The head of the agency that oversees elections in Wisconsin says there have been some instances of fraudulent signatures found on the petitions seeking to recall Republican Gov. Scott Walker from office.
And with at least three outside groups going through the signatures looking for problems, Government Accountability Board Director Kevin Kennedy said his staff expects to hear even more allegations about possible fraud.
While the GAB and other agencies will investigate all such complaints, it's unlikely there will be enough of them to stop the recall from moving forward, Kennedy said in a memo released Friday.
"The highly polarized political atmosphere which has engendered the current recall initiatives has also generated a constant buzz of speculation about illegal activity with respect to the recall efforts," Kennedy wrote.
"This speculation has ranged from allegations of people signing a petition with a name other than their own, including fictitious characters, with made up addresses; claims of multiple signings by the same individual and threats of destruction of petition pages by opponents of the recall effort,"he added. "Both proponents and opponents of the recalls have spewed accusations through social media, email, voice mail, talk radio and the media."
The GAB has taken such allegations seriously, he noted, and is working with the state Department of Justice and district attorneys around Wisconsin to investigate such complaints.
However, "given the the large number of signatures over the required thresholds, it is not plausible to believe these complaints would have an impact on the ultimate sufficiency of the recall petitions," Kennedy said.
The effort to recall Walker, Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch, and four Republican state senators began on Nov. 15. More than 1 million gubernatorial recall signatures were turned into the GAB, which has spent the last two months verifying them. Recall organizers needed to collect about 540,000 valid signatures to force an election.
Kennedy's memo was part of a packet of documents released Friday by the GAB in advance of the board's meeting in Madison on Monday. In the documents, Kennedy and the GAB staff said there are enough valid signatures to move forward with the of Racine.
Kennedy also is recommending that the GAB on Monday ask a Dane County judge for more time to review the Walker recall petitions and proposed that recall elections be held in May and June.
In Kenney's memo, GAB officials reported that they investigated a claim made by an unidentified Milwaukee man who said he had signed the petition 80 times. The man’s name was referred to the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office, but the GAB never found that name on the petitions.
On the other hand, of Racine was charged earlier this month with two felony counts of election fraud/nomination certification and seven felony counts of misappropriating identifying information for financial gain. If convicted on all charges, Demet faces up to 42 years in prison and fines up to $90,000. Kennedy reported that those signatures were thrown out.
A Caledonia man who is a Walker supporter also told Patch that he had and planned to burn them, but then he changed his mind. No law enforcement agency has requested the man's name.
Kennedy noted that recall organizers and the Republican Party of Wisconsin have set up websites and hotlines for people to register complaints about the recall process. Verify the Recall, a website that encouraged people to register their complaints, stated they intended to the help the GAB by offering an online searchable database of the signatures.
Kennedy said it was likely the GAB would get complaints from these sources and the agency intends to take those complaints seriously even though there may not be enough to stop the recall elections.
He said that the focus of an investigation should include whether the complaints represent “a pattern of activity or isolated events.” However, the specifics of those potential investigations will be discussed in closed session by the GAB.
In 1973 -1975, during my last two years of high school in Roanoke Virginia (Western Va) I had a very conservative advanced government teacher who was in the John Birch Society. I remember the government teacher had news articles, Nazi propaganda posters and other items on the wall to scare students into being ferarful of the creeping socialist menace. I remember one was an article about the former card carrying Socialist Mayor of Milwaukee, Frank Zeidler. Because of the era, I wondered how that could be. I figured he must have been a pretty good mayor for the population to tolerate that during that era, despite my distaste for socialism, especially at that time. Seldom thought about it until living many years in Williamsburg Va where I attended William and Mary. Recently, we had our long time Mayor, Jeanne Zeidler, retire from office. She is married to one of my old history professors who has just published a book. About 20 years ago I learned she was the daughter of Frank Zeidler and the neice of Carl Zeidler, another Milwaukee Mayor who resigned in 1942 to fight during WWII and was killed. I expressed my condolences when I read her father Frank died in 2010. That was a rough year for Jeanne Zeidler because her only son died too.
I am pleased that your spouse was able to successfully immigrate. I personally helped to resettle over 300 hundred families in the late 1980s and early 1990s. I agree that our nation is one of greatness and I would welcome a return to non-partisan governance.
