Judge grants elections board extra time to evaluate Dem recall petitions

Wisconsin State Journal
June 3, 2011
A Dane County judge on Friday gave the state Government Accountability Board another week to analyze challenges to recall petitions against three Democratic state senators, likely setting recall elections against those senators a week behind elections for six of their Republican colleagues.
Circuit Judge John Markson also denied a motion by Republicans to delay certification of recall petitions against the six Republican senators, saying that it was not his job to tell the GAB how to do theirs.
"It is a matter of policy," Markson said. "That is not my role here. My role here is very limited."
Markson's decision gives the GAB until June 10 to file certificates of sufficiency of recall petitions for Democratic Sens. Dave Hanson of Green Bay, Jim Holperin of Conover and Robert Wirch of Pleasant Prairie.
GAB director Kevin Kennedy said after the decision, made following a three-hour court hearing, that he has already signed the certifications for recall elections against Republican state Sens. Albert Darling of River Hills, Dan Kapanke of La Crosse, Luther Olsen of Ripon, Randy Hopper of Fond du Lac, Sheila Harsdorf of River Falls and Robert Cowles of Green Bay.
Orders for recall elections of the six will now be issued, Kennedy said.
The recall elections are tentatively set for July 12, although the date could change because of legal action — Kapanke, Hopper and Olsen have sued to stop the election — or because primary elections might be required in some races.
If the GAB certifies the recall petitions next week against the three Democrats, recall elections for them would be held on July 19.
Dan Hunt, who leads the recall effort against Wirch, said Markson's decision was not surprising, but said he expects the petitions against Wirch to stand up to GAB scrutiny.
GAB asked Markson to extend the deadline to certify the recall petitions against Hanson, Holperin and Wirch because it has not had time to sufficiently examine them.
Assistant Attorney General Lewis Beilin, representing the GAB, said that the challenges to the petitions against the three Democrats are more complex and will require more analysis than the challenges to petitions against the Republicans.
But Michael Screnock, lawyer for the Republicans, said the GAB did not mention the issue until very late in the process. Instead it finished its analysis of the petitions against all of the Republicans last week, even though the petitions against the Democrats were not the last submitted.
Markson said he did not believe that was evidence of bias on GAB's part and that it did not violate any of its own rules by taking up the petitions out of order.
"The board decided it made more sense to do what it could in the short amount of time it had," Markson said, in the interest of efficiency.
Screnock also said he believed Democrats' challenges to recall petitions were confusing and submitted to slow down the process, but Markson said he saw no evidence of that.


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