Breaking News: Wisconsin Election Officials Reverse Course, Refuse to Make Recall Petitions Public

Here’s an idea from the misnamed Wisconsin Government Accountability Board: Let’s make the attempt to recall Governor Scott Walker even nuttier.

On Monday morning the Wisconsin ‘Elections Watchdogs’ alerted media that the Walker recall petitions would be available sometime later that day. By dinnner time, they basically said, never mind.

You can’t make this stuff up.

From our coverage:

Stunner: Walker Recall Petitions NOT Available for Online Review

[Madison, Wisc…] The Wisconsin Government Accountability Board has not posted scanned copies of the Governor Walker recall petitions online despite promises to the citizens of Wisconsin that they would do so.

GAB staff delivered copies of the scans to the Governor’s campaign late last week. The campaign, with the assistance of the Republican Party of Wisconsin, began reviewing the petitions at satellite offices across the state this weekend.

Once they scanned documents, they were going to make them public, having issued an alert to all media earlier in the day. The revelation was the top of many radio broadcasts Monday.

Such a public disclosure would have allowed the volunteers at the independent VerifytheRecall.com can also begin their effort.

But early this evening the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported GAB staff was going back on their promise, citing alleged privacy concerns by some who signed the public documents.

This is the latest development in a series of back and forth decisions by the GAB that promises more legal challenges ahead.

And it could thwart a massive effort by Tea Party groups to conduct an independent review of the petitions.

“Never before have regular citizens organized in this way to this scale in a nonpartisan sense to uphold the integrity of Wisconsin’s elections,” said Ross Brown, Founder and President of the Tea Party Group, We the People of the Republic and co-organizer of the Verify The Recall effort. “Our volunteers are anxious to start and committed to the effort.”

Brown said approximately 87 percent of the more than 11,000 volunteers who signed up at his website are from Wisconsin, although they do have volunteers from all but one of the 50 states.

“Verify the Recall has written a new play in the citizens’ playbook as to how we can preserve our clean and honest elections,” Brown said.

With Monday night’s revelation that the GAB was refusing to comply with their earlier public pronouncements, the Verify the Recall process could be in jeopardy. Read more>>