Wisconsin: Verify the Recall was overly aggressive in reviewing petitions, elections officials say | JSOnline
A tea party review of recall petitions did not use the proper standards for judging signatures, an attorney for the state’s election agency reported Tuesday. “The methodology they used just would not have worked for us and would have not been valid or legal under the law and administrative code that governs recall petitions,” attorney Mike Haas told the Government Accountability Board. The agency in March found recalls were warranted against Gov. Scott Walker, Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch and four of their fellow Republicans in the state Senate. The elections are scheduled for June 5. While the agency spent months reviewing more than 1 million signatures against the six officials, tea party groups banded together for a project they called Verify the Recall. They had volunteers type information from hand-written petitions into online databases and then used software to determine how many signatures were valid.