Chicago politics, more like Wisconsin politics amirite.
The smaller the town, the less scrutiny it has and the more you can get away with.
I mean, look at all the ridiculous stuff Palin got away with as mayor of a small town in Alaska.
Well, that smaller town was (is?) the meth capital of Alaska.
Logically the smaller the town the more scrutiny the government will receive, since youre closer to your actual elected representatives. But I guess if your neighbor is your mayor and his neighbor is your chief of police you may be more likely to just trust whatever theyre doing and not scrutinize.
No, that's not how it works.
The smaller the government, the less people vote, the less people care and the less people pay attention.
Local politics make national politics look like the domain of educated cultured renaissance (wo)men and philosopher kings.
I assume that in small towns (like, under 1000 people small) people have more interaction with their elected representatives than those in larger towns/cities, thus resulting in more government scrutiny, but like I said if you know everyone in your town and interact with them often I could see people not caring about what the government does because they know the person in office and just assume theyll do the right thing. I assume its also easier to build voter blocks making it easier for people to stay in power which wont really be affected by scrutiny. Like, if theres a town of 500 with 300 people eligible to vote and if only half those people vote you and your 5 friends are a little over 3% of the vote which is fairly substantial.
Scrutiny is good, but it alone cant result in change.
But I wouldnt be surprised if local activity receives less scrutiny.
Nah, not really.
How is that possible though? I live in a city of over a million people (and a really really large geographic area) and Ive run into elected representatives.
Right, but when you run into them, do you question them thoroughly on their behavior in office? Do you watch council sessions all the time? Do you even know what they are doing at work most of the time?
Running into the mayor on the street =/= scrutiny of local government
Right, but I live in a large city where Im left with basically chance encounters with elected representatives, but in a smaller town my interactions would be more frequent and Id have a basis for a relationship with that elected official I see every Tuesday buying milk at the grocery.
But people aren't going to demand to look at the latest budget in that scenario. They'll just say hi and leave it there.
Governments run better when they have dedicated fact-checkers and whistleblowers. It only took the news media like one month to discover all the skeletons in Palin's closet, for example.
It's a nice principle, emp, and it makes sense, but in practice local government is virtually ignored by everyone, particularly the constituents. I'd have to look up the mayor of the town in whose 'suburb' I live, and I'm a hardcore geek about elections. I know that it used to be Kai Degner, but I'm pretty sure he's now a regular member of the council and I know he isn't mayor anymore.
Chicago politics, more like Wisconsin politics amirite.
The smaller the town, the less scrutiny it has and the more you can get away with.
I mean, look at all the ridiculous stuff Palin got away with as mayor of a small town in Alaska.
Well, that smaller town was (is?) the meth capital of Alaska.
Logically the smaller the town the more scrutiny the government will receive, since youre closer to your actual elected representatives. But I guess if your neighbor is your mayor and his neighbor is your chief of police you may be more likely to just trust whatever theyre doing and not scrutinize.
No, that's not how it works.
The smaller the government, the less people vote, the less people care and the less people pay attention.
Local politics make national politics look like the domain of educated cultured renaissance (wo)men and philosopher kings.
I assume that in small towns (like, under 1000 people small) people have more interaction with their elected representatives than those in larger towns/cities, thus resulting in more government scrutiny, but like I said if you know everyone in your town and interact with them often I could see people not caring about what the government does because they know the person in office and just assume theyll do the right thing. I assume its also easier to build voter blocks making it easier for people to stay in power which wont really be affected by scrutiny. Like, if theres a town of 500 with 300 people eligible to vote and if only half those people vote you and your 5 friends are a little over 3% of the vote which is fairly substantial.
Scrutiny is good, but it alone cant result in change.
But I wouldnt be surprised if local activity receives less scrutiny.
Nah, not really.
How is that possible though? I live in a city of over a million people (and a really really large geographic area) and Ive run into elected representatives.
