The Government Accountability Board posted recall-targeted senators’ petition signature challenges Friday morning amid controversy about the signatures’ legitimacy.
The challenges by all four senators, and Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald’s formal complaints, can be found on the GAB’s website.
Fitzgerald submitted a written challenge to the GAB Friday morning that said the recall petitions submitted contained numerous signatures that must be disregarded and the remaining signatures were well below the 25 percent threshold that is constitutional and would stop the recall election.
The challenge said the petitions should be disregarded for a number of reasons, including that a number of the signatures on the petition represented electors outside the 13th district and others were dated outside the circulation period.
Dane County Judge Richard Niess has given the board until March 19 to determine the sufficiency of all petitions, according to a GAB statement released Thursday.
University of Wisconsin political science professor Barry Burden said while none of the senators has a great chance at stopping the recall elections against them, Fitzgerald had a much better chance than the other three.
When asked about Fitzgerald’s chances, Burden explained it was still going to be tough for the senator because a large portion of the signatures challenged for being outside of District 13 are because Fitzgerald is using the new district lines approved by Republicans for the 2012 elections.
According to Burden, Fitzgerald has the best chance to succeed in stopping the recall election against him because there is a smaller gap between signatures gathered and signatures required, which makes the total number of signatures he needs to invalidate smaller.
Burden said those who collected the signatures were using the current district lines and said their legitimacy was likely to remain since GAB has said it would be verifying the signatures under the use of the current district lines.
A statement Fitzgerald released earlier this month said if the petitions are found to be sufficient and a recall election moves forward, he would embrace the opportunity to run on his record and the accomplishments Senate Republicans have made over the past year.
