Gov. Scott Walker announced Monday he will not challenge any of the more than 1 million recall signatures filed against him, leaving it up to election officials to verify the signatures.
The Walker campaign had days to review and challenge signatures, after gaining 20 additional days from a Dane County judge. The same judge recently denied a request for an additional two-week extension.
State officials now have until March 19 to verify 540,200 of the signatures and officially sanction an election.
Walker campaign communications director Ciara Matthews said despite the help of more than 20,000 people to inspect the petitions, “the time to challenge hundreds of thousands of signatures was simply unavailable.”
While the conservative group Verify the Recall has also been analyzing the petitions, the Government Accountability Board, which is overseeing the recall effort, said it would not take into consideration any third party analysis of the petitions.
All of the petitions filed against Walker, as well as those filed against the lieutenant governor and the four state senators targeted, are public record and can be found on the GAB website.
Matthews said the Walker campaign still expects the GAB to address problems with fake names or addresses on the petitions.
GAB spokesperson Reid Magney said election officials will continue to sort out invalid petitions, but Monday’s decision will simplify the process. He is hopeful they can beat the March 19 deadline.
“We won’t have to go through the process of looking at all of those challenges and comparing them to the work that we’ve already done to see if we’ve identified similar lines on the petitions, in addition to looking at all of the lines that they identified that we have not,” Magney said.
Democratic Party of Wisconsin Chair Mike Tate criticized Walker supporters’ “hysterical claims” of invalid petitions throughout the month-long review period.
“Walker’s campaign had millions of dollars, months of preparation and triple the time statutorily required–and even with all these advantages, he failed,” Tate said.
Next week is Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch’s deadline to file any challenges to her recall signatures.
