Flap’s Links and Comments for April 7th on 17:48

These are my links for April 7th from 17:48 to 17:52:

• Prosser Vs. Kloppenberg – Wild One in Waukesha, Wisconsin – At a press conference just moments ago, Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus explained how “human error” caused nearly 15,000 votes from the city of Brookfield to be excluded from early county tabulations.

  A clearly nervous Nickolaus said that she first discovered that data for Brookfield was missing when she uploaded a database of county votes  to a state system, and noticed that all rows and columns for the city contained zeros. On Wednesday, the county’s bipartisan canvassing board began reviewing those unofficial results — which didn’t contain the Brookfield numbers — with official tape totals from voting machines throughout the county. They found a discrepancy.

  “I discovered that the data that was sent to me from the city of Brookfield was not transferred to the final report that was given to the media on Tuesday night,” Nickolaus said. Heavily red Brookfield, she said, had cast 10,859 for Prosser and 3,456 for Kloppenberg, netting the incumbent over 7,000 votes and a lead that could put him beyond the legal trigger for a mandatory recount.

  Nickolaus assured reporters repeatedly that “This is not a a case of extra votes or extra ballots being found.” The canvassing process is a standard part of election results certification in the state, and its purpose is to catch errors just like this one.

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  Wow, what a fortuitious error.

• House passes funding bill that could get Senate majority – President Obama in the Box – The House of Representatives did its job, passing a funding bill to keep the government open a week and cover the Defense Department for the balance of the FY 2011. A senior Senate source told me flatly, “I am confident all members of the caucus would support House bill.” It is inconceivable to me that a few Democrats wouldn’t go along. But Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid is likely to refuse to bring it to the floor. Why? He won’t say. Well, because the president said he’d veto it. Why? He won’t say. The bill is precisely the “clean bill” he wanted.

  Obama has backed himself, and now Reid, into a corner. Are the Senate Democrats and the White House going to shut down the government for no good reason? Perhaps. What we see here is a transparent and slightly pathetic attempt by the president to take charge. Maybe he should have been paying attention for all of 2011 when the Democratic-controlled Congress didn’t do its job. Maybe he should have gotten into the negotiations sooner. But for now we’ll wait and see.

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  The Senate is working on it – so wait and see.