The Government Accountability Board revealed the previously undisclosed location of the recall petitions Monday, and considered upcoming plans for the verification process.

GAB spokesperson Reid Magney said the work is being done at the State of Wisconsin Central Services Building in Madison. He also said Capitol Police are providing security around the building while the staff works to verify signatures against Gov. Scott Walker and a number of Republican legislators. 

About 50 GAB employees have spent the last month entering the signatures into to a database for records and further verification, according to Magney. The location, which sits two blocks away form the Capitol, was kept secret because of security reasons since the petitions were turned in last month. 

Magney said the next steps for the GAB will be to address the challenges made by the four senators facing recalls, which he confirmed has begun.

According to Magney, the recall organizers have until 5 p.m. today to file rebuttals, and then the recalled senators would have another two days after that to file a rebuttal. He said after arguments had been made, the GAB would begin its process. 

Magney also addressed the issue of considering district lines when verifying if a signature was from the senator’s district.

“We’re using the old redistricting lines, the lines that apply to any recall election before 2012,” Magney said. “That’s what the legislators have instructed us to use, and that’s what we plan to do until told otherwise.”

According to a challenge from Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, a significant amount of signatures have addresses that fall outside the new redistricting lines, which he argued should be invalidated. 

The State Senate Democratic Committee released an analysis Monday comparing the total number of signatures each senator filed to the factual error rate of the signatures. 

According to the committee’s analysis, none of the GOP’s challenges would be able to invalidate enough signatures to put them below the threshold needed to stop the recall election against them. The analysis said the closest a senator came to the threshold was Fitzgerald, who was 2,758 signatures away from stopping the recall election.

In an email to The Badger Herald, SSDC spokesperson Brad Wojciechowski said the senators’ challenges rely on two legal arguments. Primarily, Wojciechowski said, the recalls should occur in the new 2012 redistricted maps. He also said any signatures collected on the first day of collection are invalid. Wojciechowski added both are legal arguments that GAB and the attorney general rejected months ago.