It is great to see the state Supreme Court election become this exciting. Perhaps it will motivate more people in future elections to vote. Currently standing at a 204 vote difference, which represents less than 0.014 percent of the 1,479,976 turnout, there are rumors of a recount going around. Such an action, which would need to be requested by the declared defeated Supreme Court Justice David Prosser, would however be a petty, wasted effort.

If Prosser were to request a recount, the state would need to pay for it. Although he would be able to choose which wards to recount, which could work in his favor, he would need sufficient grounds for believing that a count in a specific ward was mistaken. Since he would unlikely be able to produce facts at this stage, Assistant Attorney General JoAnne Kloppenburg, the self-declared victor, could go to the courts. The legal challenge would be appealed to the Supreme Court almost immediately, and then a group of nine people would decide the fate of this election. A personal bias would be difficult to avoid in such a situation, especially since last year Prosser admitted to calling liberal Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson “a total bitch” in a fit of temper. 

So this poses a problem. It would be undoubtedly unfair to have the courts involved in this situation. However, it is quite unfair in such a critical election to have a 0.014-percent margin decide the victory for a vote with a 0.04 percent margin of error.

With Prosser having received 54.7 percent of the vote in the Feb. 15 primary against Kloppenburg’s 25.2 percent, it appears that some Democratic Wisconsinites have gotten fired up by the protests at the capitol since then. Yet, after having experienced the repercussions of a displeasing elected official, Democrats are still barely rallying together to have their voice heard in this state. Quite frankly, a 0.014-percent margin is just not going to cut it for a desired change.

Right now, the Republicans are looking at the state results and thinking that about 50 percent of the population is pleased with how things are going. Madison is viewed as a liberal bubble irrelevant to the conservative desires of the rest of the state. If this is not true, then Democratic Wisconsinites were either misinformed about the election or just did not yet care enough.

Currently, it would be unfair to proceed with these results, yet a recount would unlikely produce favorable results for Prosser. So, by default, kudos to the 204 voters out there who made the difference, Kloppenburg will likely be the one to override the acts of Walker in the long-standing Republic-Democratic polarity that has been further exaggerated by this election.

Victoria Yakovleva ([email protected]) is a senior in chemical engineering.