Man Claims He Signed 80 Walker Recall Petitions

Original Post: WISN

MILWAUKEE, Wis. -- A man told 12 News that he has signed as many as 80 petitions to recall Gov. Scott Walker.

The man had the following exchange with 12 News' Kent Wainscott on Thursday: Man: "I think I signed about 80 times."

Wainscott: "You've signed 80 petitions, you think?"

Man: "I signed a lot of them for the past two weeks. I've been seeing them at the Grand Avenue Mall. Out here by Pick 'n Save and stuff like that."

Wainscott: "Well, you know they're only going to count one of your signatures?"

Man: "Oh well. Whatever it takes to get Scott Walker out of here, I'm happy."

Wainscott: "That means signing repeatedly?"

Man: "Yeah. They cheated for Bush, so hey, I'm going to cheat to get Scott Walker out of here."

Wisconsin's Government Accountability Board in Madison polices the recall process. The Board's director said the legality of signing multiple petitions really comes down to intent.

"If a person is signing this with the intent of artificially inflating the number of signatures that are going to be turned in, or if they're signing it to argue these petitions are riddled with fraud, because anybody can do this, then they're committing fraud on the process," said Director Kevin Kennedy. So, if someone signs a recall petition but later worries that petition might not be legit, he or she can sign another one. That's different from signing dozens of different petitions, hoping to sneak in some extra signatures, according to the director.

The latter is a practice the Democratic Party of Wisconsin said it discourages. The party's spokesman said people should sign only one petition, and he said he had not heard of any other cases of people signing dozens of petitions. "Well, these are not credible people. They either have mental illnesses or they're up to no good," said Graeme Zielinski, spokesman for the Democratic Party of Wisconsin. "They're up to criminal activity, and if they are up to criminal activity, they should be prosecuted."

The state's Republican Party spokesmen told 12 News that its members are concerned about duplicate signatures sneaking into the total count.

"This is a serious problem that needs to be addressed, and the Republican Party of Wisconsin will be looking into the matter further," said Ben Sparks, communications director of the Republican Party of Wisconsin. "This type of behavior calls the entire recall process into question."

The Democrats said they're working to weed out repeat signatures before submitting them to the GAB. The Board may not necessarily catch the duplicates. The GAB director said, according to state law, it's up to the officeholder to catch duplicates. So, in this case, it will be up to Walker's campaign and Republicans to catch any duplicate recall signatures turned in.