The Wisconsin Government Accountability Board is delaying the release of Scott Walker recall petitions online after hearing privacy concerns from some of those who signed them.
The state Government Accountability Board provided copies of the petitions against Gov. Scott Walker to Walker's campaign on Friday and had said that it planned to post copies of them on its website Monday.
But agency spokesman Reid Magney said the board was holding off on posting them online after hearing concerns about a stalking victim who signed the petitions and others who did not want their names released.
While they are still copying and scanning recall petitions against Lt. Governor Rebecca Kleefisch, the Scott Walker recall petition copies have already been provided to the Walker campaign.
Most of the concerns voiced were from victims of domestic violence or past stalking victims.
For someone like a domestic violence victim with legitimate safety concerns, Lueders said that the accountability board should simply establish a process for having his or her name or address removed from public viewing rather than keeping all names secret. He said the state court system's online records had a similar process.
The concerns expressed by current petition signers does not yet include any concerns from those fearing the type of retaliation outlined in noise of rains post yesterday involving Facebook threats to recall signers, but it may be only a matter of time before some Walkerite thug uses that information access to harrass signers. We saw, during the recall signature gathering, the lengths to which some Walker supporters would go to interfere with recallers and the petitions themselves.
While the Walker campaign has received copies of the petitions containing over 1 million signatures for his recall, online access allows that information to be available to anyone who wants to view or print them.
Privacy concerns were never raised with the past recalls of State Senators, however, in the heated and often violent episodes that occurred during the Walker recall (and the statewide nature of that recall along with the massive numbers of signatories), it stands to reason that unanticipated privacy concerns would need to be addressed.
I'll keep you posted on the GABs solution to this dilemma.
Update: Actually, more of a clarification. I never thought about the privacy concerns of those who have legitimate reasons (past domestic violence, for example) to keep their locations private. These individuals need to have some protection from having their information posted online and freely available to anyone with access to a computer.
Additional concerns relate to the online threats of harrassment and intimidation by a few rotten apple Walkerites that may use our open records and transparency for nefarious purposes. I'm not sure that there is anything that can be done to prevent that, however, there are laws in place and police officers available should any incidents occur that would be criminal.