MADISON (WSAU) State election officials did not put the recall petitions against Governor Scott Walker on-line yesterday as they had planned.
Reid Magney of the Government Accountability Board said the agency held back, after hearing from a stalking victim and others who said they did not want their names and addresses published due to privacy reasons. Magney said the Board needed more time to consider the issue.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel immediately filed a request for the petitions under the state Open Records Law, and the conservative MacIver Institute said it would do the same.
The board gave the petitions to the Walker campaign last Friday, and they've got 30 days to challenge what it believes are invalid signatures.
540,000 valid ones are needed to force a recall election, and petitioners said they submitted a million signatures just to make sure they've got enough. Officials had said that putting the petitions on-line would give others a chance to verify the signatures, and give those who didn't sign a chance to see if somebody forged their names. The American Civil Liberties Union had asked that the names of domestic abuse victims be deleted from public copies of the recall petitions. Bill Lueders of the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council said if there are legitimate safety concerns, the board should set up a procedure for blacking out names and addresses instead of keeping all the signatures under wraps. He said the signing of a recall petition is a public act -- and it cannot be done in secret.
Recall petitions against four state senators were put on the Accountability Board's Web site last week. They were still there overnight.
