Recall The Recall

It started with the pay cut, and when that didn’t fly they changed to losing collective bargaining rights, and when that fell on deaf ears they claimed the sky would most certainly fall, and when it didn’t they made one last tweak and claimed that it wasn’t necessarily what Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker did that justified a recall, it’s just that he went about it the wrong way.       

They would have been better off just bitching about the pay cut. 

Because if this is going to be an election about due process, then Walker’s opponents might as well call it quits right now and recall their recall.  To independent Wisconsinites who live outside the obsessive-compulsive binary world of partisan Madison politics, the way in which the unionists’ recall process has rolled out makes Walker’s parliamentary procedures of a year ago look positively sacramental.   

The state’s Government Accountability Board (GAB) has started to release the recall petitions, leaving it up to the individual campaigns (State Senators, Governor and Lt. Governor) to challenge the validity of signatures that GAB should have disqualified.  A grass-roots army of citizen volunteers turned out to take on that task and even the most cynical of political observers are stunned by the amount of fraud that has been discovered by a cursory review of the forms.        

So far, we have seen duplicate signatures, commercial addresses listed as domiciles, non-existent addresses, residency outside the district, residency outside the state, residency outside the country, and residency outside the galaxy - E.T. apparently wants Walker gone, too.   

And these are the signatures that the Democrats certified and the GAB accepted.  Hard to imagine what you have to do to get one tossed.

We have seen signatures with no date, dates that are too early, dates that are too late, dates crossed out and changed later by someone else.  For folks who demanded a court overturn Act 10 over the number of minutes of notice given before a legislative committee hearing, the Walker-stalkers sure don’t mind giving themselves a wide berth when it comes to telling time.    

We have seen circulators fill in information for petitioners, mask the name of the person being recalled, certify before the start date, certify known fraudulent signatures, forge signatures themselves, bribe petitioners, entice underage petitioners, and fail to complete their own circulator information as required by law.   

We have seen that some people apparently don’t know where they live.  Some people don’t know how to spell the names of their towns.  Some people don’t know how to spell their own names.  Some people forgot they signed already and signed again on the very next line.  Some signed other people’s names multiple times on multiple petitions. 

This is not what democracy looks like; this is what identity theft, voter fraud, and forgery look like.      

One guy bragged on Facebook that he signed 81 times.  Another admitted signing for her whole family, because they shouldn’t like Walker.  Some people didn’t know, or care, who they were even recalling. Some people don’t know which senate district they live in.  And some people have an impressive gift for mimicking the handwriting of the person above them, and above them, and above them. 

The salient point here is not that some people are incapable of filling out a simple form; it is the chilling realization that these are the chuckheads who want to tell us what to eat, drink, drive, smoke, wear, earn, keep, carry, buy, own, sell, listen to, learn, and read.   

Call me belligerent, but I don’t want my life regulated by some doofus who lives in Oconomowoc and can’t even spell it.  Somebody should check the petitions from King and Rio and see if the circulators shipped in from Kentucky and Ohio had an easier time of it with only one or two syllables to master.

And spare me your righteous indignation, liberals – “how” matters because you made it your pitch to independents. Honestly, did you really think you would pull this off?  Did you imagine that the people who outnumbered you to elect Governor Walker in the first place would just sit idly by and let you just nullify their votes when you are high-fiving your felonies on Facebook?   C’mon man!   

And do you really expect us to believe that so many of your experienced circulators all went rogue on you all at the same time in this one petition drive?  That they weren’t just doing what they have always done, the way they were taught by your community organizers?  What possible explanation can you give us now that we understand why you panicked over the Republicans’ Voter ID bill?     

As of this writing, not one Democrat mouthpiece in the state has come forward to denounce the blatant fraud that has been published by GAB for all to see. Not one.  How hard would it be for any one of the opposition candidates seeking our vote for Governor to simply say “falsifying information on the recall petitions is wrong, and I condemn voter fraud.”   

Apparently it is damn hard, even if there is just a small fraction of signatures that are invalid.  One by one, the Democrats most potent opponents are dropping out of contention, as they catch a whiff of the stink rising up from this whole rotten recall mess.  Do the guys running the show not think we independents know why the smart ones – Feingold, Barrett, Obey, Cullen – want no part of it?       

The average Wisconsinite is a fair-minded, common sense, decent, hard-working sort who is ashamed of dishonest behavior like this.  We are the state known for bringing transparency and reform to the political process.  Voter fraud is the kind of low-rent knuckle-dragging thuggery they do in Illinois; it is one of the reasons we call them FIBs - and that does not stand for our Fabulous Illinois Brethren.

Wisconsin Democrats, you’re busted.  You know it.  Everybody knows it.  You boasted that you have one million valid signatures to recall Governor Scott Walker – if you fall short, you will have one hell of a lot of explaining to do.  And based upon the petitions we have seen so far, you best get somebody working on that explanation right now.      

“Moment Of Clarity” is a weekly commentary by Libertarian writer and speaker Tim Nerenz, Ph.D.  Visit Tim’s website www.timnerenz.com to find your moment and order Tim’s new book, “BRING IT!”