GAB director defending board's recall review process
MILWAUKEE- The Government Accountability Board's director Kevin Kennedy is defending the GAB's recall review process, saying it has been in place since the 1980s for all recalls including Republicans and Democrats.
This comes after Governor Walker's campaign and the Republican Party filed a lawsuit in Waukesha to force state elections officials to step up their game when reviewing recall signatures. They want the Government Accountability Board, or GAB, to at least visually look for phony or duplicate signatures.
Kennedy joined Wisconsin's Afternoon News on Newsradio 620 WTMJ Friday.
Kennedy was asked about allegations that under the current structure the GAB isn't discouraging people from signing more than once. Kennedy said, "We've always said the statue doesn't prohibit a second signing, that we won't count the second signature."
The GAB has come under criticism for saying it's not the board's responsibility to find duplicates or "Mickey Mouse" signatures. It's up to Republicans and Scott Walker's team to challenge those signatures.
Kennedy responded to that by saying, "If we see a pattern like that, we would be pulling that out because we would want to go after the person who circulated that. We are going have a signature at the bottom where someone has sworn, under law, they personally obtained these signatures and so they have obviously now lied. That gives us a basis to refer that for prosecution."
Joe Olson, a lawyer for the Republicans, told TODAY'S TMJ4, "What we are talking about are signatures that on their face are invalid and we are asking GAB to exclude those when it does its counting."
Democrats argue they are checking for bad signatures and accuse the Republicans of attacking the process because they're losing.
"The attack on the system and the process are going to look pretty foolish in pretty quick time," said Graeme Zielinski, spokesperson with the Democratic Party of Wisconsin.
He says a very small number of names have been thrown out.
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kcd135 - Dec 16, 2011 5:40 PM
vh4ever - Dec 16, 2011 7:04 PM
Unless you have values.
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