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Republicans throwing out numerous invalid recall signatures in Waukesha
Today's TMJ Channel 4 ^ | 1/27/12 | WTMJ News Team

Posted on 01/29/2012 4:37:26 PM PST by Jean S

WAUKESHA - Republicans are getting their first look at all the recall signatures against Governor Walker.

Volunteers at the Waukesha County Republican headquarters told TODAY'S TMJ4 they're thrilled to finally get started. They began reviewing signatures Friday afternoon, launching a statewide mission to tackle the recall effort.

Packed into a Waukesha warehouse, Republicans got their hands on recall petitions for the first time. Nearly a thousand people signed up to help. "It's really positive. High energy. They're excited to get going with this process and get it over with," said executive director Cathy Waller.

Volunteers will be at the warehouse and at nine other sites like this one for the next five days. They will be closely checking every line, every name, every number.

"We're finding a lot of things that we're flagging," said Waller.

And after just hours on the job, they're already discovering discrepancies. "I would say from the many of us that have been here, there are going to be thousands that aren't going to be counted," said volunteer Ann Strakulski.

The finds are treasures for supporters and the governor as they look to whittle away at more than one million signatures.

Democrats aren't concerned by the claims or the massive Republican effort. "The children of Wisconsin didn't sign. The dead didn't sign, either," said Democratic party spokesman Graeme Zielinski. "Have a hundred. Have a thousand. Have a million victory sites around Wisconsin. You're not going to stop the recall."

Republican officials told TODAY'S TMJ4 they realize it's unlikely they'll bring the signature count below the threshold of 540,000. They maintain they're working to keep the petitions in check.


TOPICS: News/Current Events; Politics/Elections; US: Wisconsin
KEYWORDS: recall; walker; wisconsinshowdown
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To: Jean S

better check those addresses, you might see 15 or 20 signatures at the same residence... make sure those are real addresses too!


21 posted on 01/29/2012 6:50:21 PM PST by GeronL (The Right to Life came before the Right to Pursue Happiness)
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To: Jean S

You can’t challenge that??

What if you find 500 people in the same residence signed, would that be flaggable??


22 posted on 01/29/2012 6:52:55 PM PST by GeronL (The Right to Life came before the Right to Pursue Happiness)
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To: GeronL

I don’t think that can be done within the time limit we’re allowed. Each volunteer is given a stack of 50 petitions at a time and it take about 1 1/2 hours to go through the stack. Some have petitions have only one name, some have 10 or so. We do not have the time to check everything and compare them all.

It was done after the fact in the Kapanke (sp) recall and it turned out that there were not enough signatures to force a recall but too little, too late. He’s out.

Wisconsin needs to tighen the laws on recalls.


23 posted on 01/29/2012 7:00:45 PM PST by Jean S
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To: Jean S

Bookmark


24 posted on 01/29/2012 7:36:21 PM PST by Publius6961 (My world was lovely, until it was taken over by parasites.)
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To: Oatka

What I’ve seen with verify the recall is that only 50-60 percent of the 10 signature forms have 10 signatures. Same with the 5 signature forms. It sounds like they were extrapolating number of forms to 1.1 million signatures, but I’m thinking that its really about 700K signatures and that’s where we start throwing out the duplicates. Saw plenty of forms disqualified at the victory center for bad collector information.


25 posted on 01/29/2012 7:43:04 PM PST by sgtyork (The secret of happiness is freedom, and the secret of freedom, courage. Thucydides)
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To: Jean S

I have a very hard time believing this is a productive way ensure the integrity of the process.

For example, If I signed a petition every time someone asked me, my signature could be on many different sheets. It would only take 1000 frequent signers to add up to serious over-counts. How does your process identify those?

You also said addresses are not being verified. So If I signed, but each time I signed I used a different fictitious addresses you might only challenge it if it occurred on the same sheet?

What if I had my children sign it? any way to catch those?

In my opinion you guys need to hire a software engineering firm. I’m a software engineer and this is how I would tackle it:

1. Run each signature line through an OCR - Optical Character Recognition scanner.
2. Store all results in a database.
3. Flag anything that fails OCR as illegible.
4. Write a software “mashup” that does a look-up using Google or another mapping service to confirm each and every address. Flag all address fails.
5. Run a lookup against the State Department of Corrections list to flag all Felons. Most States have open web-services for this.
6. Run duplicate name look-ups, any Barry Buephane’s that signed 36+ times is a flag. Any John Smith’s that show up 2-3 times might have to be manually looked at.
7. Here is how you purge the list of Kids... You have to do a global “by address” count. Distinct addresses with more than 2 signatures should be looked at. The 3+ signature is likely to be a child. This is more effective with Democrats since they tend to not have large families.

What I am saying is the first pass through the data needs to be automated. You could have the software analyze the data multiple times using different rule-sets ranging from “Strict” to “Lenient”. If on the strictest settings the count comes out way about the threshold for validity then your wasting you time. However if on the most lenient rules the number of valid signatures falls short then it is time to dig in, call in the troops and start protesting signatures.

I’m honestly the RNC doesn’t already have a GO-Team up and running with a team of software engineers at the ready. RNC spends millions on their jet-setting chairman and leadership, certainly that would have anticipated how to deal with events like this.


26 posted on 01/29/2012 8:27:38 PM PST by RC51
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To: Jean S
You are truly doing the Lord's work!!!

Thank you and God bless and keep you!!!

27 posted on 01/29/2012 8:50:17 PM PST by SierraWasp (I'm done being disappointed by "He/She is the only one who can win" and being embarrassed later!!!)
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To: sgtyork
What I’ve seen with verify the recall is that only 50-60 percent of the 10 signature forms have 10 signatures. Same with the 5 signature forms.

Good point. All those that I brought up had only five, but on some it looked like the sixth one was chopped off and I wondered if we were only being sent five-name blocks.

Also, just got a note from them saying to hold off as what we had been entering was for another recall and that the Walker sheets wouldn't be available until Monday.

28 posted on 01/29/2012 8:57:58 PM PST by Oatka (This is America. Assimilate or evaporate.)
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To: Jean S; Hunton Peck; Diana in Wisconsin; TaMoDee; P from Sheb; Shady; DonkeyBonker; ...

Wisconsin Recall Signature Verification at the Victory Center Report ping

If you want on, or off this Wisconsin interest ping list, just FReep Mail me.


29 posted on 01/29/2012 10:57:32 PM PST by afraidfortherepublic
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To: Jean S

I was entering names via the VTR site this weekend, the second sheet I did had a duplicate name, the husband signed, his wife then signed and he signed again. This was for one of the Senate recalls. Lots of signatures are unreadable scribbles. One sheet, everyone dated in November, but the gatherer didn’t sign until January 6th.


30 posted on 01/30/2012 5:25:35 AM PST by DonkeyBonker
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To: Jean S
We have no legal standing to actually throw out signatures.

That's the first thing I thought when I read the article. I'm thinking "how can they be throwing out signatures? I thought that they had to go back to the GAB for review". Anyway, thanks for posting this. I am hopeful that this "verify the recall" activity will shine a spotlight on the recall petition drive and voter fraud in general.
31 posted on 01/30/2012 6:44:11 AM PST by Sopater (...where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. - 2 COR 3:17b)
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