Yesterday, the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board cleared Waukesha County clerk Kathy Nickolaus of any criminal wrongdoing following last April’s state supreme court election. You may recall that following election night, incumbent conservative justice David Prosser and liberal challenger Joanne Kloppenburg were virtually deadlocked, until Nickolaus announced she had failed to report the results from the heavily Republican city of Brookfield. The revised count gave Prosser a 7,000-vote lead, which he maintained through a lengthy recount process.
What is really newsworthy is the fact that an “investigation” into this matter took place at all. It appears the Government Accountability Board spent six months investigating a charge that no one except the most unhinged liberals in the state believed. The math was clear; once it was found that Nickolaus simply had failed to tell the Associated Press the right vote count, those Brookfield votes were found resting comfortably in Nickolaus’ office, every one legally cast. The state’s time would have been better spent figuring out why giraffes are slow in learning how to play the banjo.
Links to the full report can be found here. Otherwise, you’re just as well off reading my posts on the subject from April.