As further reported, the Wirch campaign has engaged in misleading "push-calling" to petition signers in an attempt to create the false appearance of fraudulent signature gathering.
The Wirch campaign has submitted its challenge to the petitions, but could specify challenges only to 4043 signatures. Thus, even if every single challenged signature were thrown out, there still would be enough signatures for a recall election.
So the Wirch campaign wants all petitions circulated by paid circulators thrown out if a single signature were invalid in the petition, even if all the other signatures were valid.
The Wirch campaign does this by claiming that the use of paid, out-of-state circulators, though perfectly legal, has tainted the process and does not reflect the will of the voters in Wirch's district. Here is how the Wirch campaign frames the issue in the introductory paragraph of its challenge (emphasis mine):
Methodical, far reaching inquiry confirms that the recall petitions offered for filing against Senator Wirch do not reflect the actual intent of electors sufficient to authorize a recall election. The evidence establishes a pattern of pervasive and systemic fraud in the signature gather process. Both the signatures tainted by fraud and all petitions purportedly attributed to circulators who used fraudulent tactics should be excluded. They do not reflect electors' desire for a recall election; they reflect only the product of a for-profit signature drive largely concerned with filling pages as quickly as possible without regard for Wisconsin's laws or residents. In addition to pervasive fraud, this process generated a large universe of otherwise invalid signatures attributable, if not to fraud, to indifference and recklessness.The Recall Wirch group has submitted an extensive rebuttal of the accusations, and also extensive documentation that most of the challenged signatures were in fact valid.
Putting aside the specific challenges to specific signatures, the tactic of the Wirch campaign is quite astounding. The Wirch campaign wants valid signatures thrown out.
This tactic is similar to the attempts by Democrats in the Prosser-Kloppenburg recount to throw out thousands of valid votes because of supposedly improperly sealed ballot bags, even though the recount totals match almost precisely the election night and canvass totals. But of course, Kloppenburg only worries about such ballot bag security in places which votes heavily for Prosser.
In both the Wirch recall effort and the Kloppenburg recount effort, Democrats seek to have election officials (and ultimately the courts I suspect) throw out votes and signatures as to which there is absolutely no evidence of fraud, based upon speculation, conjecture, and conspiracy theories.
So the next time you hear a Wisconsin Democrat demand that every vote be counted and every vote count, don't believe it, because they don't.
Update: As an interesting contrast, Republican Senators Darling and Kapanke have challenged the recall efforts against them based upon the failure of the recall groups to follow Government Accountability Board requirements of registering for the recall. If a group did not register, it is not a legally recognized recall effort, which is quite different than saying a lawful recall effort should fail even if it has gathered enough valid signatures.
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Here in New York, it was at one time the case that if a statement of witness or notarial statement was invalid for one reason or another, every signature on the page so witnessed was invalid according to the election law. Ditto if standard text on the petition sheet was in error or if the candidates names and addresses were not properly rendered. When Ross Perot's organization was circulating petitions in 1992, some of the circulators were making use of petition sheets that had just one signature per page, rather than the five, ten, or twenty you ordinarily see. I believe that was the reason (though it must have increased the associated clerical labor immensely).
ReplyDeleteI would like to be lumped with those who think that the use of commercial signature gatherers is bad policy, but if that's the law, that's the law.
If my own experience of electoral politics at this level is representative (all of it being in New York), these sorts of pleadings and maneuverings are just business. Nothing terribly shocking about it.
"The Wirch campaign does this by claiming that the use of paid, out-of-state circulators, though perfectly legal, has tainted the process and does not reflect the will of the voters in Wirch's district."
ReplyDeleteSo let's use this logic to argue that the 2008 presidential election should be negated on constitutional grounds because the computers and most other equipment used to tabulate the results were imported from China or other communist country and so, are tainted.
Like I said here before the Blogger meltdown:
ReplyDelete"Klop": to infect & distort the election process. Carriers of this disease typically confined to the Democrat population."
Here's something else to ponder - in addition to the costs we are incurring here in Wisconsin for the Klop recount (my county's estimated expense was about $50,000/+40,000 votes.); numbers are starting to roll in for the costs of extra Capital security related to the protests. Various law enforcement agencies state-wide sent staff to supplement Madison officers, and are now submitting for reimbursement:
$7.8 million for Capitol security
"It's not the tape from Capitol protest signs that will stick to taxpayers - it's the paychecks to police.
Just one month of added security during the massive statehouse demonstrations cost state taxpayers at least $7.8 million to cover the use of police officers from agencies around Wisconsin, Gov. Scott Walker's administration announced Friday.
That figure will only rise higher because it doesn't include added police overtime and other costs for the heightened security that has remained in place for an additional two months since March 14. The state has not yet released an estimate of those costs."
Clearly projection. This statement is revealing on so many levels. In essence, they have told Republicans how they themselves operate, what they do themselves to negate legal, valid signatures and votes, and thwart the rule of law - or skirt on its edges.
ReplyDeleteRepublicans never seem to see this, to prepare and then counter the actions, or attack leftist liberals' incorrect assumptions and false conclusions.
They just don't see the evil among these "progressives" - probably due to some misguided idea that they need to have bipartisan cooperation, to reach across the aisle, to work together, to find common ground, to reach mutual consensus, blah blah blah.
Projection is a mirror into the soul of the speaker. Thus, these operatives reveal the deceitful, manipulative, dark soul of the leftist Democrats in Wisconsin.
Can't you just hear the duplicitous Wirchers intoning, "I don't recall" upon cross?
ReplyDeleteFirst they came for Althouse,
ReplyDeleteand I didn't speak out because I wasn't Althouse.
Then they came for Jacobson,
and I did speak out..
Google just erased my brilliant comment, possibly because it contained the word RED(s), in place of the word democrat/democratic/democracy.
So, we shall see what, how, when, where on this comment. The why, is anyone's guess, but I could take a stab at it and quite possibly have A second comment obliterated.
Second comment excuse:
Your OpenID credentials could not be verified.
Which is false, I've used that same OpenID, prior to..
Lemme' try another..
If I weren't such a trusting soul, I might get the impression that Democrats' positions on election rules are determined by whose ox is about to get gored. But that can't be the case; if it was, the people on the news would say so.
ReplyDeleteIt seems that my former party is all about dismissing the votes of those they can't agree with.
ReplyDeleteSeriously, this is nothing compared to what happened in the 2008 primaries.
Com si, com sa.
"So the Wirch campaign wants all petitions circulated by paid circulators thrown out...."
ReplyDeleteThis is exactly.what.ACORN.did. AND how they operate! Community organizing groups, with PAID employees under "ACORN" or "Organizing for America" go out and collect as many signatures or voter registrations as they can. How many of them are paid vs volunteers? Just look at how many people they have to pay and bus in to power the astroturf protests....So, then all the organizing groups do is exclude all those who aren't Democrat, and turn in the rest. PROJECTION PROJECTION PROJECTION. http://capoliticalnews.com/blog_post/show/3250
If they keep this up, the broken rules they use to gimmick the system won't work anymore. Watch out!