It’s not quite an online database, but it’s a start.  After reneging on their promise to post pdfs of the Scott Walker recall petitions online, the misnamed Wisconsin Government Accountability Board has relented.

The signatures are now online, here.

Earlier Tuesday, before their latest change of course, I sent the GAB this letter.

January 31, 2012
Kevin Kennedy
State of Wisconsin Government Accountability
Board 212 East Washington Avenue, Third Floor
VIA EMAIL AND HAND DELIVERED Madison,
Wisconsin 53707-7984

Dear Executive Director Kennedy:

This letter is to request the following records, under the state’s Open Records Law (19.31-39, Wisconsin Statutes):

Copy of the electronic record of the scanned petitions which seek the recall of Governor Scott Walker. This electronic record has been, under information and belief, created and is in your possession. Creation of a duplicate copy of said electronic record should, therefore, be able to be produced immediately and at a minimal cost, if any.

Please be aware that the Open Records law defines “record” to include information that is maintained on paper as well as electronically, such as data files and unprinted emails. Wis. Stat. § 19.32(2).

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A confident, perhaps a bit defiant, Governor Scott Walker on Wednesday delivered his annual State of the State address as a threat of a recall looms.

[Madison, Wisc…] Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker delivered his annual State of the State address Wednesday night before a polarized state legislature and with a potential recall looming.

“When I addressed you in the chamber last January, Wisconsin had suffered through three years of 150,000 of our fellow citizens losing their jobs,” Walker said. “The unemployment rate was 7.5%. And after years of tax increases and budget tricks, Wisconsin faced one of the largest budget deficits in the country.”

Walker boasted about the progress made in the last year.

“Tonight I’m happy to report that after three years of losing 150,000 jobs Wisconsin actually added thousands of new jobs in 2011,” said Walker. “New business formations are up by over two percent and our unemployment rate is down from a year ago. In fact, Wisconsin’s unemployment rate is much better than our neighbors to the south in Illinois.”

The governor outlined three priorities for his Administration:

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More from the Mickey Mouse Club known as the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board.

[Madison, Wisc...] The same employee who admitted the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board would deem all recall signatures valid, even if they were signed Mickey Mouse or Adolf Hitler, has engaged in online activity that could lead some to question his impartiality.

David Buerger, an elections specialist with the GAB used his Twitter account to praise a blog postingwherein Republican State Senator Mary Lazich was called “Crazy Mary.”

“OMG! Headline winner…” Buerger tweeted last month, and then included a link to the blog post.

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Far be it from me to call the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board a Mickey Mouse operation.

Big Labor Gets Big Boost by Goofy Wisconsin GAB Decision

Madison, Wisc…] The Government Accountability Board needs over $600,000 to verify the anticipated 1.5 million recall petition signatures against the Governor and several State Senators.

However, the process it will be using, which was unanimously approved by the Board, will assume every signature is from a valid Wisconsin elector… even if their name is Mickey Mouse or Adolf Hitler.

Testifying at a meeting of Wisconsin’s Government Accountability Board, GAB staff made several stunning admissions Tuesday. GAB representative stated, on the record, that all signatures that include a proper date and Wisconsin address are presumed valid, even those of Mickey Mouse and Adolf Hitler.

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This should not shock anyone who has been following the ongoing effort to recall Governor Scott Walker.

As I mentioned earlier, the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board will not be on the look out for duplicate or fraudulent signatures.

I’ll also note, the man in this interview didn’t say he signed HIS signature or the SAME signature 80 times. Just that he signed the forms that many times.

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Tea Party leaders in Wisconsin are happy with what they are calling an overwhelming response to their efforts to verify the signatures on the Governor Scott Walker Recall petitions.

In one day, more than 1,000 volunteers from across Wisconsin and the nation have already signed up to help two Tea Party groups verify the petitions in the upcoming gubernatorial recall.

“The response [Monday] has been overwhelming,” said Ross Brown of the Tea Party group, We the People of the Republic, one of two nonprofit organizations sponsoring the project. “Verify The Recall has become a national story less than 24 hours after it was announced.’

Brown’s comments came in an email update to supporters. His group is partnering with The Wisconsin Grandsons of Liberty to sponsor the online VerifyTheRecall.com project. It is at that website where volunteers can sign up to enter the data from the handwritten petitions.

The groups announced that more than 1,200 individuals signed up on the website in the first 24 hours since the site was launched.

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Welcome to Wisconsin. Home of recallmania.

As the unions strike back against the governor who forced them to ask permission to collect dues from public employees, controversy over the ongoing recall process is emerging. One liberal organization is saying people have a right to sign more than one recall petition. The state regulators admit it’s true, they have that right and although only one signature per eligible voter is supposed to be counted as vaild, their temporary workers won’t be accountable for finding duplicates.

Huh?

This MacIver News’ report provides the details.

The state board overseeing the potential recall election of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker tells the MacIver News Service that they will rely upon temporary workers to scrutinize recall petitions and those individuals will not be expected to catch any duplicate signatures submitted by recall organizers.

This revelation comes as one statewide liberal group is actively promoting the collection of duplicate signatures, paving the way for a lengthy process wherein Walker supporters will challenge the validity of the recall petitions.

