Waukesha - After poorly sealed and torn ballot bags became one source of concern during the recent Supreme Court recount, Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus plans to introduce new, more secure bags.
She said the bags are made of tougher plastic and are comparable to bags used by banks, with an adhesive tape closing that would reveal signs of tampering. Ballots from individual polling places are bagged after they're counted on election night and stored either at municipal halls or with the county clerk until results are final and uncontested.
During the statewide recount this spring, in which Justice David Prosser's win over Assistant Attorney General JoAnne Kloppenburg was affirmed by a 7,004-vote margin, poorly sealed ballot bags were a common problem. Some saw the gaps as evidence of potential tampering; others said it only showed that poll workers had difficulty cinching overstuffed bags with plastic straps.
Nickolaus said with the new bags, "the poll worker doesn't have to try and work a plastic seal around the bag."
Nickolaus showed off the sample bag at last week's annual convention of county clerks in Rusk County and many responded favorably, she said.
"The majority of us who use plastic bags are looking to use these in the future," she said. The earliest they would be put to use is in the spring election, she predicted.
Reid Magney, spokesman for the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board, which oversees elections in the state, said Tuesday that county clerks are free to buy whatever election supplies they need. However, he said the items must conform to security standards set by the board and its Election Administration Council, which advises local clerks on, among other things, which ballot containers to buy.
Nickolaus said the bags meet state security requirements.
Magney said the council has not met recently or reviewed the particular bags that Nickolaus said she'll use, and it may not do so.
Based on three bids from ballot vendors already received, Nickolaus said, the new bags could cost less than the plastic ballot bags that have been in use since 1980.
The state of ballot bags came under a microscope particularly during the recount in Waukesha County after Nickolaus' misstep in reporting unofficial election results April 5.
She failed to include all 14,315 votes from the city of Brookfield in her initial totals, and then didn't correct the record for nearly two days despite knowing of her mistake the next morning.
What had initially seemed like a 204-vote lead for Kloppenburg statewide out of nearly 1.5 million votes cast turned into a 7,300-plus-vote unofficial win for Prosser after including the Brookfield votes.
The Waukesha County recount, which lasted longer than any other county's and cost $129,000, added a net of 68 votes to Prosser's total and 19 votes to Kloppenburg's. Kloppenburg's campaign manager has filed a complaint against Nickolaus with the accountability board.