In the extremely unlikely event you haven’t been following the never-ending Wisconsin Supreme Court election with rapt attention (and why wouldn’t you? It’s not like there’s been anything else going on in the world), some recent developments have shown us what a farce this all has become.

After the “Brookfield Miracle” nearly four weeks ago that put conservative incumbent Justice David Prosser up nearly 7,500 votes two days after the election, liberal challenger JoAnne Kloppenburg announced she wanted a statewide recount. The state collectively groaned, as the recount was going to cost taxpayers over a million dollars, and the largest margin ever closed in any state recount was 489 votes. Kloppenburg’s strategy was clear — begin the recount and start to gin up bogus “inconsistencies” in the ballots as a basis for a lawsuit, then hope a liberal court in Madison throws out the election result.

Yet it appears this strategy might be backfiring.Yesterday, Kloppenburg’s campaign tried to pull a stunt that might get them in trouble with a higher power:

The recount for the state Supreme Court race has come to this: Votes from nuns have been thrown out.
The twist in the race between Justice David Prosser and challenger JoAnne Kloppenburg came during the recount in Sauk County. There, ballots of Cistercian nuns from the Valley of Our Lady Monastery in Prairie du Sac were rejected.
The nuns live a contemplative, monastic life and support themselves by baking and distributing altar breads, according to their website.
On Friday, during the recount, it was noted that witness signatures were missing from 18 absentee ballots from the Town of Sumpter, where votes from the monastery are counted.
“Eighteen applications did not have a witness signature,” said Alene Bolin, assistant corporation counsel for Sauk County. “I don’t think all 18 were from the monastery. I think it has turned into, there were 18 nuns but I do remember one of the ballots was not from the convent.”
“They’re cloistered nuns,” Bolin said. “So the clerk (Donna Ziegler) dropped off an envelope with all the absentee ballots and applications with them. On the day of the election, she picked them up and dropped them off at the polling place. The absentee ballots were opened there and counted. During the recount it was discovered that there was no witness signature.”
Because canvassers were unable to match the actual ballots to the voter, they took all 24 absentee ballots from the Town of Sumpter and randomly drew 18, which were then set aside and not counted. Of those ballots, Prosser had 14 while Kloppenburg had four.

So now all Kloppenburg needs is about 7,300 more silent nuns to overturn the election result.

Basically, Kloppenburg is trying to keep the issue of state-employee collective bargaining in the news until state senator recall elections take place on July 12. And she’s doing it by making a sham out of this recount. As long as our troops are still over in Abbottabad, they might want to start the search for Kloppenburg’s dignity.

— Christian Schneider is a senior fellow at the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute.