Video: Hey, who’s up for more gloating over Prosser’s glorious Wisconsin victory?

We’re all hung over from yesterday’s 12-pack of schadenfreude so here’s some video hair-of-the-dog for you. Prosser himself, ironically, seems to be the only Republican in America who isn’t high-fiving people in the street today over the ballot windfall in Waukesha. Quote: “I’m not conceding, and I’m not congratulating. And I’m not claiming victory.” How … judicious.

The state is sending officials to Waukesha to make sure that everything’s on the up-and-up with the new totals, but the statistical evidence is compelling. A political analyst at the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel crunched the turnout numbers and found that the new data is more in line with traditional Waukesha turnout models than the original erroneous data from election night. Nate Silver, performing an even more thorough analysis, found the same thing. His conclusion:

[I]f you want to allege that there’s a conspiracy afoot, the statistical evidence tends to work against you. Waukesha County’s revised turnout figures are pretty normal for Waukesha County, a wealthy, white suburban county that usually votes at high rates, whereas its original figures were at the low end of reasonable expectations, given the way the rest of the state voted.

Also of note is that the number of votes that Ms. Nickolaus says she failed to count in Brookfield, amounting to 11 percent of the county total, is in line with the proportion Brookfield normally represents: the city supplied 11 percent of Waukesha County’s total vote in both the 2008 and 2010 general elections.

If this was a conspiracy, it was one executed with an extraordinarily high degree of cunning and competence. I’m more inclined to think that Ms. Nickolaus, who has drawn complaints for her sloppy management practices in the past, is no savvier than she seems.

A day later, the strongest “evidence” the left seems to have of shenanigans taking place is the fact that Nickolaus once worked for the state assembly’s Republican caucus in 1995 when Prosser was speaker and therefore technically in charge of it. There was eventually a criminal investigation of the caucus, years after Prosser had left; Nickolaus was still there at the time but was granted immunity. And so the “underpants gnomes” theory of election-rigging takes shape: Phase one — Prosser and Nickolaus meet, Phase two — ????, Phase three — Nickolaus rigs the election for Prosser 16 years later. Exit question: If you were going to rig an election, wouldn’t you want to do it very quietly on election night rather than a day later later via a bombshell announcement that draws the attention of, well, everyone in America?

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