The massive political game of chicken that is the recall effort against Wisconsin GOP Gov. Scott Walker (working title? Recall: The Electoral Opera) entered a new phase as former GOP State Senator and Republican-friendly judge J. Mac Davis ruled in favor of the Governor as expected, saying now that the burden of vetting the recall petition signatures now falls on the state’s election officials and not Walker.
The ruling by Waukesha County Circuit Judge J. Mac Davis came in a case filed Dec. 15 by Walker’s campaign committee and Stephan Thompson, executive director of the state Republican Party, asking Davis to order the accountability board to seek out and eliminate duplicate and fictitious signatures and illegible addresses in recall petitions.
Davis, who refused to enter injunctions in the case, based his decision on his interpretation of state law, more than on equal protection arguments brought up by the Republicans. He also said that the board must take “reasonable” efforts to eliminate such signatures.
Kevin Kennedy, director and general counsel of the board, said after the hearing that his organization would have to discuss the decision to see what it needed to change in procedures already in place.
In court, Kennedy testified that entering signatures into a database to look for duplicates could take eight extra weeks for his staff, and could cost $94,000 for software and outside help.
Steven M. Biskupic, attorney for the Republicans, argued that not catching invalid signatures violated the constitutional rights to equal protection of people who chose not to sign recall petitions.
The second-best part is now that Democrats will be blamed for the bill after the Republicans sued in a heavily Republican county in front of a judge that was a former Republican state senator. The best part is that if the board manages to get all the signatures processed and certifies them, it will be a massive Obama/ACORN conspiracy because the signatures weren’t vetted by Walker’s people.
Win-win for the Kochs, frankly.
Ian
Kay beat you to it by about 15 minutes. A very good post however.
True that the Dem’s will be blamed for this whole fiasco, but somehow I still think the recall will go forward.
Ben Cisco
Dems were going to get blamed anyway. Dems get blamed for everything including the following:
__
Numbness, tingling, swelling, shrinkage, rapid hair loss, rapid hair growth, shingles, Pringles, and infestations of aardvarks, armadillos, bears, boars, cats, bats, dawgs, hawgs, stoats, goats, yaks, and old gnus.
Boo
Wait, can’t this be appealed to a higher court?
dr. bloor
I’m not so sure. The scent of flop sweat is universal and knows no party affiliation, and Walker will only look more desperate as his comic opera plays out.
something fabulous
@Ben Cisco: and why are you only telling us about this infestation now? That’s old gnus! (Sorry.)
Hunter Gathers
@Ben Cisco: You forgot about gout, irritable bowel syndrome, the condition known as Hot Dog Fingers, gravity, religions other than Christianity, teh gays, the dearth of white players in the NFL, MLB and the NBA, Detroit, the southern hemisphere, mail-in-rebates, Sarah Palin’s stupidity, East St. Louis, the continent of Africa, and last, but certainly not least, the policies of George W. Bush (whom, I am told, was a closet liberal).
Raven
@Hunter Gathers: And the flutterin blue goofus.
Tony J
It’s not a win, it’s a delaying tactic.
To take the second paragraph first, the “We only lost because Activist Judges stopped us counting all the votes ourselves!” bull would and will only fly with the 27% who would have thought it anyway. GOP failures always need to paint their defeats as proof of the ‘Great Liberal Conspiracy’ if they’re going parachute into the strong manly arms of the unhinged Base.
Otherwise, yes, the House of Walker will obviously try to exploit this ruling to ratfuck the recall election by sending out Party stalwarts to cast a mass of fake votes, along with a handful of ‘technically invalid though well faked enough to get through the first layer of inspection’ ones, so they can point to the latter as ‘proof’ that the board has violated election law and so the result has to be ignored.
But that’s it. They don’t get to cancel the recall or guarantee a win. They’ve just put in place a trigger for delaying the verdict when the vote goes against them. The board still gets to be in charge of the counting.
Wouldn’t you have expected them to do this? Wasn’t that the whole point of going to Waukesha for the ruling in the first place? And this is the best he could get out of a friendly judge?
If the feeling amongst Wisconsin Goopers was that Walker might win the recall election the fix would have been put in to give him a lot more. The judge could have ruled that the evidence of rampant voter fraud was so convincing the recall election would have to be delayed until “reasonable” precautions were put in place. It would have been BS, but wouldn’t it have got to the SC eventually? That would have been a win.
But this is all he got.
Obviously, as this is BJ, I expect to be told how wrong I am in the comments. It’s educational.
Scott
I honestly suspect that Walker will never make it to the recall. I kinda think that, at some point, he’ll get caught holding up a liquor store or something much worse and will flee to South America. He just seems the type.
Tony J
@Tony J:
I’m educating myself.
Otherwise I just sound naive.
MikeJ
@Boo:
The state has to do the appealing. I don’t think the gov is going to tell the state they should appeal.
