This is insane.
An individual can sign petitions to recall Governor Scott Walker and Lt. Governor Rebecca Kleefisch with a fake name. The Government Accountability Board has NO PROBLEM WITH THAT.
"Mickey Mouse" can sign to recall the Governor.
WISN has the story:
The signatures of Mickey Mouse and Adolf Hitler will be counted on recall petitions targeting Gov. Scott Walker as long as they are properly dated and include a Wisconsin address, the board charged with reviewing the petitions was told Tuesday.
Suspicious signatures will be noted when the Government Accountability Board reviews the petitions, but reviewers will look to see that signatures are accompanied by a Wisconsin address and are dated as having been signed during the circulation period, board elections specialist David Buerger said.
"We will flag them, but we will not strike them without challenge," Buerger said after being asked whether Mickey Mouse's signature would be counted. He noted that in previous recall petitions, Adolf Hitler's name was struck because the address given was in Germany, not because of the name itself.
The board unanimously approved the board's plan for reviewing the petitions.
Circulators need to gather 540,208 valid signatures by Jan. 17 to force a recall election for Walker and Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch. Organizers said they had 300,000 as of Nov. 28 and then declined to give an update Tuesday.
This is key:
"Circulators need to gather 540,208 valid signatures by Jan. 17 to force a recall election for Walker and Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch."
Mickey Mouse and Adolph Hitler are not VALID signatures.
In effect, anyone can pull addresses out of the phone book and sign Barack Obama or Dr. Seuss.
It's utterly unacceptable for the GAB to discover clearly invalid signatures and do nothing about it.
The GAB is useless.
I don't think the burden should be on Scott Walker supporters to sort through the signatures. It should be on those challenging him.
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Here's video, from WISN.
4 comments:
Pathetic.
The bar to trigger the recall is low to start with (in terms of the total percent of signatures compared to total votes in the past election). Just volunteered to help "verify" the signatures, but you are right: the onus should be on the GAO and the recall petitioners to prove they have the valid signatures, not Walker supporters. That needs to change going into the future.
I think the number of signatures should be 50.1% of the prior election- otherwise a small minority gets to cancel out the will of the voters on the last election.
It really is pathetic.
"...do nothing about it." Did you not view your own video? They said such instances would be flagged for the benefit of validators. In other words, they will follow the law.
Flag it?
It's an utter embarrassment that the GAB is presuming such signatures to be valid.
And I doubt the GAB is going to provide a nice, neat list of potentially problematic signatures to Walker's team.
"Let's play find the flag!"
The board is a joke.
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