Surprise, Surprise!

Last night a notably conservative Wisconsin county clerk appeared out of the blue having reportedly  "found" 7582 additional votes in favor of conservative judge David Prosser in his race against JoAnne Kloppenburg for a seat on their state's Supreme Court.

She found the votes on her personal computer. She put them there for safe-keeping "just in case" the voting machines malfunctioned, or something, and, boy, were her arms tired!

The clerk's name is Kathy Nickolaus and she simply, you know, forgot to send the votes along to the central tally office. Like it was her job or anything.

The way Ms. Nickolaus handled her county's votes was totally contrary to the rest of the state, and came with no official oversight. When taken to task in the past for her lax safety procedures (three of her employees had access to the computer using the same login and passwords) her response was to sit and smirk about it. Does it then suprise anyone to learn that she recently served as president of the Republican Women of Waukesha County?

The most suspicious aspect of the 7582 new votes is that by a mere margin of 82 tallies it now requires JoAnne Kloppenburg to pay for a recount out of her own pocket. Anything less than that would have required that the state pay for it. My, what a coincidence.

The problem is not entirely scummy individuals like Ms. Nickolaus, it's just that we've constructed a voting system that essentially a candy shop with no guards. Time and again these insidious touch-screen voting machines have been proven to be hackable and yet we act all surprised when another obvious fraud like this one occurs.

Oregon has a fabulous system of mail-in balloting. If there's a system worth emulating in this country, that's the one.

=Lefty=

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February 10, 2011: "We're going to have a relentless focus on creating jobs." - John Boehner.

So far the list of Republican accomplishments for 2011 is:

(1) Attempted curtailing of abortion rights.
(2) Attempted defunding of Planned Parenthood.
(3) Attempted defunding of NPR.
(4) Investigating Muslims.
(5) Declaring English as America's Official Language.
(6) Reaffirming "In God We Trust".
(7) Challenging AARP's tax-exempt status.
(8) Approved defunct funding for failed religious schools.
(9) Attempt to destroy Medicaid.
(10) Shutting down the government.

Nope. No job creation here. Move along. Move along.

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And what lies is Fox News spewing lately? When your Conservative friends are losing their elections, scream voting fraud. This is doubly hilarious as Fox's candidate, David Prosser, may yet win his judgeship.