Eight weeks after the Wisconsin Supreme Court election, Joanne Kloppenburg finally conceded defeat in her bid to unseat Justice David Prosser.
“David Prosser has won this election and I have congratulated him,” Kloppenburg said Tuesday in a press conference a block from the Capitol.
However, in her prepared remarks, Kloppenburg was adamant that “[T]housands of votes were not counted, were counted incorrectly, or have been called into question.”
Kloppenburg’s concession was as atypical as the election process itself.
“The recount was always about much more than the small difference in votes between the two candidates,” Kloppenburg said. “Widespread irregularities, unintentional as they may be, around the state, along with the cascade of irregularities in Waukesha, make it clear that we must do more to ensure the electoral process in Wisconsin is beyond reproach.”
Her concession brings a resolution to the high court election, which, despite the 7,000 plus vote margin, has been in limbo for nearly two months.
Kathy Nickolaus, the Clerk in the conservative stronghold of Waukesha County, initially failed to report all of the City of Brookfield’s 14,000 votes in her unofficial April 5 election night totals she released to the media. She announced the error a few days later, at the conclusion of the official canvass in Waukesha County.
With that revelation, what had been reported as a 204-vote margin for Kloppenburg (out of 1.5 million votes cast) became a 7,316-vote victory for Prosser.
Two weeks later, from a park on Madison’s North side, a defiant Joanne Kloppenburg announced that she was requesting a statewide recount in the Supreme Court race.
Her supporters in the labor community immediately applauded that decision.