One Wisconsin Now, a liberal non-profit, posted on its website “you can circulate or sign a recall petition even if you have already signed another recall petition.”

This advice, however, will complicate the signature challenge process and runs counter to the advice of nonpartisan state election regulators.

“While it is not illegal to sign more than once, we do not suggest people sign a second time unless they have good reason to believe the first petition they signed was somehow fraudulent,” Reid Magney, GAB Spokesman.

One Wisconsin Now follows their advice with this disclaimer: “[N]ote, however, that only one signature per person will be counted,”

That is not necessarily true.

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A Wisconsin Democratic Party spokesman accused Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus of “tampering” with the vote in last night’s recall election.

“We believe the election in this contest has been tampered with by Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus.

“She’s sitting on votes. We believe that right now, there are severe irregularities in Waukesha County once again. We believe the very fate of the Wisconsin Senate hangs in the balance and is in the hands of a woman who has already shown extreme incompetence.”

“We believe there’s dirty tricks afoot.”

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If you live in California’s 36th Congressional district or in one of the 6 state senate districts targeted by Big Labor in Wisconsin, please vote today. If you don’t live in one of these districts, but know someone who does, call them and urge them to vote today. These are important skirmishes in the battle for liberty.

In California, voters will determine the successor to retiring Representative Jane Harman. The deeply indigo district ought to be a calk-walk for Democrats, but they went with their inner crazy and nominated LA councilwoman Janice Hahn. She championed the ‘novel’ program of giving taxpayer money to gang members to…well, I’m not really sure what they were supposed to do. Not do gang stuff, I guess. What used to be called “protection money” is “gang outreach” in Democrats’ bizarro world. Of course, these gang members continued to do what gang members do. Hahn shouldn’t be in the same hemisphere as the U.S. Treasury. Please support her opponent, Craig Huey.

In Wisconsin, Big Labor has targeted 6 GOP senators for recall. (Sure, there was an election just a few months ago, but Big Labor doesn’t like those results so they want a do-over.) Today is the primary for those recalls.

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[Madison, Wisc...]  At a hearing Monday morning, the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board certified the recall petitions for Senators Olsen, Kapanke, and Hopper.

Some insiders consider these three Senators to be the most vulnerable in a recall election.

At the hearing legal counsel for the three Republican Senators stated the petitions were not valid. The lawyers argued that the individual who signed the statement of intent to recall should also be the person who filed the official recall committee registration paperwork. GAB rejected that argument.

The counsel also attempted to challenge a number of signatures on the petitions.  They argued some of the signatures were duplicates, did not include an address, or were added after the deadline on May 2^nd. However, even had GAB tossed all those signatures, there would still have been enough to certify the petitions.

Now that the petitions have been certified, GAB will file the petitions between May31st and June 3^rd. GAB will also hold a hearing on six more recall petitions on May 31^st.  Those involve Republic Senators Cowles, Darling, and Harsdorf, and Democrat Senators Holperin, Hansen and Wirch.

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In yet another union-styled outrage, Democrats backed by union thugs in Wisconsin are using the personal information of voters found on recall petitions to harass them because they signed a petition to recall Green Bay Democrat State Senator Dave Hansen.

Over the last few weeks thousands of Wisconsin voters signed a recall petition in Green Bay to recall Hansen and when voters sign such petitions they must give their address and phone numbers so that authorities can verify the voter’s signature in order to approve the petition. Now it seems that the Wisconsin Democrat Party has gotten hold of these petitions and have begun a telephone harassment campaign against the individual voters that signed the petitions.

The Wisconsin GOP has discovered this disgusting campaign and have found that the Democrats are using a fake phone number and a fake caller ID in order to get voters to answer the phone only to be harangued about having signed the recall petition.

The Democratic Party has targeted for harassment people who signed recall petitions against Senator Hansen, making calls on beginning on Monday April 25th using a fake phone number and caller ID that showed up on phones as “Bay Care Aurora,” a well-known Green Bay area medical center. Once recall supporters answered the phone, they were told they were speaking with a Democrat Party of Wisconsin operative, and were questioned about signing a petition to recall Hansen.

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The Wisconsin Government Accountability Board released today the filing reports for the recall committees of eight Republican state senators. A look at the numbers does not reflect a grassroots effort to raise money but large donations from the Democratic Party of Wisconsin and the Wisconsin Progress PAC.

Included among the expenditures is money allocated for paid staff. These totals amount to more than 12 times the money raised by efforts to recall Democratic senators.

Committee to Recall Kapanke
-Democratic Party of Wisconsin-$8,589
-Wisconsin Progress PAC-$6,586.12
TOTAL-$15,175.13

Committee to Recall Darling
-Democratic Party of Wisconsin-$7,404.73
-Wisconsin Progress PAC-$8,775.12
-Friends of the Committee to Recall Alberta Darling- $634.57
TOTAL-$16,814.42

Committee to Recall Hopper
-Democratic Party of Wisconsin-$31,667.63
-Wisconsin Progress PAC-$8,053.12
TOTAL-$39,667.63

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