Daily Kos diarist's husband used to work with Kathy Nickolaus

[highplainsdem]

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/04/07/964621/-My-connection-to-Kathy-Nickolaus

Thu Apr 07, 2011 at 10:37 PM EDT
Kathy Nicholaus: surprise, surprise? Maybe not.

by MouseNoMore


Unbeknownst to me until 10 minutes ago, my husband used to work with Kathy Nickolaus (Waukesha County Clerk) in the Wisconsin legislature's IT shop. (He worked there from 1993 to 1997.) Quote my DH, "She was not only incompetent, but also a fierce right-to-lifer and arch-conservative. If you said to her, 'I really like hot fudge sundaes', her reply would be, 'We really have to stop abortions.' Her testifying in the caucus scandal notwithstanding, this casts considerable doubt on her integrity. She knew damn well that what she was doing for the caucuses was against the law, (later) immunity not withstanding."

He says he is very, very afraid now because the questions about her integrity are extremely frightening to him. "The fact the the entire county's election data is on a single PC with no backup demonstrates her incompetence." He remembers being in a meeting with the chief of their IT shop and hearing about the stuff she was doing, and he told the boss, "We could really get caught with our pants down. This is NOT an acceptable way of doing this stuff." And he was just speaking as a data processing professional. BTW my husband was an IT professional for 20+ years so I trust his opinion.

-snip-

[Teaser]

1. criminals

.

[dkf]

2. If someone pays for a recount can't they get the original ballots?

[Lefta Dissenter]

9. yes,

they WILL get the original ballots. Normally a recount is done by machine, but I'm guessing that a hand count is the only way anyone will even begin to trust any of the numbers.

[dkf]

10. Well that's it then.

[buddysmellgood]

15. agreed

[DoBotherMe]

27. Not if they've been destroyed and

replaced with new ones. Each voter on the poll will need to be canvassed and affirm that the ballot they see is the ballot they cast. Dana ; )

[in_cog_ni_to]

3. A fierce Right to Lifer? Great.

INVESTIGATE.

[Dawson Leery]

4. Did she change the vote totals on her computer before submitting them?

[glinda]

5. Possibly why she was late submitting them in. Took her awhile.

[Occulus]

22. Waaaay back when, so long ago that Bev Harris had a modicum of credibility here,

there was published a way to "hack the vote" on systems that used Diebold's GEMS (Global Election Management System); you could use Microsoft Access to open the final election database file, alter the vote totals, erase the footprints of the same from the log (including the action of erasing the log entries!), and then saving the file. There was no evidence, period, and it took all of five minutes at the most, open to close.

Poof! You have a completely compromised election. I'm sure they're not using GEMS in this election- both Diebold and their election systems have been thoroughly discredited- but it does make me wonder what the new method is. After all, it's pretty obviously currently in use.

[emcguffie]

28. Sorry to change the subject --

I have no desire to hijack the thread, if that's what it would be.

But I am sincerely interested in vote rigging.

Why does Bev Harris have no credibility here? Are there other activists who do have credibility here?

[Blue Owl]

6. she did it all to save the babies...

the precious babies...

[buddysmellgood]

16. Babies are precious. She was trying to save access to other women's uteri

[somone]

7. Crazy nut worked for 13 years as a data analyst and computer specialist

for the assembly Republican Caucus...

http://millermps.wordpress.com/2011/04/07/info-on-kathy-nickolaus-waukesha-county-clerk-republican/

[flamingdem]

8. Plus she looks shifty when she lies

Needs lessons from Rove

[in_cog_ni_to]

11. She hardly looked up when she was explaining how she committed her fraud

when Rachel was showing the clip tonight on the show. She looked guilty as hell. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty.

[flamingdem]

14. My liar sensor was alerted watching her, it wasn't just that she made an error

that's a different look on the face, it's certainly more contrite and less twisted

There were many levels going on at once inside that person, masking at work.

[femrap]

26. So let's get an

FBI agent in there....have her lie and put her in jail on the 'Martha Stewart' law.

[Bound by Honor]

12. Ok, declare her mentally incompentent to be in public

and send her to the insane asylum with bread and water only.

And yes, a incompetent with no clue on what damage they are doing, doing all of this for the loyalty of the Party.

I would recommend an arrest warrant for Ms. Kathy Nickolaus.

And no bail allowed and no Republican contact. Stick her with a PD, when she is banned from having a Republican lawyer.

[coalition_unwilling]

18. How about just hauling her skeezy ass in front of a federal

grand jury under penalty of perjury? She's entitled to whatever attorney she can afford, whether Repuke, Dem or Independent. But she can either answer the grand jury's questions under penalty of perjury or invoke her 5th amendment right against self incrimination. We still grant that right to Repukes who don't believe in the principle of 'one man, one vote' but instead believe that 'all votes are equal, but some are more equal than others' (Bush v. Gore 2000).

