While Democrats celebrate the million petitions turned in today supporting a recall of Wisconsin governor Scott Walker, Badger state Republicans are hoping that the best offense is a good defense.
"Of course the Democrats got a million signatures," said Ben Sparks, spokesperson for the Wisconsin GOP. "They're allowing individuals to sign up 80 times and they're allowing Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny to go on the rolls."
Critics of the recall effort have long charged that many of the signatures gathered were invalid. However, the anti-Walker forces gathered significantly more petitions than expected (they only needed 540,000), and United Wisconsin, the group co-ordinating the effort, seemed confident that with so many extra signatures, the recall would be almost impossible to avert.
Sparks, however, wasn't so eager to give up. "We have volunteers throughout the state who are working to verify these signatures," he said, noting the GOP was holding training sessions every night this week to help people verify. "Our sole focus is to check all recall petitions," he said. With a million to check, they likely can't afford to have any others.
A second Trump administration will cement a right-wing majority on the Supreme Court for a generation, and put our collective future in the hands of someone who will be virtually unchecked by our institutions. The country has shifted rightward, and the reverberations will ensue for potentially the next few decades. In this climate, a robust independent media ecosystem will be more important than ever. We're committed to bringing you the latest news on how Trump's agenda will actually affect the American people, shining a light on the stories corporate media overlooks and keeping the public informed about how power really works in this country.
Quality journalism is expensive to produce, and we don't have corporate backers to rely on to fund what we do. Everything we do is thanks to our incredible community of readers, who chip in a few dollars at a time to make our work possible. Any amount you give today will help us continue reporting on what matters to our democracy.
