Two recounts underway at courthouse

Ken Lumpkin and Kaplan's attorney Michael Maistelman
watch as Rosanne Kuemmel and Joan Rennert examine ballot

UPDATES: Kaplan wins by one vote. Mount Pleasant recount won't be finished until Thursday.

ORIGINAL POST: What's the old quote about two things you never want to see being made: sausage and legislation?

Add recounts to that list.

Two recounts are underway at the Racine County Courthouse this morning -- one in a storage closet and the other in a more spacious meeting room.

Relegated to the storage closet are Ken Lumpkin and Jim Kaplan, fighting over Kaplan's two-vote margin in the contest for the Racine County Board seat in District 4.

In the meeting room was Ruth Gedwardt, trying to overcome a 41-vote deficit in her effort to win election to the Mount Pleasant Village Board. Gedwardt came in fourth in a three-seat race.

The Lumpkin/Kaplan recount was the more interesting affair, what with Kaplan's two lawyers monitoring every step County Clerk Joan Rennert and her assistants made in the claustrophobically confining space, crammed with 14 people. Atty. Michael Maistelman, fresh from a recount in Franklin yesterday, pointed out to Rennert that in Franklin "the table was much bigger and the clerk bought us pizza."

"In that case," Rennert replied, "you should buy today."

Instantly, all decided that would be inappropriate, so the nitty-gritty of counting ballots, examining absentee forms and zero-ing out the voting machine for testing went on.

Things were more refined in Gedwardt's recount, where clerks sat quietly around a big table -- at least four times larger than the one Rennert and her two assistants were using. Gedwart, too, had an attorney present.

The recounts were expected to last up to eight hours...

Jim Kaplan and his wife, Julie

Ruth Gedwardt and Atty. Joe Kremkoski