest or race? The ballots cast would be lower if a portion of the results were entered by hand."

The 2006 race tally was first highlighted by a blogger on the liberal Daily Kos web site.

Also Tuesday, Democratic state lawmakers called on the state's Judiciary and Elections committees to hold hearings to "investigate the results and conduct of elections officials in Waukesha County."


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