After four GOP senators facing potential recalls submitted an analysis of possibly fraudulent signatures, committees heading the recall efforts filed responses to the reports with the Government Accountability Board Tuesday.

The filed responses argue the GOP challenges were incorrect on several counts. 

The responses said the GOP challenges are based on newly-drawn district lines, which had been previously reviewed and rejected by the GAB. They said the challenges are based on improper analysis of the 60-day signature collection window.

Another reccurring argument found in the four responses is a significant amount of challenges that found signatures with incomplete addresses were actually complete. 

In an email to The Badger Herald, GAB spokesperson Reid Magney said the board has a responsibility to examine the petitions for legible addresses and complete dates, but state law also puts the burden on officeholders to challenge signatures in these situations.

Magney said in the email petitioners did have the right to file correcting affidavits to fix problems the officeholders may have found, but petitioners only had until 5 p.m. Tuesday night to file rebuttals to the challenges. If this course of action were taken, officeholders would then have two more days to file replies to the rebuttals.

According to Magney’s email, the GAB will continue to review recall petitions while the challenges are being filed and debated. He said the 50 employees verifying the signatures and the rest of the GAB staff are working hard to review the petitions. Magney’s email also said at the current time it was premature to say exactly how many petitions had been reviewed.

Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau, Sen. Pam Galloway, R-Wausau, Sen. Terry Moulton, R-Chippewa Falls, and Sen. Van Wanggaard, R-Racine, all worked together to challenge enough signatures to void an election in complaints filed and posted by the GAB earlier in the week. 

However, according to an analysis by the State Senate Democratic Committee, none of the GOP’s challenges could be close. The analysis said the closest a senator came to the threshold was Fitzgerald, who was 2,758 signatures away from stopping the recall election. 

According to the response filed against Fitzgerald’s claims, the largest section of Fitzgerald’s challenges refuted by the complaint were the 1,739 signatures Fitzgerald wanted disqualified — because the circulator of the petitions under question was not certified properly. After their review process, the response said a credited circulator did actually properly certify 1,628 of the challenged signatures.  

“The challenges Fitzgerald was making were frivolous and wouldn’t stand,” State Senate Democratic Committee Executive Zac Kramer said. “Fitzgerald inflated his challenge total by wrongly alleging some petitions were missing required data that they weren’t and double-counting some of his challenges and making data entry errors.” 

Kramer predicted all four elections would proceed, and that a cursory review of the signatures the senators challenged shows they have not met the threshold to prevent the elections.

According to Kramer, the fraudulent recall challenges, secrecy pacts and distorting the budget to make it appear to be a balanced budget are all dangerous partisan political games to play on the backs of citizens.