Right, but when you run into them, do you question them thoroughly on their behavior in office? Do you watch council sessions all the time? Do you even know what they are doing at work most of the time?
Running into the mayor on the street =/= scrutiny of local government
Right, but I live in a large city where Im left with basically chance encounters with elected representatives, but in a smaller town my interactions would be more frequent and Id have a basis for a relationship with that elected official I see every Tuesday buying milk at the grocery.
But people aren't going to demand to look at the latest budget in that scenario. They'll just say hi and leave it there.
Governments run better when they have dedicated fact-checkers and whistleblowers. It only took the news media like one month to discover all the skeletons in Palin's closet, for example.
Well I wouldnt expect questions like, "Whats with the discrepencies between the revenue from last year and the expenditures for this year?" but I could see a simple, "hey, whats new at city hall?" sort of thing going down.
But like I said, I wouldnt be surprised if it didnt work like that.
Chicago politics, more like Wisconsin politics amirite.
The smaller the town, the less scrutiny it has and the more you can get away with.
I mean, look at all the ridiculous stuff Palin got away with as mayor of a small town in Alaska.
Well, that smaller town was (is?) the meth capital of Alaska.
Logically the smaller the town the more scrutiny the government will receive, since youre closer to your actual elected representatives. But I guess if your neighbor is your mayor and his neighbor is your chief of police you may be more likely to just trust whatever theyre doing and not scrutinize.
No, that's not how it works.
The smaller the government, the less people vote, the less people care and the less people pay attention.
Local politics make national politics look like the domain of educated cultured renaissance (wo)men and philosopher kings.
I assume that in small towns (like, under 1000 people small) people have more interaction with their elected representatives than those in larger towns/cities, thus resulting in more government scrutiny, but like I said if you know everyone in your town and interact with them often I could see people not caring about what the government does because they know the person in office and just assume theyll do the right thing. I assume its also easier to build voter blocks making it easier for people to stay in power which wont really be affected by scrutiny. Like, if theres a town of 500 with 300 people eligible to vote and if only half those people vote you and your 5 friends are a little over 3% of the vote which is fairly substantial.
Scrutiny is good, but it alone cant result in change.
But I wouldnt be surprised if local activity receives less scrutiny.
Nah, not really.
How is that possible though? I live in a city of over a million people (and a really really large geographic area) and Ive run into elected representatives.
Right, but when you run into them, do you question them thoroughly on their behavior in office? Do you watch council sessions all the time? Do you even know what they are doing at work most of the time?
Running into the mayor on the street =/= scrutiny of local government
Right, but I live in a large city where Im left with basically chance encounters with elected representatives, but in a smaller town my interactions would be more frequent and Id have a basis for a relationship with that elected official I see every Tuesday buying milk at the grocery.
Yes but what does that relationship have to do with his work as mayor?
I can see a friend every weekend for a get together and still not know shit about the specifics of what he does at work.
I just have one thing to say about local governments: Waukesha.
You have a somewhat well-to-do populace and a local government that is completely subverted by the state Republican party, to the point where the crooked county clerk is still in office after multiple scandals. They like her, so she stays. The people are well-off, so they don't give a shit. Misplacing thousands of votes in a statewide recall election isn't even enough to put serious heat on this lady, in terms of her constituency.
So yeah. Local governments pretty much do what they want, for the most part.
Of course, one alternative is Michigan's financial manager program which is essentially microcosmic fascism, so...
One would think, not sure if anyone in Benton Harbor has sued about it yet. I'd have to assume so.
The idea that your vote is a moral statement about you or who you vote for is some backwards ass libertarian nonsense. Your vote is about society. Vote to protect the vulnerable.
I'm pretty sure Michigan's financial manager program is unconstitutional
When I first heard about it, I literally imagined Rick Snyder dressed up as Grand Moff Tarkin. "Fear, fear will keep the local governments in line. Fear of this Super-Pac/Think-Tank."
If the best you can come up with against someone who's patently ignorant is to yell back at him, "Yeah? Well there's BOOKS, and they say you're WRONG!"
