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Thursday, May 5, 2011

Kloppenburg's First Big Recount Success - Nuns' Ballots Thrown Out

As of the end of the day yesterday, with 75.43% of the reporting units and just under 70%, of the votes recounted, JoAnne Kloppenburg has picked up ... (drum roll please) ... 210 votes.

Based on the Kloppenburg-O-Meter's estimate of daily cost of the recount, these 210 votes will have cost Wisconsin taxpayers a little over $600,000.

But fear not.  The recount uncovered improper absentee ballots filled out by suspicious characters.

The cloistered Cistercian nuns from the Valley of Our Lady Monastery in Prairie du Sac, WI, have had their absentee ballots thrown out -- over the protests of the Prosser camp -- for lack of witness signatures.

As reported by JSOnline:
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.
This is, perhaps, the single greatest achievement of the Kloppenburg recount, with Kloppenburg picking up a net 10 votes.

What utter nunsense.

Update 5-6-2011:  At the end of yesterday, with 79.46% of reporting units and just under 75% of votes recounted, Kloppenburg holds steady at a net gain of 220 votes.  Kloppenburg needs to pick up 7,096 votes to catch up to Prosser.  Are there even that many cloistered nuns in Wisconsin?  If not, Kloppenburg's chances look like a dim lighbulb on a foggy country road.

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29 comments:

  1. How many public employees' jobs could have been saved with that $600,000? Where's the Union protests?

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'm sure Kloppenberg is singing,

    "Holier than thou! Holier than thou! Thank the Lord Almighty that I'm holier than thou!"(from the the musical Nunsense)

    How proud she must be.

    ReplyDelete
  3. O For Christ Sakes..

    ReplyDelete
  4. Because if the voter is a nun then we shouldn't have to follow the law!

    Wait...

    Seriously trying to gin up outrage about nun's votes being thrown out is lame. The failed to sign the ballots apparently. What happens to a ballot that isn't signed? it's invalid. Does being a nun have anything to do with it? Uh, no. It's clearly only mentioned out of the hopes it will provoke an emotional response and cause outrage that the story doesn't merit.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Seriously trying to gin up outrage about nun's votes being thrown out is lame.

    No. Demanding a recount - costing taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars - when the outcome isn't going to change is lame.

    A person with class would've conceded. A person with class wouldn't be dragging out the process out in an attempt to taint the winner. A person with class wouldn't have her bottom-feeding lawyers tossing out the votes of cloistered nuns.

    But then again, we're talking about Kloppenburg, you and people like you. You're only familiar with the last three letters of the word.

    ReplyDelete
  6. The failed to sign the ballots apparently. What happens to a ballot that isn't signed? it's invalid.

    Yup. That's one way to play the game.

    By the way, to the eternal shame of the profession (assuming they have any shame left), Kloppsky's lawyers are objecting to 'torn bags' containing ballots.

    Because, as we all know, City clerks spent 200 hours re-casting all the ballots of Brookfield to make certain that Prosser won.

    See: http://www.620wtmj.com/shows/charliesykes/121344379.html?blog=y

    Hotz is a UW-Madison lawyer who never managed to make it with larger lawfirms in Milwaukee.

    Now we know why.

    ReplyDelete
  7. If the Catholic leadership had any spine, they'd be screaming bloody murder about throwing the votes of nuns out. But as with everything else they face, they'll give in so that they can 'foster dialogue' and 'reach out to those with whom we share differences' -

    Sorry, I just threw up in my mouth a little.

    ReplyDelete
  8. "No. Demanding a recount - costing taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars - when the outcome isn't going to change is lame."

    Then change the law that said she's completely entitled to said recount.

    ReplyDelete
  9. It's funny how the votes that are thrown out are people "cheating","undermining", or just doing anything they can to vote for the conservative in this race. Is that how it works? Were there any fuzzy left wing votes that were thrown out, or was all the "vote fraud" in this race for the conservative?

    ReplyDelete
  10. Eh, what do the Dems care about the nun vote.

    They just wander around clinging to their Bibles anyway. Might even be bitter...for all we know.

    Wow! Google "nuns with guns" It's a movie! It's a band! It's nunsploitation!!!!!

    ReplyDelete
  11. To the loon posting 'they didn't sign the ballots, blah, blah, blah'. Wrong dumbass, they didn't have to sign their ballots.

    The signature on the envelope wasn't signed by a witness in order to prevent voter fraud. Cloisters of nuns are famous for voter fraud and should have been tossed post haste.