Ben Cisco
@something fabulous: @Hunter Gathers: @Raven: Winners! One internet for each of you.
Jennifer
I’m really curious in the first place why it would be up to Walker (or any private individual or party) to verify signatures on ANY initiative. Must be an anomality of Wisconsin law. Here in my state, every petition goes to the Secretary of State’s office for signature verification. While this can cause some problems in and of itself – we once upon a time had a Sec. State who could be counted upon to “lose” or “find” signatures according to how much he was paid, which we got around by photocopying EVERY SINGLE PETITION before turning over the originals* – seems that our system leaves far less opportunity for partisan abuse.
*I’ll never forget the conversation I had with the head of the signature verification unit when the Sec. State was claiming we came up 5,000 signatures short. “I don’t understand how you’re showing our total as 5,000 less than what we turned over to you. I went back through our copies and the number we had was correct.” Long silence on line….”you have copies?” “Oh yes, we have a copy of every single petition we turned in.” Miraculously, by the next day, all the “missing” petitions had been not only found, but also verified.
feebog
Personally, I can’t find a lot to be upset about here. In my view, it should be the State that authenticates the signatures. I just see it as a legitimate function of the GAB, and not of the opposition campaign. And yes, it will delay the election, but that is just delaying the inevitable.
Of much more concern once the signatures are submitted is who the Dems are going to put up against Walker and his Lt. Gov. and how much money they can raise to counteract the millions Walker has already raised and that the Koch Bros. will throw into the race in independent ads.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Tony J:
So if this optimistic interpretation is correct, then in effect a lukewarm court told Walker: These aren’t the voids you’re looking for. Move along.
Tony J
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Nicely put.
agrippa
What is this about blaming Dems? So what if they are blamed?
It looks to me that the recall will go forward. The GAB will validate the signatures, the date will be set and people will vote.
AA+ Bonds
Yeah but a pathetic one, a pebble tossed in front of a flood
AA+ Bonds
Make no mistake, the Kochs are traitors and criminals and have their hand so far up Walker’s rectum that he’s bleeding, but they can’t muster enough Kluxers to stop this
They can’t even muster their C-ranked operatives to fuck up this thread, I mean look at the loser sock puppets we have above pimping their line
Waldo
Kinda sucks, sure. But it keeps the campaign against Gov. Dead Eyes in the spotlight, so not all bad.
TenguPhule
Open Season on Walker. No Bag Limit.
The Sailor
@Tony J: You forgot about the part where Walker and his cronies changed the law so they could bring suit in a friendly county.
markg
This was really quite an extraordinary ruling by this ex-republican legislator turned judge. He basically issued instructions to a state agency on how it must perform its duties in the upcoming recall. If a liberal judge tried to rule on future matters like this you better believe we’d hear all about that evil judicial activism but, as usual, IOKIYAR.
The Sailor
That works right up to where the state is crooked. This state is crooked. If republicans can’t invalidate the sigs they want to make the citizens of WI pay money to invalidate them.
This is not how democracy, or science, works. AKA you say they aren’t valid, prove it.
Republicans want a court challenge because they know they will win in a crooked court. Do you deny that?
kideni
The GAB does validate the signatures. By law, they’re not allowed to strike any names, but they flag anything suspicious for the incumbent’s people to review and challenge. The whole point of the suit is to try to taint the recall process and make the GAB look bad. It’s a nonpartisan agency created 4 or 5 years ago because the previous partisan system didn’t work, and it was created with the approval of overwhelming numbers of Republicans and Democrats. Now the Republicans have decided they don’t like the GAB because it’s not letting them do whatever they want.
Also, the GAB will hire temps to assist them in reviewing the petitions, and they’ve stipulated that no one who has signed (yes: signed!) a petition can review. As if those who have signed are necessarily any more partisan than those who haven’t. They’re also using temp agencies approved by the Walker admin. Fortunately, the recall groups can send observers, and they have some recourse if there’s something fishy going on; otherwise who knows what would happen.
vor
My understanding is that the Walker administration themselves had the law changed after the previous recall elections. Guess it never occurred to them that it might cause problems for them.
KCinDC
I don’t see this as necessarily unreasonable either. In DC, recall petitions are verified by the Board of Elections, not the official in question. The board doesn’t have to verify every single signature, though, just a large enough sample to meet a statistical test showing with 95% confidence that the number of signatures exceeds the threshold (10% of the number of registered voters).
For petitions to get on the ballot, signatures are only verified if someone (usually someone connected with an opponent) challenges them. Often kooks get onto the ballot because no one feels it’s worthwhile to challenge their petitions. I’d prefer it if all of those petitions were similarly checked by the Board of Elections rather than leaving it up to the competence and calculations of the competition.
bob h
Recall: The Electoral Opera
Or, Recall: Mourning Becomes Electoral