Via David Dayen, news that the Democratic Party of Wisconsin is pushing to disqualify three recall petitions against Democratic state Senators. They say while their recall efforts have been volunteer-led and above-board, the Republican campaigns featured fraud perpetrated by out-of-state sources.
I kind of figured there was some funny business last month when Republicans announced one of their recall offices had been burglarized and the entire story stunk to high heaven. If there's anything I know, it's that Republicans will do anything to win:
A formal challenge to be filed later today against Republican recall petitions asks the Government Accountability Board to disqualify thousands of invalid signatures, and reject recall elections against three Democratic state senators, because widespread and systemic election fraud has tainted the entire GOP operation.
“The overwhelming evidence clearly shows a pervasive pattern of election fraud committed by the shady out-of-state organization hired by Republicans to collect recall petitions,” said Senate Democratic Leader Mark Miller. “Thousands of Wisconsin citizens fell victim to lies and misinformation spread by the circulators, and the papers submitted by this operation contain a river of omissions and wrong information.”
Miller continued: “We believe that when the facts are reviewed, the GAB will throw out thousands of flawed signatures because they were fraudulent or defective. The vast depth of this misconduct calls into question the legitimacy of every signature collected by these circulators, and shows that the GOP effort failed to gather the valid signatures needed for recall elections.”
Miller and the lead counsel for the DPW plan to reveal more at a news conference later this afternoon. But essentially, here’s their argument. An out-of-state firm named Kennedy Enterprises (editor's note: This is the kind of stuff Kennedy Enterprises does) got $100,000 from the Republican Party of Wisconsin to manage the recall petitions. The DPW has sampled the three Senate districts where Republicans were successful in getting the required signatures, and found that between 6.6% and 9.2% of the signers were “misled into signing the petition or asserted they had never signed.”
[...] The signature gatherers repeatedly lied about the petition, saying it was for work on a local park, or to recall a Republican Senator instead of a Democrat, or even to recall Governor Scott Walker. There are forged signatures of dead people in the petitions, names with fake addresses, and out-of-state signature gatherers with high incidences of fraud.