    I read somewhere the nuns have never had their envelopes witnessed. You know, trust comes in here somewhere.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Prosser 580,600 +305
    Kloppy 542,461 +527

    ReplyDelete
  13. It's pretty bad when they go after Nun-Catholics
    ... but nobody expects the Kloppenburg Inquisition.

    ReplyDelete
  14. "The signature on the envelope wasn't signed by a witness in order to prevent voter fraud. Cloisters of nuns are famous for voter fraud and should have been tossed post haste."

    Okay and what does the law say about ballots without a witness signature? See it all ends in the same place. The ballots are invalid because...their invalid. That they came from nuns is immaterial, except for those looking to work up some faux-"war on christmas" style victim-hood memes.

    ReplyDelete
  15. @ptcontracting -

    Where do these numbers come from? Is there a link? I'd like to bookmark it for future reference.

    At the rate Kloppy is gaining ground she should catch up about the time the 2,398,987,673rd vote is counted. Is there that many remaining?

    ReplyDelete
  16. "and cause outrage that the story doesn't merit. "

    The story merits plenty of outrage. Here are 18 nuns, known to every one. No criminals, not senile, etc, just decent folks carrying on with their lives.

    The political party that wants their votes thrown out have never seen a criminal that they didn't want their vote counted. A political party that claims their party members are not intelligent enough to get a vote ID. Who (in their right mind) would want a person who was of voting age that did not have enough common sense to figure out how to get their own photo ID? Leftists don't want IDs checked because it cuts down on their cheating.

    ReplyDelete
  17. For some reason, I get the feeling that Tlalaoc would be very upset if the votes tossed were from a demographic that could be expected to vote Democrat, like people in jail.

    ReplyDelete
  18. There were similar issues in the Franken/Coleman recount and taken to court - anyone know how that turned out? I think the Franken side was concerned about that rejected incomplete ballots would "disenfranchise" those voters.

    Bottom line, what was the Franken treatment on these similar issues?

    ReplyDelete
  19. Shameful.
    I hope that this boomerangs on the D's in WI.
    Talk about fraud, waste and abuse.

    ReplyDelete
  20. http://gab.wi.gov/elections-voting/recount

    Recount Page

    ReplyDelete
  21. ptcontracting said...
    http://gab.wi.gov/elections-voting/recount

    Recount Page

    Thanks,
    Chuck

    ReplyDelete
  22. Are the Dems sure they were real nuns? It's easy to dress up in a nun costume. After all, even Whoopi "It wasn't rape-rape" Goldberg dressed up like a nun and I know for a fact she isn't even Catholic.

    I think the Dems ought to file some sort of a motion before Judge SueMe requiring these so-called nuns to strip down and be photographed and then publish the pictures in the newspapers to see if their nunhood can be verified.

    ReplyDelete
  23. "The story merits plenty of outrage. Here are 18 nuns, known to every one. No criminals, not senile, etc, just decent folks carrying on with their lives."

    So you want justice meted out based on how well liked a group is instead of the facts of the matter? Seriously what part of this don't you understand: if you fill out your ballot wrong it gets disqualified. There's no "well I like this person so even though they messed up I'll let it slide".

    Aren't you the guys usually screaming about following the law and the evil of activist judiciary? What could be more activist then choosing to apply the law only when you want to?

    ReplyDelete
  24. Tlaloc, you got all the answer you deserve to any of your silly sideshow points here from Jim, above, yesterday at 5:58 PM when he said:

    "No. Demanding a recount - costing taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars - when the outcome isn't going to change is lame.

    A person with class would've conceded. A person with class wouldn't be dragging out the process out in an attempt to taint the winner. A person with class wouldn't have her bottom-feeding lawyers tossing out the votes of cloistered nuns.

    But then again, we're talking about Kloppenburg, you and people like you. You're only familiar with the last three letters of the word."


    As for your last "contribution" here, Tlaloc this recount is not about the "meting out of justice" to anyone.

    It is all about an election that was lost by Kloppenburg, her ridiculous claim the day after that she had "won" (though she had a mere 204 vote lead at that point before any of the canvassing had taken place), and her current obnoxious insistence on pressing ahead with this recount, even though though there is no way for her to prevail -- at least not in an honest fashion!

    She better hope that some thieving snake in Dane County rips open and stuffs some of the bags-o-ballots in Dane County with literally thousands of previously uncounted votes, ones with her name checked!

