Thousands of citizens gear up for Walker recall petition drive

[undeterred]

JESSICA VANEGEREN | The Capital Times | Sunday, November 6, 2011 6:15 am

Doofus and Waukesha Barbie


Friday, they were beat to the punch. Yet officials with the state Democratic Party and United Wisconsin, a grass-roots organization created to recall Republican Gov. Scott Walker, say despite the fact that David Brandt, a Muskego resident and modest campaign contributor to Walker, filed paperwork Friday to launch Walker's recall, they are sticking to their plan to start what they say is "the real" recall effort Nov. 15. On that day several members of United Wisconsin will file paperwork with the state Government Accountability Board, says Meagan Mahaffey, spokeswoman for the group. They hope to recall Walker and Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch.

"We encourage real supporters of this movement to recall Walker to remain focused on Nov. 15, when the recall will begin," Mahaffey said Friday. When that happens, hundreds of residents who have participated in training sessions sponsored by the Democratic Party of Wisconsin will be ready to hit the streets, clipboard and stacks of petitions in hand, to begin the never-before-performed task of collecting enough signatures to trigger a recall election against a state governor.

Roughly 540,000 signatures must be collected for Walker, another 540,000 to recall Kleefisch. The last day a petition can be signed is Jan. 14. Those petitions then need to be turned in to the state Government Accountability Board by Jan. 17, giving anti-Walker forces a tight 60-day timeframe to collect more than 1 million signatures. "Recall trainings are ongoing around the state and the response has been incredible," Mahaffey says. "Thousands of volunteers have been trained on how to collect petitions, including many people who haven't been involved with politics before. Walker's attacks have driven thousands of people to become engaged in this movement to recall him." Those "attacks" began in February when Walker first announced plans to strip most collective bargaining rights from public employee unions. The news prompted weeks of protests at the Capitol that at times drew crowds up to 100,000 people. Other actions by the conservative Republican governor in subsequent months have kept the anger alive among a portion of the state's electorate willing to wait until Walker had been in office long enough to qualify for a recall effort under state law.

<snip>

According to Madison resident Donna Magdalina, the required one-year wait from the date of Walker's election before a recall could be mounted hasn't dampened determination in her east-side neighborhood. Several weeks ago, she and a few neighbors met to discuss strategies to collect signatures in the Schenk, Atwood, Starkweather and Yahara neighborhoods. She says she sketched the outline of the neighborhoods on a whiteboard, determined how many blocks were within each, and then set out to find a block captain for each block who would be in charge of collecting signatures. She is in charge of a 22-block area and has found block captains for 17 of them, she says. "We are so organized it is amazing," says Magdalina, a self-employed graphic artist who attended a Democratic Party-sponsored training session. "We plan to have our whole neighborhood done by Thanksgiving. Then I'm heading out to collect signatures in other parts of the state."


http://host.madison.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/capitol-report/article_53504f64-080e-11e1-a37e-001cc4c002e0.html

[Firebrand Gary]

1. Walker has made a political mess of Wisconsin.

With his slandering, his dirty tactics, his corporate sell out, running false democratic candidates and now preempting the democratic party of Wisconsin, Governor Walker has set Wisconsin back and turned it into a hostile environment.

He needs to go down!

[lonestarnot]

2. mike check that bitch at his every move!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x631956

[gateley]

3. K&R! nt

[hue]

4. there'll be plenty of dirty tricks from Repubs to prevent this,

I'm afraid the first recall effort from Brandt may be one of them. What if he has people signing & then disposes of/throws those sigs away knowing those people cannot sign again?? or something like that???

I literally hate Walker & cannot bear to see this effort fail!

[Bjorn Against]

8. I am worried about the fake petition as well...

I do want to correct one point in your post however, if people are fooled into signing the fake petition that does not mean they can not sign the real petition as well. People can sign both petitions, the problem is that some people may sign the fake petition thinking that it is the real petition and then their signature won't be counted because it will be on the wrong form. We need to make sure that people are aware of the two petitions and if they are unsure as to whether or not they signed the fake petition or the real one they should sign again and make sure the signature is on the real one. This will mean that there will be a number of duplicates that need to be weeded out before the petitions are turned in, but that is routine for petition drives anyways and with computers it is a pretty easy process. It is much better to have two signatures from a person and have to throw one of them out than it is to have no signature.

[undeterred]

10. Muskego is in the middle of nowhere

and I can't imagine these jokers putting much effort into collecting signatures. The real point of them doing this was for the fundraising.

[Bjorn Against]

12. Who says it is only a single guy in Muskego behind this?

I would not put anything past the Republicans, they will do anything to stay in power no matter how unethical. I hope you are right, but we need to be on our guard because there is a huge potential for dirty tricks here and I would not be one bit surprised to see the Republicans take advantage of it.

[lunatica]

5. Wisconisn will show us again that they're the Flagship state

[undeterred]

6. There are going to be rallies around the state on Saturday Nov 19

Watch us get a HUGE number of signatures on petitions in one day!

:kick: :kick: :kick: :kick: :kick: :kick: :kick: :kick: :kick: :kick:

[lunatica]

9. I wish I could sign too!

I'm definitely rooting for you guys. You're awesome!

[undeterred]

11. Our Democratic elected officials are pretty awesome

in this state and this year the volunteers have been awesome too. And so have our party chair and our field organizers.

[louslobbs]

7. Solidarity Wisconsin, kick this fascist lunatic to the curb so he can go work for the Koch Klan,

oh, sorry, he already does. Strike that, just kick his crazy, radical ass back into the gutter he came from.
Lou