Kloppenburg concedes state Supreme Court election

• State map of Wisconsin judicial election

This is a map of Wisconsin which shows which counties went for either Prosser or Kloppenburg for the state supreme court.

Talk about it

JoAnne Kloppenburg said late this morning she will not challenge the results of this month’s statewide recount of the Supreme Court election in which she lost to incumbent Justice David Prosser by just over 7,000 votes.

Kloppenburg, an assistant attorney general, told reporters that her campaign found lots of irregularities in the way the votes from April 5 were counted and secured. And while conceding to Prosser, Kloppenburg asked the Government Accountability Board to look into the total voting process and fix it so “Everyone can have confidence that their votes will be counted.”

Kloppenburg said many irregularities remained in Waukesha County, where the clerk failed to count 14,000 votes from Brookfield on the April 5 Election Night. The state board later said there were no more irregularities than normal. When the board certified the results last week, its chairman said there would always be small errors because no process is perfect.

Kloppenburg said she called Prosser just before her news conference to congratulate him on his victory.

Today’s decision means Prosser will begin his second full 10-year term Aug. 1, and there’s no chance that a lawsuit will delay that inauguration. Prosser, a former Republican state Assembly speaker, won the April county canvasses by 7,316 votes. The recount cut that margin down by 312 votes.

Before the statewide recount, Prosser’s camp called it a waste of money and demanded that Kloppenburg concede then.

The recount is expected to cost taxpayers in the neighborhood of $500,000, but Kloppenburg said today it was worth the cost to do a check on the voting process and protect its integrity.

Tags: state news, news, wisconsin, politics, courts