After losing Wisconsin’s Supreme Court race April 5, Assistant Attorney General JoAnne Kloppenburg requested a statewide recount. This will be the first recount Wisconsin has had in 22 years.

Kloppenburg has the right to ask for a recount, but it is unnecessary.

Justice David Prosser won the election over Kloppenburg by 7,316 votes according to the most recent totals. That is less than 0.5 percent of the 1.5 million votes that were cast during the election.

Kloppenburg appeared to be winning earlier in the race when she was up by 204 votes. It turned out that Waukesha County Clerk, Kathy Nickolaus’ initial unofficial tally did not include 14,315 votes from the City of Brookfield.

Though Nickolaus made a reporting error, it was corrected and looked into, making the chances of fraud less likely.

State election officials reviewed Nickolaus’ canvass reports and the results from the April 5 election during an on-site investigation. On April 19, the state Government Accountability Board issued a statement saying that the canvass report and municipal elections were consistent and no revision needed to be made.

It’s understandable that Kloppenburg is frustrated. Before Nickolaus’ error, she was expecting a victory, but the votes found in the City of Brookfield were apparently legitimate. Kloppenburg’s request for an investigation of Nickolaus and her competence is reasonable, but a recount is not.

The recent election was a tight race, but 7,000-plus votes is not tight enough to require a recount. The original announcement of Kloppenburg winning by 204 votes would have been deserving of verification, but a recount in this current situation is unlikely to change the outcome of the election.

Regardless of how little difference will be made, the state accountability board issued an order Monday for the recount to begin on Wednesday.

The recount is going to happen no matter what, but it doesn’t change the fact that Kloppenburg requesting one is a waste of time and money, and will more than likely not change a thing.

Some of the ballots will be recounted by hand in areas where older machines that do not copy data were used. Ballots elsewhere will be recounted using the same machines, or the methods used to count them initially on Election Day.

Recounting a number of votes by hand in about 31 counties is costly, time consuming and is an unnecessary use of labor.

As of now, the cost of the recount is still unknown, but because the statewide margin was so small, the expense of the recount would fall upon taxpayers, and not Kloppenburg’s campaign. County budgets will also be affected, according to the accountability board.

Wisconsin is still dealing with fiscal issues. With the current budget in dismal condition, using money to fund a pointless recount is frivolous spending of taxpayers’ dollars.

Kloppenburg shouldn’t have asked for a recount in the first place, but since it was granted there’s nothing that can be done.

Hopefully, in upcoming elections, greater attention will be put into tallying votes in order to avoid needless recounts. Kloppenburg’s decision to have a recount was her choice to make, but it is unlikely the result will be in her favor.