Elections board wants to do review itself

MADISON, Wis. (AP) - The head of Wisconsin's elections board does not want to accept analysis of recall petitions done by anyone other than the targeted office holders, including Gov. Scott Walker, and those who organized the recall drives.

The Government Accountability Board was to discuss the issue at its meeting Tuesday.

Monday's memo by Government Accountability Board director Kevin Kennedy comes after the attorney for two tea party groups submitted a request Thursday asking the board to accept its analysis of the estimated 1 million petition signatures targeting Walker.

About 900,000 additional signatures have been turned in seeking the recall of Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch and four Republican state senators. The recall drives were instigated largely in reaction to Walker's proposal, passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature, that effectively ended most collective bargaining rights for nearly all public workers.

Kennedy said in the memo that there is no process in place for accepting information from anyone other than the petition circulators and office holders.

"Given the unprecedented nature of these recall efforts, it would be improper to change procedures in the midst of our review," Kennedy said.

Two tea party groups, Wisconsin GrandSons of Liberty and We the People of the Republic, have enlisted volunteers to enter data into a software program to then analyze the validity of the signatures, searching for such disqualifiers as undated signatures, dates outside the circulation period and names of fictional or dead people.

The board should not ignore any information to ensure the integrity of the recall process, said Jim Troupis, the attorney working for the tea party groups said in the letter sent to the GAB. Troupis was in court Monday and did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Republican Party is working in conjunction with the Walker campaign to do its own separate review of the petitions, which also involves constructing a database. Party spokesman Ben Sparks said they were focused on that work and didn't have an immediate reaction to the GAB memo.

Last month, the GAB was ordered by a judge to do a more extensive review of the signatures in order to remove duplicate names and obviously fake names. But an appeals court last week said Democrats should have been allowed to intervene in that lawsuit and vacated the order, sending it back to the lower court judge for directions on how to proceed. The GAB is expected to discuss the ruling during the closed-session part of Tuesday's meeting.

In Monday's memo, Kennedy said the board's review would still be more limited than what tea party groups proposed. For example, the board does not have a way to search for dead people and it does not plan on comparing the names on the petitions with other databases.

Kennedy said that the board continues to test and evaluate optical character recognition software that will convert images of the signatures into a database where they can be sorted and analyzed. The board has also looked at other data entry and data sampling options with the hopes of finalizing its approach by Friday, Kennedy said. The goal is to find a cost-effective process that doesn't significantly extend the review time, he said.

"Unlike the officeholders or the Wisconsin GrandSons of Liberty, we cannot rely on a large army of volunteers to enter a huge amount of data to analyze," Kennedy said. "We have to pay staff to complete the data entry and our resources are very limited."

The deadline for targeted office holders to submit challenges varies. All four senators - Van Wanggaard of Racine, Terry Moulton of Chippewa Falls, Scott Fitzgerald of Juneau and Pam Galloway of Wausau - have until Thursday. Walker's challenges are due Feb. 27 and Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch has until March 5.

The GAB has until March 19 to verify all of the recall petitions but could seek an extension from a judge. The board has already been granted a 30-day extension for the work of verifying the estimated 1.9 million signatures.