Then honestly you're not coming out of this looking great either.
I hate to tell you Wisconsinites this, but I'm pretty sure that unless you find someone to rally around, and soon, you're not going to win that recall. It's going to be a repeat of the legislator recalls all over again. Lots of noise, with a disappointing finish and quietly going away with your tails between your legs. Deny it all you want, you lost that fight.
I hate to tell you Wisconsinites this, but I'm pretty sure that unless you find someone to rally around, and soon, you're not going to win that recall. It's going to be a repeat of the legislator recalls all over again. Lots of noise, with a disappointing finish and quietly going away with your tails between your legs. Deny it all you want, you lost that fight.
We didn't get complete and total victory, but it set us up so that if we win even one more seat, regardless of what happens to walker, we can't be run roughshod over anymore.
Oh and please stfu about this "tail between our legs" nonsense, we rallied and got an unprecedented in the entire history of the United States number of recall petitions
I'm tired of gooses coming in here and casually belittling our efforts
I hate to tell you Wisconsinites this, but I'm pretty sure that unless you find someone to rally around, and soon, you're not going to win that recall. It's going to be a repeat of the legislator recalls all over again. Lots of noise, with a disappointing finish and quietly going away with your tails between your legs. Deny it all you want, you lost that fight.
The Secretary of State for Wisconsin (a state wide, elected position, and the only Democrat to hold such an office currently) for 20-some years just filed papers to run for governor, Doug La Follete. Funny thing though, he filed the papers before doing any fund raising, any campaigning, or anything. He said he filed the papers on his daily walk to work at the capitol to judge the reaction. He's extremely popular, the Governor-King wants to get rid of his job, and he's got statewide name recognition.
There are also a couple other candidates that have put their hat in the ring and we don't really have to flock to any one of them until after the Primary (Yes, there will be a democratic primary for the recall election). And unlike other states, we don't like the national DNC telling us who to vote for, which is a big reason why Barret lost the governor election in the first place. He was the DNC's choice for governor, so he got all the money, but he wasn't Wisconsin's real choice.
No, it was a loss for us. You failed in your objective to flip control of the legislator. "Almost" doesn't cut it. I hope I'm wrong, but I've seen some polling that gives Walker a nice lead on various challengers.
I hate to tell you Wisconsinites this, but I'm pretty sure that unless you find someone to rally around, and soon, you're not going to win that recall. It's going to be a repeat of the legislator recalls all over again. Lots of noise, with a disappointing finish and quietly going away with your tails between your legs. Deny it all you want, you lost that fight.
The Secretary of State for Wisconsin (a state wide, elected position, and the only Democrat to hold such an office currently) for 20-some years just filed papers to run for governor, Doug La Follete. Funny thing though, he filed the papers before doing any fund raising, any campaigning, or anything. He said he filed the papers on his daily walk to work at the capitol to judge the reaction. He's extremely popular, the Governor-King wants to get rid of his job, and he's got statewide name recognition.
That's kind of awesome. I'm imagining this highly unrealistic scenario:
"Siri, file the paperwork to run for governor of Wisconsin."
"I have filed the paperwork to run for governor."
"Great. Let me know when I have poll numbers."
"Ok. I will let you know when you have poll numbers."
There are also a couple other senator recalls to go along with the governor recall as well.
And frankly, you aren't from Wisconsin, you don't know us. You can't know us, so please shut up about how we're already defeated. Just because you don't see us on the national stage doesn't mean we aren't doing anything, or talking about what is going on. We will prevail just to spite your pessimistic ass if we have to
Look even if Walker isn't recalled we'll probably get the senate back, but going against is that he's going to have fucking ton of money to throw at this (although mercifully since its a presidential election year, not as much as he would: the big money will all be tied up). Add to that the difficulty in getting voters to show up to special elections (and the Republican party in Wisconsin sending letters to people that say to send in absentee ballots and have a date listed that's after the election, they resorted to wide scale voter fraud in the last recall), etc. The point is: 20% of the state's population signed the recall petition.