Our nation is based on compromise between the rights of the individual and the rights of the communal group. It swings back and forth like a pendulum; at times swinging in favor of individual rights and swinging back to communal rights. What is currently troubling the nation is extremism. We work best when we govern from the middle. Part of that process is maintaining a balance of power between the three branches of government. A major issue in Wisconsin is that all three branches are controlled by very conservative forces and there isn't anyway to balance and reach compromise. Therefore, the opposition needs to regain control of at least one of the branches.
As far as Wisconsin's unions, the public employee unions, except for the teachers, have been relatively weak in comparison to their private sector counterparts. The unions were not breaking the state, it was all designed as a manipulation to cut off funding to the Democratic Party since unions almost exclusively support Democrats. (continued)
What many don't realize is that we are continue to borrow because we are not bringing in too little revenue. Taxes have been too low for thirty years and the government has fought two wars without funding them. We have spent too much on military and not enough on infrastructure.
The United States has been the strongest economy since the Second World War. If you remember, we were the only industrial economy left intact after the war. We easily transitions from building tanks and aircraft over to washing machines and cars. We rebuilt the rest of the world's manufacturing base, plus we had fifteen years of pent up domestic demand after the Depression and the War. We had unprecedented growth for about 15 years and the middle class grew as well to unprecedented heights. As other nation's economies came on line the world markets began to be segmented. What that has shifted wealth was the switch over to supply side economics and it is also responsible for shipping jobs overseas.
I love William Shatner and science fiction! I actually met him once at a hotel bar in Milwaukee about 12 years ago and ended up having an hour long conversation with him. We got along quite well! Your comparison of Hoffa to Shatner is very flattering indeed - thanks for the compliment!
There are quite a few entrepreneurs and they are strong capitalists. Denmark's wages are comperable to ours in Wisconsin and they have as much or more incentive as we do.
Good evening! I'm doing pretty well, although I'd much rather be where I was the previous weekend, if you catch my drift ;-) No, not very much has changed, has it. We're expecting anywhere between 100-200 people at the mall event. The event was never intended to be that large scale, but rather an opportunity to get the dedicated Walker activists together before we started going full steam into the recall campaign effort. We expect some protestors, as you've probably been able to tell via Keith Schmitz and company's reactions to our event on the Patch boards. It's nice to see you having a nice conversation with Wendell - I've been passively following along. We should really try and get together sometime in persona, as I'd love to meet you. Have a great night!
Wendell and Lyle are right that the US has unwisely spent way too much. Especially by borrowing to finance several counterproductive military adventures and increasing numbers of military bases around the world. A few Trillion dollars would have solved the solvency problems of Social Security and Medicare. Thanks, oh wise and great leaders!! Lyle is right that the US tax burden is lower than it has been in over a generation. Especially for the very wealthy whose effective tax rates have really gone down, causing the US deficit to explode, poverty to rise, income disparity to widen and our infrastructure to decline. That being said, there is validity to Wendell's criticisms of Democrat tendencies to overspend on nannystate programs, new classes of victims and occasionally, poorly planned entitlements that hinder self-reliance and/or self initiative in favor of handouts.
That being said, I suspect much of Europe would be spending more on their militaries if they weren't being protected by US dominated NATO or the US nuclear umbrella. Nevertheless, they are good models which by and large have peaceful and reasonable people and governments. Even France and Brittain with their socialized medicine have an average life span about two years longer than Americans. Considering what the US spends on healthcare per capita, we are definitely not getting what we pay for. In fact I think we are getting ripped off in what is called a free market system, except that it isn't. It's rigged. Though I am not a huge fan of "Obamacare", it may turn out to be better than the status quo which is the real train wreck bearing down upon us. What kills me is that the whole issue of the premium mandate that most Republican states are challenging in court as an unconstitutional government takeover of healthcare, isn't that at all. It was a Republican idea that emerged as a response to the Hillary-Care proposal of the early 1990's. It came from the Heritage Foundation and was based on personal responsibility, self reliance and paying your way. They loved it until Obama adopted it and now it is portrayed as a Socialist Death Panel menace that will kill Americans. Jeez!
Lyle, your Denmark example is right on. I drove up to a fisheries conference in Wash DC last week and ended up talking for two hours to a Danish guy named Paul at a New Zealand Seafood reception. Most of what you said about Danes could apply to him too. We had a lively, wideranging and substantive discussion comparing American, Danish and international politics and issues. He seemed happy to talk to an American who actually knew a little about Danish politics, culture and other European issues. He was with an international fishery group. When I asked him for critiques or observations of various American political and other issues, he had some keen answers. One that sticks with me was his characterization of how and why some American's had not absorbed certain lessons learned in The Enlightenment.