Schools

UPDATE: County Results Problematic; Wartman, Lambert Re-Elected to School Board

Patch's hand-count of results for the Elmbrook School Board show both incumbents winning. The Waukesha County clerk's office, which said it would post local results online, posted few results, and asked the media and campaigns to tally up votes.

Update (1:30 p.m. Wednesday): Patch story details the that involved races including Elmbrook School Board, with reaction from Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus' GOP and Democratic re-election opponents.
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Update (10:40 a.m. Wednesday): Nickolaus said her plans to directly upload results from local government election machine packs failed to work, causing hand-tabulation and delays in releasing results, according to this report from JSOnline.com reporter Laurel Walker, who was at the County Administration Building last night.

Nickolaus faces on the November ballot.
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Find out what's happening in Brookfieldwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Update (8:47 a.m. Wednesday): The Waukesha County clerk's office released these unofficial, unaudited results with Wartman, Lambert winning re-election: Wartman: 7,347 | Thomas: 3,977 | Lambert: 6,060 | Byrne: 5,168
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Original story (1:07 a.m. Tuesday): Unofficial results more than four hours after the polls closed Tuesday showed the two Elmbrook School Board incumbents winning re-election to new three-year terms.

Find out what's happening in Brookfieldwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Those results showed:

Meg Wartman: 7,346 votes (65 percent)
Lynne Thomas:   3,973 votes (35 percent)

Jean Lambert: 6,060 votes (54 percent)
Paul Byrne:    5,164 votes (46 percent)

The results, however, were tabulated by a Patch writer who added the numbers from voting machine tapes at the Waukesha County Administration Building.

The Waukesha County clerk's office, which said it would post local results online, posted few results, and asked the media and political campaigns to hand-count, using voting machine printouts taped to the walls around a room.

Prosser race prompts changes

The change came after Clerk Kathy Nickolaus was criticized for not posting results online in last spring's state Supreme Court race, in which the entire City of on election night. in the razor-thin election from Kloppenburg, who had declared victory, to Prosser.

Had Nickolaus posted results online, someone would have caught the zeros for the City of Brookfield in the countywide total, some critics said. 

This year, Nickolaus told municipal clerks to drive the election machine vote packs to the county, where they would be directly uploaded and the results posted online when permissible.

However, hours after the polls closed, the county's site had no results for any elections. Media and campaigns who didn't want to wait while the county double-checked its results were given the opportunity to get the results immediately (as fast as they could hand count) from voting machine printouts taped to the walls of a room.

As of 11:30 p.m. the clerk for the Elmbrook School District told Patch she was calling it a night and had not seen any results from the county. Pat Felde with Elmbrook said she did receive the School Board results from municipal officials as the Village of Elm Grove and Town of Brookfield.

The clerk's office left late Tuesday after delivering the results to the county, leaving the reporting to the county.

Wartman 'gratified' by re-election

Reached at 11:59 p.m. Tuesday after Patch tabulated the City of Brookfield votes for Elmbrook School Board from the machine tape, School Board member Meg Wartman said she was gratified to be re-elected.

"I hope they stand up," she said of the unofficial results.

"I'm humbled to be re-elected," Wartman said. "I'm looking forward to the next three years."

She said she appreciated the show of support, particularly after a difficult year in which she and the board voted to close an elementary school.

"Hopefully, people appreciate the time and energy we’ve put into the transition plan so that we can make the move easily" for students merging next year into , she said.

The board's focus for the next three years will be on curriculum, now that the financial outlook improved with the state's Act 10 and the school closing, she said.

Lambert said she was happy to hear the results but said she would comment more Wednesday, given the late hour.

  • For more on the Brookfield elections, see on Election Day, as well as a story on .


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