It might not be today or tomorrow, but the Republicans are finished for a good while in Wisconsin.
The Koch brothers have plenty of money, it's not that expensive to buy an election. Which is part of the problem. If you're wealthy enough, spending 20 million on having a lackey hand you an entire state makes good financial sense.
The idea that your vote is a moral statement about you or who you vote for is some backwards ass libertarian nonsense. Your vote is about society. Vote to protect the vulnerable.
No, it was a loss for us. You failed in your objective to flip control of the legislator. "Almost" doesn't cut it. I hope I'm wrong, but I've seen some polling that gives Walker a nice lead on various challengers.
Going from 19 Republicans in the Senate to 17 meant that Dale what's his face, the moderate Republican and swing vote, could prevent most of the Republican agenda, instead of railing against it while it passed with 18 votes. That's a victory. Not as much as having only 16 Republicans in there, but a victory nonetheless.
And I think we have a good chance of getting at least one republican if not walker
Honestly the reason there's no support coalescing around a candidate is we haven't had a primary yet
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GoslingLooking Up Soccer In Mongolia Right Now, ProbablyWatertown, WIRegistered Userregular
Seriously. You honestly think we'd get up to recall day and go "Hey, guys? Did we nominate an opponent?" "OH SHIT I KNEW WE FORGOT SOMETHING! ALL IS LOST!"
Come on. After we've gotten this far, I think we deserve a LITTLE credit. Stop with the Little Red Hen stuff.
I have a new soccer blog The Minnow Tank. Reading it psychically kicks Sepp Blatter in the bean bag.
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lonelyahavaCall me Ahava ~~She/Her~~Move to New ZealandRegistered Userregular
You guys deserve more than just a little credit.
What you've managed to do so far is astonishing in the face of election history in the country. If anything, the rest of us in this country/forum/party should be heaping praise and moral support to Wisconsin.
Cautious Optimism has it's place, of course, but at the moment, let's focus more on how we can help and encourage, rather than being headless chickens.
I wish more states did allow for recall elections for all elected officials.
Any idea on whether the democrats in Wisconsin will be able to offset the money advantage enjoyed by Walker? That's probably the biggest issue right now is that he can attempt to drown out the opposition (god does this country need serious campaign reforms that shut down this kind of garbage), on the plus side most of the big guns are going to be busy funding the national elections, so the money gap isn't as big as it could have been.
I wish more states did allow for recall elections for all elected officials.
Any idea on whether the democrats in Wisconsin will be able to offset the money advantage enjoyed by Walker? That's probably the biggest issue right now is that he can attempt to drown out the opposition (god does this country need serious campaign reforms that shut down this kind of garbage), on the plus side most of the big guns are going to be busy funding the national elections, so the money gap isn't as big as it could have been.
Doesn't he already have $12 million in his war chest? If that is true, he doesn't need to break out any more "big guns" to have an insane financing advantage.
I wish more states did allow for recall elections for all elected officials.
Any idea on whether the democrats in Wisconsin will be able to offset the money advantage enjoyed by Walker? That's probably the biggest issue right now is that he can attempt to drown out the opposition (god does this country need serious campaign reforms that shut down this kind of garbage), on the plus side most of the big guns are going to be busy funding the national elections, so the money gap isn't as big as it could have been.
Doesn't he already have $12 million in his war chest? If that is true, he doesn't need to break out any more "big guns" to have an insane financing advantage.
I'd suggest rallies, door-knocking, and other "traditional" electioneering, but unfortunately Walker may have the advantage there as well since the people with the most spare time to do that sort of thing are the welfare leeches in the Tea Party (/lolcheapshot).
