"It profits me but little that a vigilant authority always protects the tranquillity of my pleasures and constantly averts all dangers from my path, without my care or concern, if this same authority is the absolute master of my liberty and my life."

--Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

Thursday, April 7, 2011

The Latest on Wisconsin

The latest rumor (via the Gateway Pundit) in Wisconsin's Supreme Court election is that election workers in Waukesha County (which went 73% for the conservative, Justice David Prosser) have discovered 500-600 lost ballots.   If those ballots were to break for Prosser, he just might make up the 204 votes he is behind.   Expect outrage from the Democrats if this happens; also expect more miraculous "discoveries" of votes as we move forward here in the Badger State.

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A somewhat related thought:  according to the Statistical Abstract of the United States for 2011, there are roughly 283,000 state and local government employees in Wisconsin.   If they all voted on Tuesday   -- and they were certainly motivated to do so by their unions -- they would have accounted for around 20% of the voting electorate for this off-year election.   Which raises the following not-so-theoretical-anymore question.   When the key issues of a country or a state involve how we are to govern, or what our government should do, maybe the size of the population that is employed by government does not matter.   When, however, the key issue becomes the size of government itself  -- as I believe it has at this moment in history -- then the fact that a huge constituency of government employees has a built-in preference for more government makes changing direction more and more difficult.   Is there a tipping point where we've got so much government that we can't ever decide to have less government, because those employed by government won't allow it?   There must be.   But I hope we haven't reached it already.

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UPDATE:

According to this story, Prosser now leads after the official tally in Winnebago County showed something like 250 more votes for him than previously reported unofficially by the AP.

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