[pacalo]

13. From the Citizen for Action website...

http://citizenactionwi.org/no-sacred-cows-blog.html

These warning signs that should trigger a full and independent investigation include:

·         During her press conference Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus claimed this was an open and transparent process.  Yet According to Nickolaus she found out about this at noon yesterday.  She then sat on this information for 29 hours before disclosing it.

·         According to 3 observers who attended the county vote canvass, the issue of 14,315 additional votes from Brookfield never came up in the room.

    While it was hidden from the people in the room, others involved in the process, Charlie Sykes, a representative of the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute, National Review, and conservative bloggers had the story hours before it was announced.

·         Kathy Nickolaus has a long history of questionable practices in vote counting.  The issue of Nicklaus keeping records on her personal computer was central to the audit conducted on her last fall.  Was the “human error” she is apologizing for her own personal error made on her personal computer? She has been repeatedly warned about the danger of that process and criticized for keeping information “secret” from even others with in her own office in the past.

[highplainsdem]

17. Nickolaus didn't even tell the Brookfield City Clerk:

http://brookfield-wi.patch.com/articles/additional-votes-found-in-waukesha-county-canvassing

After news of the increased Prosser votes leaked but before Nickolaus' press conference, Brookfield City Clerk Kristine Schmidt said that she had not been notified by the county of any vote reporting problems.

"The votes that I had on Tuesday night, the votes I reported to the county clerk on Tuesday night, and the votes I turned over to the county clerk on Wednesday were the same numbers in each instance," Schmidt said.

"What they did with those votes afterward I can’t answer," she added.

After watching Nickolaus' press conference, Schmidt said in an interview that she empathized with the error. But she was not happy Nickolaus never told Brookfield about the snafu, even when Schmidt talked to Nickolaus earlier today. Schmidt said she also called the county clerk's office shortly before the press conference but was not told what happened.

[pacalo]

21. Exactly.

[AmBlue]

19. COUNT THE PAPER BALLOTS...

Auditing elections involves ballot accounting, or comparing the number of ballots to the number of voters who voted. They should be the same.

The campaign cannot and should not be distracted by the "data" on her PC. The back-up for that data is ALWAYS the paper ballots COMPARED WITH the voter sign-in sheets from election day. Hopefully the ballots have been impounded and now should be hand counted, then compared with the tallies of the voters that signed in to vote on election day. Absentees and overseas ballots as well. I'd be real curious to know what the security measures for the ballots are in that county.

Her PC's data should absolutely be examined, but the true vote count of the ballots should EQUAL or be the same as the sign-in books (or whatever means they use to check-in voters on election day). If the counts don't match and are significantly more or less than the number of voters that signed in, then that's a big red flag.

[karnac]

20. wouldn't it be hilarious if she has been undercounting votes

in other towns of a HEAVILY REPUBLICAN county?

And after an investigation, more votes come out that wouldn't have otherwise?

peachy keen

The law of unintended consequences :-/

[gkhouston]

24. If that happens, it happens. I'm looking for an accurate total and results that

I can have some confidence in. Right now, I don't think the county clerk could find her ass with both hands and a flashlight.

[fasttense]

23. Ahh, shades of Katherine Harris. n/t

[PATRICK]

25. Assuming the worst

That this was small "Chicago" style delay/reserve tactic in what thye likely knew would be a close election, what should have happened was for the "discovery' to happen a lot sooner, i.e. if the results were decisive one way or the other. The razor thin margin had to be scoped for who would ask for a recount and how much was needed. In this case simply adding in the real totals for Prosser from the missing county seem to be enough- an Oops not an Opps. This is not a great tactic to put so much focus on the one "missing" county. If that is suspicious perhaps there are other larger more diffuse erros as well. I take it there has been some delay in "discovering" this error so the GOP could take counsel together. Instead of a nail in the coffin the incident has the burden of being the weighted lid itself.

It might be assumed they first hastily double checked whether their other numbers would hold up under a recount then planned to oppose and delay any such thing happening. that would be true even if things were mainly on the up and up.

The main story has not changed. That ANY Dem has a new de facto voting block starting out without any other advantage whatsoever. The "victory" may only intensify feelings against them. It would be great for all states and populations to get their head around protecting the vote based on this incident so we can actually be sure of the real dimensions of the coming wave.

The general GOP strategy of creating misery and failure(blame the Prez 24/7) and dumping their idiots who have no comparable sway over the populist reaction started in Wisconsin(Palin, Beck) slouches toward 2012, yet another rough beast to be born. Bluff backed by all the media and money and DNC enablement creates the arrogance of their villainy. Nothing else left.

[louslobbs]

29. Just another lying, cheating, hypocrite Republicon rigging the system for her cause. She needs to

be investigated again, and this time, instead of getting off by being a stool pigeon to save her feathers, she needs to be found guilty of her crimes and sent to one of the fine Corporate womens prisons in Wisconsin.
She's exactly what all Republicons seem to be, a cheat, a liar and a hypocrite. I'm sure as the sun shines, that she rigged this vote and probably got some help from the Koch billions and their many Republicon IT professional cheats and liars.
Lou