Wis. Judge Rules For GOP On Walker Recall Procedures. There is now talk of hiring software vendor!

[cyberpj]

A judge in Wisconsin threw a curveball Thursday evening into the recall campaign targeting Republican Gov. Scott Walker, ruling that state election officials must make a greater effort to screen out fake or duplicate petition signatures — rather than abide by the pre-existing rules, which have placed more of the burden on the Walker campaign.

The state GOP’s lawsuit filed in mid-December against the state Government Accountability Board, which oversees elections in the state, claims that Walker’s 14th Amendment rights of Equal Protection are violated by putting a burden on his campaign to review and challenge petition signatures within a ten-day period. Instead, they say, the GAB must thoroughly search for and directly strike out duplicate signatures, and invalid names and addresses.

snip-
Kennedy testified that his staff has looked into the option of creating a database and entering names by hand, a process that could take eight weeks. Hiring a vendor whose software could read information from scanned petitions could speed the effort but cost about $94,000, he said.

After the hearing, Kennedy said the agency would review the decision and figure out the best way to comply. He also said he plans to ask the Legislature for additional money, enough to cover about $650,000 in initial cost estimates plus anything further as a result of Thursday’s ruling.

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/01/wis-judge-rules-for-gop-on-recall-procedures.php

Also, January 5, 2012 AP article here:
http://host.madison.com/news/state_and_regional/wis-judge-remove-fake-names-from-recall-petition/article_dc3b3198-0c24-5c01-bbb8-840c79a87fa9.html

[gratuitous]

1. Walker didn't like the game, so he changed the rules

Damned accommodating of the judge to shit-can the rules as written because Gov. Walker threw a tantrum.

[cyberpj]

2. And now, can't there/won't there be an appeal which just delays things longer?

And we all know well what happens with politicians call in software vendors to do their counting!

[cyberpj]

3. 1.Judge's recent ruling may help Walker - but 2. Challengers say they have more than needed

1. Judge rules for Walker campaign on recall petition signature questions - January 6, 2012

snip-
A judge ruled Thursday that the state Government Accountability Board needs to take more aggressive action to vet recall signatures that are expected to be submitted in two weeks against Gov. Scott Walker and other Republican office holders.

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.

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/01/judge_rules_for_walker_campaign_on_recall_petition_signature_questions.html#ixzz1jNqVodgphttp://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/01/judge_rules_for_walker_campaign_on_recall_petition_signature_questions.html

2. Both Sides Of Walker Recall Effort Plan Major Event - UPDATED: 6:36 pm CST January 11, 2012

snip-
MILWAUKEE -- The state Democratic party says it won't deny that it has gathered enough signatures to recall Gov. Scott Walker, and sources tell 12 News that recall organizers have collected more than the required number of signatures to trigger a recall election.

snip-
"We're going to have turn in next Tuesday at 3 p.m. it looks like, at the Government Accountability Board in Madison, followed by a party at Monona Terrace at 5 p.m.," Democratic Party of Wisconsin spokesman Graeme Zielinkski said.

snip-
"Can you say at this point that you've surpassed the minimum number required to force a recall?" Wainscott asked.

"We're confident that we will get 720,000 signatures, which is a number beyond any challenge," Zielinski said.

Read more: http://www.wisn.com/politics/30190265/detail.html#ixzz1jNs65BMc

[Mojeoux]

4. ON WISCONSON !!!!

The re-callers are the heroes of our country right now and I bet they would respond to volunteering their data base entry time.

This is good news you post. The re-call will not be stopped.

[Bjorn Against]

5. Sending the signatures to be scanned actually makes some sense

I honestly would not be too concerned about fraud in the scanning process, the Democrats will have record of everything turned in and any attempt by the vendor to tamper with the signatures would be easily caught. I have worked with scan programs a great deal and I probably know more about them then 99% of the population because of my experience. They are very accurate on printed fields, handwritten fields however can be a challenge and there are presumably a lot of those being it is a petition. There are creative ways to make the scan process more accurate and efficient, but even with a scan program going through 1.5 million signatures is going to be a huge task. A single person could probably scan that many in just a few days, but the verification process will be very time consuming.

While a scan program makes sense it should be Walker that is responsible for verifying the ballots, not the state. I can only imagine the trouble he is going to make about each signature that makes it through that he doesn't think should have, if he was responsible he couldn't complain.

[cyberpj]

6. I'll take your word for it. It's still a stall tactic that keeps him in office. And once scanned,

it's an easily manipulatable 'spreadsheet' that's a little troubling.

And then what?
Delay some more while each entry is verified by personal call?

I'm wondering what the WI legal procedure has always been for a recall and then wondering why Walker felt the need to go to court instead of following the legal process in place?

[Bjorn Against]

7. A scan program wouldn't delay things, it would speed things up

I agree with you that Walker is trying to delay things, but it is the GAB who wants to scan the petitions not Walker. Scanning the petitions will be far more efficient than entering them entirely by hand, even with the scan program huge amounts of data will have to be hand entered, but it can at least speed the process up.

The spreadsheet is not that big of a concern, no matter the method of verification they would likely use a spreadsheet. While it may seem spreadsheets are easy to manipulate you have to remember that the Democratic Party has spreadsheets of their own along with photocopies of all the petitions. Any attempt to fraudulently manipulate it would be easily detected, they can not remove signatures they can only flag them and they have to give a valid reason as to why they should not be counted.

[cyberpj]

8. Maybe the best idea of all would be for residents to have their licenses scanned instead of

signing petitions.

That way, they're verified right then and there.

No license? Then sign. But it would surely reduce the time, cost and number of signatures to verify.

And there are small and portable scanners around these days that could be used.

[Bjorn Against]

9. Interesting idea, although too late for that now.

The cost would likely also be prohibitively expensive, you would have to purchase a scanner for every person gathering signatures. It would require hundreds or even thousands of scanners and I am sure the cost of that would be enormous.

Now if there were a way to get some sort of ID number for each person who signs the petition that could be linked to both the Democratic Party database and the petitions themselves it would allow quick verification that the two matched and it could speed up the process a great deal and save a lot of money. It is almost certainly too late for that as well however, if that process had been implemented before the gathering of signatures began it would work and be very efficient but because no ID numbers were assigned to the petitions before circulation far more data entry will be needed.

[BadgerKid]

10. Good idea, but it wouldn't surprise me if

there is some state law to the effect that licenses may be scanned only by (state-approved) authorized personnel. Then again, if I can be carded at the grocery store by some 18-year-old who runs my license through a scanner, I doubt it.

[dragonlady]

11. All the petitions will be put on the GAB website

As they did for the summer recalls, they will scan all the petitions and make them into pdf files that are posted on the Internet. I would not want my license available to anybody from here to Uzbeckistan, but maybe some variation of this would work. On the other hand, let's hope we don't have to go through another recall like this any time soon.