The Sconi

In 2011 the Wisconsin Supreme Court race was marred by an error in which Waukesha County failed to report all votes received in the county. 

Former Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus said the 7,500 votes from the town of Brookfield were not submitted to the state. 

"It is important to stress that this is not a case of extra votes or extra ballots being found," she said at a press conference held at the time, Courthouse News Service reported. "This is human error -- which I apologize for -- which is common in this process, which is why the state requires us to conduct a canvass." 

The incident is referred to as the “Brookfield bombshell” due to its implication on the Supreme Court race which appeared to be decided by only 205 votes. Brookfield is the county’s second-largest city which leaned heavily Republican. JoAnne Kloppenburg was leading when the error was discovered. As a result, after a canvass of the ballots, the election swung to Republican David Prosser Jr.’s favor by a margin of 7,316. He served on the high court from 1998 to 2016. 

Some called out Nickolaus for not being immediately forthcoming about the error. She waited 24 hours to alert the public. "There are mistakes and we build in checks to catch them," Kevin Kennedy, the state’s top election official, said at the time, according to PolitiFact. "But this is unusual in its magnitude and the fact that it wasn’t brought to light (immediately). That is very unusual."

After the major error, Nickolaus continued to serve as Waukesha County Clerk until 2012. Following her tenure as an elected official, she continued as clerk/treasurer in Waukesha until 2020, when she was selected as the winning candidate out of 20 to serve as town administrator for the town of Lisbon, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.

Nickolaus was implicated in an earlier error in 2006 in which her office allegedly underreported 17,423 votes. At the time lawmakers said Nickolaus’s actions "raised questions about the integrity of the outcome and shaken trust in our electoral system.” The incident is one of a handful that may have affected outcomes in recent Wisconsin electoral history.