Assembly Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald introduced a bill last month to criminalize the act of knowingly signing a recall petition more than once. The bill is aimed at preventing alleged fraud in the recall process, as some evidence has surfaced of people signing multiple petitions. An additional bill from Sen. Glenn Grothmann would also require the petitioner to have the recall petitions notarized, instead of allowing the petitioner to simply sign the bottom, which is the current practice.
I find it troubling that neither of these two lawmakers failed to address the real problem. Signing of multiple recall petitions is just a symptom of the no holds barred tactics employed by fringe right wingers. Recall supporters would have never had a need to sign multiple recall petitions if thousands of Walker supporters didn’t flock to Facebook and pledge their allegiance to do anything to stop the recall dead in its tracks.
Many of us saw the vitriolic rhetoric that sometimes went as far as physical threats. There were also the promises to destroy petitions, or to collect petitions disguised as recall supporters, only to throw away the signatures. Right wingers even went so far as to file fake recall papers a few days early just to raise a little extra money for Walker. With such desperate attempts to stifle democracy, who can blame someone for signing multiple petitions? It seems only pragmatic.
Now, I find it outright laughable that Fitzgerald wants to make this act a Class I Felony. That’s absurd. With the ruling from Judge Mac Davis that compelled the GAB to make a valid effort to strike multiple and obviously phony signatures this bill is not only a waste of lawmaker time, it is a bias attack against those trying to undo the damage to this state done by Walker and the Fitzgerald clan.
Last month, there was a man in Oshkosh collecting signatures to recall Walker. A man pulled up in his truck and harassed the petitioner and then threatened to kill him. The man was captured on video tape and the Oshkosh police department was called. When the officer showed up, he also pledged his allegiance to the derelict Governor and proceeded to give the man who threatened to kill the petitioner a municipal citation for disorderly conduct.(You can read the diary here) My question is simple: Where is the bill to make threatening a recall petitioner or signer a Class A Felony? In this author’s humble opinion, I think threatening one’s life while they exercise their right to democracy is a much more heinous crime than signing two recall petitions. What do you think?
Instead of restoring some sense of civility to our state, Republican lawmakers seem content to launch legislative attack after attack against those who do not support their draconian vision for the future. The futile ads by Walker that have bombarded us recently are not fooling anyone. The cut and pray method is not working. We are not moving forward. We are moving backward.