Democrats and their leftwing allies are touting the fact that they reached their 1 million-signature goal in the effort to recall Governor Scott Walker. Political observers on both sides of the spectrum had predicted that a recall would proceed because organizers would eventually get enough signatures to force Walker to defend his post less than two years after taking office.

While recall advocates only needed to gather 540,208 valid signatures to force an election, reaching the 1 million mark was a symbolic goal that they set to prove the strength of the movement. However, before judging their efforts a complete success, several factors must be noted.

First, the petition process was riddled with fraud and tainted with questionable ethics at several points. Early in the process the Soros-funded One Wisconsin Now encouraged those opposed to Walker to sign recall petitions multiple times. Although not necessarily an illegal act (unless there is the specific intent to commit fraud), signing a petition multiple times does raise questions about how best to properly calculate the true number of signature since, in theory and according to state law, only the first signature will count. Even the Government Accountability Board’s announcement that it will use software to help catch duplicates, though a step in the right direction, doesn’t promise to catch every or even most of those kinds of errors.

When a Milwaukee man proudly said he signed recall petitions 80 times as a way of getting back at Republicans who, he believes, stole the 2000 election in Florida, he proved just how error prone the process can be.

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On Sunday, the Green Bay Press-Gazette posted a link on its Facebook page to an Associated Press story detailing state aid cuts to organizations that help victims of sexual abuse. After that story was posted, a reader left a comment expressing outrage that the state would cut such aid, and asserted that perhaps Governor Scott Walker’s wife or children should become victims of sexual assault so the governor could see the how devastating the state aid cuts really are.

The first comment reads:

Another thing Walker has destroyed . . . well just more people that will sign for recall walker now . . . is he really that ignorant to even attack victims at their lowest . . . what a real prize, maybe someone should rape and victimize his wife and daughter if he has any . . . or even sons, then he will wish he supported this service a lot more.

The women, Nancy Butzlaff, appears to have been the first to comment on this particular story on the Press-Gazette’s Facebook page. Not too long after her comment, another woman, Jenni Kone-Keeler, suggested that perhaps the governor himself should become the victim of a sexual assault or some assault-related crime. One conservative activist, Lauren Stephens, said that the comments were left up on the Press-Gazette’s Facebook page for close to nine hours before the paper removed them.

According to Butzlaff’s personal Facebook page, she is married to Robert A. Butzlaff. A search of a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel database found a Robert A. Butzlaff who works for the state of Wisconsin as a corrections officer and made over $63,000–including overtime pay–in 2010.

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On Monday, the MacIver News Service reported that a death threat had been made against Governor Scott Walker on a recall Walker Facebook page. The page was advertising the upcoming Walker recall kickoff rally hosted by We Are Wisconsin, one of the leading leftwing conduit groups that channeled millions of dollars in out-of-state money into the summer recall elections. Regan Cowan, a Dane County resident, was the one who made the threat. Shortly after the threat was brought to light, the comment was deleted from Facebook.

Regan Cowan (Left)

Cowan, who suggested that Walker be killed instead of recalled, said that she was willing to make use of the state’s new concealed carry law to carry out her idea. Her personal Facebook page was unavailable Tuesday morning and an initial search of Facebook did not reveal any other comments made by Cowan. Media Trackers did, however, review Ms. Cowan’s court records and found that she has a long history of civil and criminal issues.

In her record, which spans 25 different incidents, Cowan has pled guilty to two felony charges. The first one came in 2003 when she failed to report to jail, a Class H felony. The second one came in 2007 when she was found guilty of committing forgery, also a Class H felony.

Along with her felony in 2003, Cowan was found guilty five different times in incidents ranging from twice being found in possession of drug paraphernalia to damaging property, and then disorderly conduct and operating a vehicle on a revoked license. Perhaps one of the more disturbing cases came in 2004 when Cowan was involved in a hit and run incident that took place while she was driving with her license revoked.

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