Supreme Court

GAB releases report on Waukesha vote counting

September 28, 2011 by Uppity Wisconsin

You may remember the investigation that was started into the vote count in Waukesha County for the Kloppenburg election for Supreme Court.  The GAB has just released their report on the investigation on their web site.

The quick gist -

As a result of the investigation, the G.A.B. has issued an order requiring Clerk Nickolaus to conform her conduct to law and take certain steps to ensure accountability and transparency in her Election Night reporting practices prior to the February 2012 spring primary.  Those steps include releasing detailed results on Election Night, instead of only county-wide figures.  Had Clerk Nickolaus reported all results separately on Election Night, her failure to include numbers from the City of Brookfield would have been apparent immediately, rather than the next morning when she discovered the problem.

Uncomfy conservatives and their enablers now even busier dismantling dissent

September 23, 2011 by Uppity Wisconsin

You've got to admire the chutzpah (pronounced "chuts-paw" by Michele Bachmann) of Republicans and conservatives and their opinion-leader enablers. Their attempt to seize permanent control of government (and that's hardly an overstatement, since at least one GOP party official a couple years ago said flat out that was their goal) hasn't been going well, so they're doubling down.

And how do you go about seizing control when the public isn't willing to help vote you into undismissable majorities? Well, there are ways, as we are learning in Wisconsin. For example:

* Trying to elilminate or make much more difficult our state's constitutional provision for recalls of state elected lawmakers for any reason the voters choose. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel as of this morning has now written at least two editorials backing this dumb-down of the recall right.  

On Protecting The Innocent, Or, Is There A Death Penalty Compromise?

September 23, 2011 by Uppity Wisconsin

I don’t feel very good about this country this morning, and as so many of us are I’m thinking of how Troy Davis was hustled off this mortal coil by the State of Georgia without a lot of thought of what it means to execute the innocent.

And given the choice, I’d rather see us abandon the death penalty altogether, for reasons that must, at this moment, seem self-evident; that said, it’s my suspicion that a lot of states are not going to be in any hurry to abandon their death penalties anytime soon now that they know the Supreme Court will allow the innocent to be murdered.

So what if there was a way to create a compromise that balanced the absolute need to protect the innocent with the feeling among many Americans that, for some crimes, we absolutely have to impose the death penalty?

Considering the circumstances, it’s not going to be an easy subject, but let’s give it a try, and see what we can do.