Wisconsin: Judge grants GAB request for longer recall verification period
http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/govt-and-politics/elections/judge-grants-gab-request-for-longer-recall-verification-period/article_9be38a32-4311-11e1-aa6c-0019bb2963f4.html
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A Dane County judge on Wednesday granted the state Government Accountability Board an additional 30 days to finish its work validating recall petitions against the governor, lieutenant governor and four state senators. Dane County Circuit Judge Richard Niess also granted lawyers for Gov. Scott Walker and Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch 30 days to challenge signatures on the petitions against them. The four Republican senators will have 20 days to review and challenge the signatures.
State law allows 10 days to challenge signatures after the recall subject has received copies of the petitions from the GAB, unless good cause is shown to extend that deadline. Niess' order gives the GAB a total of 61 days until March 19 to certify the recall petitions.
Jeremy Levinson, lawyer for the recall committees, argued that the GAB should abandon an untested validation step using optical character recognition to look for duplicate signatures. He said the board should instead consider using a statistical analysis to determine whether to certify the petitions, using a sampling of the petitions.
Niess said he cannot tell the GAB how to do its business and can only consider whether it has shown good cause in asking for more time to complete its task. That task became more complicated with a Jan. 5 order by Waukesha County Circuit Judge Mac Davis that the board use "reasonable" measures to make an effort to find and strike duplicate and fictitious names from the petitions. Magney said GAB has contacted statisticians at UW-Madison but said he did not know how far discussions with them had gotten.
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Get on with the election; we need to kick Scott Walker's ass to the street.