Waukesha County to pay $256,300 to fix Nickolaus error

July 25, 2012
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By Larry Sandler of the Journal Sentinel

July 25, 2012 0

The Waukesha County Board has appropriated more than a quarter-million dollars to fix an election computer programming mistake by outgoing County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus.

Supervisors voted, 22-2, on Tuesday to spend $256,300 in the wake of a breakdown in the system for reporting results in the April 3 election.

Despite Nickolaus' promise to post timely results online, the public didn't learn the results of contested local races for hours. Reporters and election reporting service representatives had to tabulate vote totals themselves from long paper tapes hanging on the walls of a meeting room.

At County Executive Dan Vrakas' direction, the county hired a consulting firm to investigate what happened, at a cost of $15,000.

SysLogic Inc. of Brookfield found that Nickolaus had ordered an upgrade in the election software and, after that upgrade, she was the only person trained to program the computers. Then, sometime after final testing of the computers, but before the election, she changed something in the programming, the consultant's report said.

Nickolaus wouldn't tell the consultants what she did. Emails later showed that she carried out a change required by the state Government Accountability Board, but then disobeyed the state agency's instructions to test the system again after the programming change. In any event, Nickolaus apparently did something wrong that caused the election night breakdown, SysLogic found.

The county brought in its Minnesota software vendor, Command Central LLC, to take over programming the election computers for the May 8 recall primary, the June 5 recall general election and the upcoming Aug. 14 primary, at a cost of $237,300. After the primary, Command Central will train two other county staffers in programming the software, at a cost of $4,000, to avoid spending another $67,600 for the firm to program computers for the Nov. 6 general election.

Nickolaus did not return a call seeking comment Wednesday. She is not seeking re-election to her post in the fall.

About Larry Sandler

Larry Sandler has been writing about government, politics, transportation, business and education in Wisconsin and Illinois for more than 25 years. He joined the Milwaukee Sentinel's staff as a general assignment reporter in 1982, after covering county government, politics and business for The Pantagraph of Bloomington-Normal, Ill. At the Sentinel, he reported on higher education, the Milwaukee Public Schools, Milwaukee County government and the manufacturing and transportation industries. After the April 1995 merger of the Sentinel and the Milwaukee Journal, Sandler became the transportation reporter for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and from May 2001 to May 2007, he also wrote the weekly Road Warrior column. His investigation into flaws in aviation security earned a first-place award in the Milwaukee Press Club’s 2004 Excellence in Wisconsin Journalism Contest. Sandler was named City Hall reporter in June 2007 and continues to cover public transit issues as well. He holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana and a master’s degree in public affairs reporting from the University of Illinois at Springfield.

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