Walker effort to discredit recall petitions 'extremely dishonest'

Here's Walker and his BFF, Charlie K. getting ready for a night of contemplation and soul searching.

It’s legal to "sign a recall petition (against Gov. Scott Walker) even if you have already signed another recall petition," but only one signature counts

"The liberal group One Wisconsin Now, worried about possible confusion over who can sign petitions to recall Gov. Scott Walker, issued a "recall petitioners’ rights" memo in late November 2011.

The group said you only have to be a qualified voter in Wisconsin; you don’t have to have voted here before or even have registered to vote.

Mildly surprising to some perhaps, but the next claim really jumped out.

The group wrote: "You can circulate or sign a recall petition even if you have already signed another recall petition (note, however, that only one signature per person will be counted)."

Can you really sign a petition twice?

And will it count for one signature -- or none, or two -- if you pen your name on separate petitions?

It’s one of many points, from both sides, that has prompted confusion -- and accusations that opponents are misleading folks for their advantage. We already looked at a few process-related questions.

Here’s one more.

In state statutes, the recall law (Section 9.10) lists eight ways a signature could be nullified. Among them: It’s not dated, was too early or late, the signer lives out of state, the address can’t be confirmed.

There was nothing noted about a case of multiple signatures.

But deeper in the statute, we found an answer: "If a challenger can establish that a person signed the recall petition more than once, the 2nd and subsequent signatures may not be counted."

That means the first signature is still good, but duplicates can be thrown out, said Reid Magney, spokesman for the Government Accountability Board, which oversees elections the recall process.

That doesn’t guarantee they will be. It’s up to the incumbent to challenge the validity of signatures.

The state Accountability Board will review the petitions, but isn’t staffed to systematically check for duplicates, Magney said. That puts the onus on the gatherers or Walker’s side.

If people do sign more than once, they face no penalties.

"There are no legal restrictions," Magney said.

That doesn't speak to practical concerns.

Magney, for instance, noted that people signing more than once could put their own cause in jeopardy because that falsely inflates the true number of signatures.

Magney said the Government Accountability Board is not encouraging people to sign multiple times. But he added there is an instance in which they could be justified in doing so.

"People should not sign a petition more than once unless they have some good faith reason to believe that the first petition was somehow fraudulent and believes the circulator doesn’t intend to file it," Magney said."

http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2011/dec/02/one-wisconsin-now/one...

Ed Schultz, isn't he the guy that gets drunk, beats his wife and shoots his dog ? I guess he should know a thing or two concerning psychos.

http://www.wisn.com/r-video/29957768/detail.html