Snidery aside the 3 problems I see with those things are that they have limited returns, they require a lot of people, and ANY amount used will have an initial negative effect (which can then be overcome) when the kleptocrats paint it as "union thugs steal tax dollars to pay for illegal campaigning." I believe this can be overcome if the same network that worked its ass off getting those signatures starts doing the same passing out buttons and bumper-stickers and such.
There's gotta be official methods of doing that, still. It is a damn slippery slope between, "Hey, Joe, vote for me while I drop the kids off at the pool" to "Hey, Joe, vote for me while I'm on vacation in Cabo."
Not a good precident, and displaying a lack of concern for the rules by which society has governed for its lawmakers.
"Oh yes, I know all fourteen Democrats fled the state to prevent quorum, but Bob (D) just called me and wants me to vote on his behalf to eliminate collective bargaining..."
For the current "vote for me" system, the representative has to be within the chamber, which the lawmakers apparently commonly consider the bathroom and eating area as part of the chamber. This has been going on for years, and both sides have been doing it.
I don't necessarily agree with it, but it is not as bad as people here are assuming.
Sits weird with me but our political culture is completely different. If a member of a party is not able to be present to vote for whatever measure in the Danish parliament someone from the opposing side will abstain so that the vote reflects the actual number of seats held and not the number of representatives present. This is standard practice and it's not even official policy but an informal agreement. Honestly the zero sum nature and hostility of American politics is fucking frightening.
That practice has also been common in Congress, Demiurge, though I don't think it's happened in a while.
I'd love to know who's responsible for that. Carl Rove? I Just remember reading the debacle when Kennedy got a brain tumor and everyone was talking about how the Democrats didn't have enough votes now.
I can't imagine his money will be much of any good to him. Nobody who signed the petition is liable to vote for him so the only thing phone calls or commercials will do is remind people that Scott Walker is being recalled.
We're still kind of in a holding pattern as Walker tries to bribe, corrupt, and lie his way out of the recall by challenging the petitions
That's not going to work with a million though
Overhearing some talk at work, in just raw numbers the amount of challenged signatures Walker is submitting is just about equal to the amount of signatures we've already throw out due to errors (Not providing an address, not filling the date out, Circulator not filing out the footer fully [this piss me off], or having the smallest part of the header/footer missing [this does as well]) and those raw numbers still give enough signatures to move forward with the recall.
And I don't care how much money Walker has, we got one-fifth of the entire state's population to sign his recall and everyone of those people are of voting age. That's not something to overlook and if everyone of those people vote the recall is a sure thing.
That practice has also been common in Congress, Demiurge, though I don't think it's happened in a while.
I'd love to know who's responsible for that. Carl Rove? I Just remember reading the debacle when Kennedy got a brain tumor and everyone was talking about how the Democrats didn't have enough votes now.
Technically if a Republican abstained during that period the Democrats still wouldn't have had enough votes. You need 3/5 of all sitting, not just present, Senators to break a filibuster. Abstaining (or being absent) is effectively the same thing as voting no.
The greatest deliberative body in the world, people.
We're still kind of in a holding pattern as Walker tries to bribe, corrupt, and lie his way out of the recall by challenging the petitions
That's not going to work with a million though
Overhearing some talk at work, in just raw numbers the amount of challenged signatures Walker is submitting is just about equal to the amount of signatures we've already throw out due to errors (Not providing an address, not filling the date out, Circulator not filing out the footer fully [this piss me off], or having the smallest part of the header/footer missing [this does as well]) and those raw numbers still give enough signatures to move forward with the recall.
And I don't care how much money Walker has, we got one-fifth of the entire state's population to sign his recall and everyone of those people are of voting age. That's not something to overlook and if everyone of those people vote the recall is a sure thing.
If there were 600k signatures walker might have a leg to stand on
With a million it's pretty much impossible to realistically challenge them
Also, a lot of his challenges are complete bullshit, like "We sent a postcard to this address and it couldn't be delivered, this signature should be thrown out!" when the address they sent it to bears only a faint resemblance to the one on the list, and frequently doesn't exist.
