Breaking Election Law, and Getting Away with it, the Republican Way!

So much for the integrity of our elections. How can one person, Kathy Nickolaus, be so unbelievably lucky, seriously? For someone who has bucked election protocol for years, suddenly, it's been determined that all she made was an honest mistake?

TMJ4: Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus will not face any criminal charges in the problems with the April election, but the Government Accountability Board investigators say she needs to make improvements … "appears to be either an honest mistake or ineffectiveness. Her conduct does not appear to rise to the level of conduct that can be described as willful neglect or refusal to comply with the law."

Don't these guys do any research? She willfully did not comply in the past.

Jsonline: Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus' decision to go it alone in how she collects and maintains election results has some county officials raising a red flag about the integrity of the system. Nickolaus said she decided to take the election data collection and storage system off the county's computer network - and keep it on stand-alone personal computers accessible only in her office - for security reasons. "What it gave me was good security of the elections from start to finish, without the ability of someone unauthorized to be involved," she said.

Nonetheless, Director of Administration Norman A. Cummings said "How does anybody else in the county know, except for her verbal word, that there are backups, and that the software she has out there is performing as it should?" he said. "There's no way I can assure that the election system is going to be fine for the next presidential election." Cummings stressed … municipal clerks send their election night results by dial-up modem to the county clerk, where they are tabulated and stored. That prompted Cummings' concerns.

But that's in the past, what now?

While the GAB is not asking for any criminal charges, they are asking Nickolaus to improve. "Steps must be taken to correct the failure in order to prevent it from recurring, and to restore public confidence and trust in the administration of elections," said GAB Chairperson Thomas H. Barland.

Too late for that.