Waukesha County makes changes ahead of recall primary



WAUKESHA -- With change comes optimism and that's what Waukesha County hopes to turn into success on recall primary election night coming up in two weeks - on May 8th. The county is changing the way it handles the reporting of election results after problems plagued the county during the past two elections.

With JoAnne Kloppenburg claiming victory on April 6th, 2011, only to find out days later she actually lost the Supreme Court bid to David Prosser because of missing votes...to the rolls and rolls of results posted late at night on the walls of the Waukesha County Clerk's Office after the presidential primary election on April 3rd, Waukesha County has had a difficult time getting its results out accurately, timely or easily.

"We have retained the services of an outside consultant to look at just what had been being done and we're going to obviously see changes in May and June," Waukesha County Executive Dan Vrakas said.

One of those changes is that Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus will delegate her duties to her Deputy Clerk Kelly Yeager for the recall primary election.

Other changes include municipal clerks, like Brookfield's Kelly Michaels will tabulate totals from the two pieces of equipment at poll sites, add those totals together and enter it into the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board's canvas system, instead of driving the results to the County Clerk's Office.

After its accuracy is verified, they'll fax the results to the County Clerk's Office, where they will be made public.

"We have our process detailed from the county and we've agreed to do that. We've put some staff in to place to accomplish it. I think we'll be okay," Michaels said.

"We're going to have some dry runs. We're going to go through it a couple of times to make sure that everybody has the procedure down," Vrakas said.

Vrakas and Michaels are both very optimistic the changes made will be easily handled on May 8th and June 5th. While it's been a quick process, both feel their staffs are prepared for the changes.

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