As the recall efforts of Wisconsin residents intensifies and a recall election in 2012 becomes more of a reality, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is not taking the recall efforts lightly.
“Friends of Scott Walker,” Mr. Walker’s Wisconsin state campaign committee and Wisconsin Republican Party Director Stephan Thompson filed a lawsuit last week against the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board (GAB) regarding the board’s handling of multiple signatures on recall petitions against the governor.
“The decision of one individual who chooses to sign a recall petition should not carry more weight than the decision of another who chooses not to sign,” Mr. Thompson said last week regarding the decision to file the lawsuit, The Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel reports.
“This lawsuit seeks to protect the Wisconsin electors whose voices have been trumped by those purposefully signing multiple petitions,” Mr. Thomson added.
The lawsuit claims that the Wisconsin GAB violated the Wisconsin state constitution by publicly announcing that it will not be reviewing the petitions for duplicate signatures, bogus names or illegible street addresses.
Additionally, Mr. Walker’s website now features a pop up window prior to entering the site that invites Walker supporters to volunteer to help verify the recall petitions.
“If you want to bring fairness to the recall process by verifying signatures, the place to volunteer is ScottWalker.org,” Michael Grebe, Mr. Walker’s campaign chairman writes in a statement printed on the website.
On Tuesday, several recall groups collectively filed a motion to intervene in the case.
According to RecallScottWalker.info, recall groups have collected over 500,000 signatures thus far in their effort to force a recall election for the Wisconsin governor in 2012. They need a total of 540,208 valid signatures by January 17th in order to force the election.
The Wisconsin Democratic Party is claiming that it is reviewing the signatures and will strike out any fake or unverifiable signatures prior to submitting them in January.
Governor Walker has been consistently running ads in recent weeks to fight the recall effort.
The Wisconsin GAB believes the plaintiffs in the lawsuit are fighting an uphill battle.
“The plaintiffs are challenging the rules that have been established by statutes and administrative code, and which have been in place since the late 1980s. Since then, these rules have been used in every state and local recall petition effort against incumbents of both parties,” Kevin Kennedy, the accountability board director said concerning the lawsuit.
If enough signatures are collected prior to the January 17th deadline, depending on the outcome of the lawsuit, the Walker recall election could occur as early as March 27th.