    Challenging the validity of the votes of the 18 or so cloistered nuns was, and remains a symbolic disaster for Kloppenburg in particular and for Wisconsin Democrats in general.

    It shows a level of ruthlessness that disgusts decent Americans. In fact I think it's close to being up there with Al Gore fighting to prevent the counting of the absenteed ballot votes of American Servicemen at one stage in the Florida recount kerfuffel, 11 years ago! H

    He knew that, on balance, they would work to Bush's advantage. So he tried to take away their votes!

    Your most risible claim here was this nonsense:

    "Then change the law that said she's completely entitled to said recount."

    There's no need. The law is based on the presumption that reasonable candidates will have enough sense to make a good judgement.

    She, however chose to go ahead even though there was no way of honestly prevailing, given a 7,316 vote gap.

    Because there was no way she could prevail, she was faced with the prospect of graciously conceding, or unnecessarily wasting another million dollars plus in Wisconsin taxpayer money by demanding a recount she could not win.

    She chose the latter.

    Hopefully, having been forced to go through this, the people of Wisconsin will at least reap the benefit of the fact that by doing so, she has committed "political suicide by recount."

    They at least deserve some public benefit from her bad judgement!

    ReplyDelete
  25. "It is all about an election that was lost by Kloppenburg,"

    Of course it is. I mean there's no way it's about a very close election in which a number of votes were found after the fact that eclipsed the actual margin. No way that could possibly be grounds for a recount. Oh, actually it is grounds for a recount, the recount we're having. You can whine about that all you want but exercising a legal right to a recount after a close race isn't exactly the great sin you seem to think it is.


    "There's no need. The law is based on the presumption that reasonable candidates will have enough sense to make a good judgement."

    So you want to whine that the situation is just horrible but won't actually try to change anything that led to the situation? And we're supposed to care about your griping, why exactly?

    ReplyDelete
  26. "It shows a level of ruthlessness that disgusts decent Americans. In fact I think it's close to being up there with Al Gore fighting to prevent the counting of the absenteed ballot votes of American Servicemen at one stage in the Florida recount kerfuffel, 11 years ago! "

    Out of curiosity were you just as mad at Kathleen Harris illegally purging the voter rolls of blacks to help Bush? You know, a sitting SoS actively disenfranchising Americans she didn't like? I'm assuming there is a bottom to your well of hypocrisy I'm just wondering how far we have to plumb to find it...

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_Central_Voter_File

    ReplyDelete
  27. Tlaloc, if you weren't so thin skinned, you'd probably get that the only one who is whining on this thread is you . . . repeatedly!

    The law allowing her to ask for a recount (at state expense if it is within half a percentage point) does not require her to call for the recount. This election involved a considerable number of voters, and therefore the percentage made the threshold number quite high -- 7,316.

    Following the full statewide canvassing process and the GAB investigation into the Waukesha County matter, it became very clear that there was virtually no chance at all of her overturning a 7,316 vote deficit.

    She just lost.

    Even the liberal-leaning Milwaukee Journal Sentinel twice urged her to throw in the towel.

    During the canvassing process, Democrat Milwaukee County kept adding the same columns of numberd over and over again (and coming up with the same answer), but they just couldn't bring themselves to put an end the canvassing process until long after everyone else was finished.

    I suspect Kloppenburg demanded the recount because she was so thoroughly embarrassed by the fact that she had made a very stupid decision in declaring victory when it was so close the day following the election, and she concluded that she needed to look for ways to disparage the process in order to personally save face.

    That shows extremely poor judgement on her part, so as far as I'm concerned, Wisconsin really did dodge a bullet. The problem, of course, is that she won't stop shooting -- and wasting taxpayer resources!

    Your other claims are just trash, much like Jimmy Carter in Plains in 2004, in full race-baiting mode, with candidate John Kerry standing next to him nodding his head, flat-out lying and actually claiming that over a million blacks were unlawfully disinfranchised in Florida in 2000, when there was never any proof whatsoever that any blacks were so disinfranchised.

    ReplyDelete
  28. Other news from WI: Gov. Scott Walker...announced he had ordered layoff notices to approximately 350 assistant district attorneys be rescinded.

    America has the highest incarceration rate in the world. The WI prison-industrial complex has just faced down the governor despite the state's fiscal crisis. There is a degree of resemblance to what the SEIU is trying to do.

    ReplyDelete