After weeks following a close election for the Wisconsin Supreme Court that saw one county election official admit a data entry error that changed the result of the race, pro-life Justice David Prosser has unofficially won.
Prosser has been declared the winner of the election to his seat, defeating his pro-abortion challenger JoAnne Kloppenburg by 7,316 votes. The county vote totals were finalized Friday and the tallies from Wisconsin’s 72 counties show Prosser defeated Kloppenburg. However, the race will not officially be declared until the deadline for Kloppenburg to seek a recount passes and she has until Wednesday of next week to call for one.
The count shows Prosser ahead by 7,316 votes and Kloppenburg has not said whether she will seek a recount against the 12-year court veteran and former Republican Assembly speaker. Prosser appears to have won even though liberal activists attempted to use the race to focus opposition to pro-life Governor Scott Walker.
The initial election returns made it appear Kloppenburg had beaten Prosser by 234 votes but Waukesha County clerk Kathy Nickolaus admitted she had forgotten to save 14,000 votes on her computer and the processing of those votes in a heavily Republican area gave Prosser the lead. State elections officials are reviewing the error but Nickolaus has refused to step down from her post saying she made an honest mistake and the final tallies are accurate.
“This is not a case of extra votes or extra ballots being found,” Nickolaus said. “This is human error, which I apologize for.”
The political action committee associated with the Family Research Council’s lobbying group supported Prosser as did Wisconsin Right to Life.
Connie Mackey, chairwoman of the Faith Family Freedom Fund, which is the FRC-related PAC running the ads, told LifeNews.com that Kloppenburg’s supporters ” want to use the Wisconsin Supreme Court to advance their liberal agenda and also recall any elected official who stands in their way.”
“Faith Family Freedom Fund will advocate for these duly elected officials and work to protect the courts from judicial activism,” she said.
In January, Wisconsin Right to Life said voters should re-elect David Prosser to his current position on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. With high court races not usually occupying the attention of voters, having the support of the pro-life community could make the difference in the election.
“Our organization is proud to endorse Justice David Prosser for re-election to our state’s highest court,” WRTL legislative director Susan Armacost told LifeNews.com. “Justice Prosser is a highly respected jurist whose judicial philosophy focuses on interpreting the Constitution, not making law. David Prosser has served the State Supreme Court with great distinction and richly deserves to be re-elected.”
Prosser has described himself as a judicial conservative and an impartial judge while the candidates seeking to replace him have not sided themselves with those who favor the rule of law as opposed to legislative from the bench — the key problem in the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade that allowed virtually unlimited abortions and 53 million abortions since 1973.
Prosser has also touted his time as the former GOP Assembly speaker and said he is looking forward to preserving the common-sense majority on the current court — something that Kloppenburg has condemned. Prosser has a great deal of experience and has participated in more than 900 published Supreme Court decisions.
