Madison — Assistant Attorney General JoAnne Kloppenburg asked Wednesday for a statewide recount - the first in 22 years - to check the results in the April 5 state Supreme Court race she lost to Justice David Prosser.

That recount will start next week, at taxpayers' expense, the state Government Accountability Board said.

The official tally shows Kloppenburg lost to Prosser by 7,316 votes - less than 0.5% of the 1.5 million votes cast in the race. The election initially appeared much closer, with Kloppenburg up by 204 votes, before Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus announced her initial, unofficial tally failed to include the 14,315 votes from the City of Brookfield.

Kloppenburg also called on the board to appoint a special investigator to probe Nickolaus' "actions and words."

And in her complaint seeking a probe of Nickolaus, Kloppenburgalleges Prosser had a one-on-one meeting with Republican Gov. Scott Walker on the day after the election - an explosive charge in an officially nonpartisan race where the candidates questioned each other's claims of political independence.

The next day, Walker's administration asked the Supreme Court to quickly get involved in a Dane County case that has blocked implementation of Walker's controversial plan to sharply limit collective bargaining for public employees.

Prosser and Walker aide Chris Schrimpf denied the two met on April 6.

Melissa Mulliken, Kloppenburg's campaign manager, said she had been in touch with two or three people with knowledge of a Prosser-Walker meeting, including at least one who observed Prosser entering the meeting. She declined to name the people.

"With a margin this small - less than one-half of 1% - the importance of every vote is magnified and doubts about each vote are magnified as well," Kloppenburg said at a news conference. "If there are problems, we need to identify them and fix them. If there is doubt, we need to remove it. If there was misconduct, we must hold those who perpetrated it accountable."

Several dozen supporters cheered her statements. A few protesters also were present, including one who yelled, "The state doesn't want you - just Madison."

Prosser's campaign vowed to fight the recount.

"Apparently nothing will stop (Kloppenburg) from going ahead and wasting taxpayers' hard-earned money to discover what election officials did on April 5 - that Justice David Prosser was re-elected," Prosser campaign spokesman Brian Nemoir said in a written statement that noted no recount in state history had reversed this many votes.

"With the official canvass showing her down by over 7,300 votes, the only way she can achieve her nakedly political goal is to do one thing: challenge and disenfranchise thousands of Wisconsin citizens who exercised their right to vote April 5 and believed this election over," Nemoir said.

Experts said it was unlikely the recount would change the result of the race, unless fraud is uncovered.

"I think it's going to be a hard go for her," said Minnesota journalist Jay Weiner, who wrote a book about the epic recount of his state's 2008 U.S. Senate race.

Chris Sautter, a Washington, D.C., lawyer who typically represents Democratic candidates in recounts, agreed that the result of the race was unlikely to change but said "it's worth the taxpayers' investment" to be sure the count is accurate.

Sautter, who also wrote a book about recounts, raised the possibility of starting the recount in Waukesha County and any other areas of concern, then dropping it if nothing significant showed up in those places.

Joe Heim, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, said he was surprised both that Kloppenburg initially declared victory with only what was then a 204-vote unofficial lead and that later Prosser aides said that Kloppenburg would be out of line to ask for the recount.

"They've both been a little imprudent here," Heim said of the candidates.

It was Nickolaus' election night error and correction two days later that flipped the apparent victory from Kloppenburg to Prosser by more than 7,000 votes.

State elections officials scoured her canvass report and the April 5 election results over four days during an on-site investigation. The accountability board issued a report Tuesday saying that, except for a few "anomalies," the canvass report and municipal election returns were consistent, so no revisions in the canvass were needed.

The board intends to issue a report within 60 days on other questions about Nickolaus' elections operation.

Waukesha County aside, Kloppenburg said she was concerned about "under votes" - ballots with votes for other offices but not the court - in Milwaukee and Racine counties and photocopied ballots in Fond du Lac County that machines may not have read properly.

The state board has been preparing for the recount since election night and is ready to go, Kevin Kennedy, the board's director, said in a written statement.

It was not clear how much the recount would cost. Because the statewide margin was less than 0.5%, the expense would be borne by the taxpayers, not the Kloppenburg campaign. And that burden will fall on county budgets, according to the accountability board.

Those costs could be steep. Lisa Weiner, administrator of the Milwaukee County Election Commission, said she thought it could cost her county up to $500,000 - as much as an actual election.

Kloppenburg and Prosser also could face high bills for attorneys to represent them in the process. Sautter said it's not unusual for candidates to spend as much on a recount as they did on their entire campaign.

Both Prosser and Kloppenburg accepted public funding of $400,000 to run their campaigns. But they can raise and spend unlimited amounts for the recount.

The accountability board will file paperwork Thursday in Dane County Circuit Court to seek permission to clear the memory devices on some voting machines, spokesman Reid Magney said. By law, those devices cannot be cleared 21 days after an election or during a recount. But in 31 counties, the devices need to be cleared so ballots can be run through them again for the recount, Magney said.

Separately, Kloppenburg said she wanted the recount to be done by hand. She would need to provide a court with "clear and convincing evidence" that a hand recount would be more accurate than a machine recount, according to Magney.

Hand recounts are typically more expensive and lengthier than machine recounts, Jay Weiner said.

Kloppenburg said an investigation of the Waukesha County clerk was necessary and that something must be done so "real change" comes to the county's election practices and procedures.

Nickolaus was out of the office and unavailable for comment Wednesday.

A staff member in the clerk's office said Nickolaus left a statement that said the clerk "has been and will continue to be cooperative" with the state agency "throughout this entire process."

Ellen Nowak, chief of staff for Waukesha County Executive Dan Vrakas, said the county would cooperate fully with the accountability board and both campaigns, and the process would be "transparent."

Nowak called Kloppenburg's request for a special investigator premature because the accountability board already is investigating Nickolaus.

Kloppenburg said she was asking for the new investigation of the vote count in Waukesha County because of the 1 1/2 -day delay in alerting the public to the error and because conservative bloggers knew about the additional votes earlier.

Although the accountability board is an independent agency, Kloppenburg said she believed the agency worked too closely with Nickolaus to properly investigate her.

Magney said it would be up to the board to decide whether to hire an outside investigator. Most of the board's work on investigations is secret.

Patrick Marley reported from Madison and Larry Sandler and Mike Johnson reported from Milwaukee. Jason Stein contributed from Madison and Laurel Walker contributed from Waukesha.