The address on the petition had to be your physical address, and to many rural (and not so rural) people it is impossible to actually get mail at that address. So yeah that type of challenge wont work
And I see Walker decided challenging was too hard and said "fuck it, we will see you on the campaign trail"
However in his paperwork, he told the GAB Rey should use the information found by a tea Party group called Verify the Wisconsin Recall, something that is illegal for the GAB to do
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But people aren't going to demand to look at the latest budget in that scenario. They'll just say hi and leave it there.
Governments run better when they have dedicated fact-checkers and whistleblowers. It only took the news media like one month to discover all the skeletons in Palin's closet, for example.
Well I wouldnt expect questions like, "Whats with the discrepencies between the revenue from last year and the expenditures for this year?" but I could see a simple, "hey, whats new at city hall?" sort of thing going down.
But like I said, I wouldnt be surprised if it didnt work like that.
Yes but what does that relationship have to do with his work as mayor?
I can see a friend every weekend for a get together and still not know shit about the specifics of what he does at work.
You have a somewhat well-to-do populace and a local government that is completely subverted by the state Republican party, to the point where the crooked county clerk is still in office after multiple scandals. They like her, so she stays. The people are well-off, so they don't give a shit. Misplacing thousands of votes in a statewide recall election isn't even enough to put serious heat on this lady, in terms of her constituency.
So yeah. Local governments pretty much do what they want, for the most part.
Of course, one alternative is Michigan's financial manager program which is essentially microcosmic fascism, so...
When I first heard about it, I literally imagined Rick Snyder dressed up as Grand Moff Tarkin. "Fear, fear will keep the local governments in line. Fear of this Super-Pac/Think-Tank."
We didn't get complete and total victory, but it set us up so that if we win even one more seat, regardless of what happens to walker, we can't be run roughshod over anymore.
Oh and please stfu about this "tail between our legs" nonsense, we rallied and got an unprecedented in the entire history of the United States number of recall petitions
I'm tired of gooses coming in here and casually belittling our efforts
The Secretary of State for Wisconsin (a state wide, elected position, and the only Democrat to hold such an office currently) for 20-some years just filed papers to run for governor, Doug La Follete. Funny thing though, he filed the papers before doing any fund raising, any campaigning, or anything. He said he filed the papers on his daily walk to work at the capitol to judge the reaction. He's extremely popular, the Governor-King wants to get rid of his job, and he's got statewide name recognition.
There are also a couple other candidates that have put their hat in the ring and we don't really have to flock to any one of them until after the Primary (Yes, there will be a democratic primary for the recall election). And unlike other states, we don't like the national DNC telling us who to vote for, which is a big reason why Barret lost the governor election in the first place. He was the DNC's choice for governor, so he got all the money, but he wasn't Wisconsin's real choice.
That's kind of awesome. I'm imagining this highly unrealistic scenario:
"Siri, file the paperwork to run for governor of Wisconsin."
"I have filed the paperwork to run for governor."
"Great. Let me know when I have poll numbers."
"Ok. I will let you know when you have poll numbers."
And frankly, you aren't from Wisconsin, you don't know us. You can't know us, so please shut up about how we're already defeated. Just because you don't see us on the national stage doesn't mean we aren't doing anything, or talking about what is going on. We will prevail just to spite your pessimistic ass if we have to
It might not be today or tomorrow, but the Republicans are finished for a good while in Wisconsin.
Steam: pazython
I hope the irony of Bob being a Republican is not lost on this election.
Honestly the reason there's no support coalescing around a candidate is we haven't had a primary yet
Come on. After we've gotten this far, I think we deserve a LITTLE credit. Stop with the Little Red Hen stuff.
What you've managed to do so far is astonishing in the face of election history in the country. If anything, the rest of us in this country/forum/party should be heaping praise and moral support to Wisconsin.
Cautious Optimism has it's place, of course, but at the moment, let's focus more on how we can help and encourage, rather than being headless chickens.
Democrats Abroad! || Vote From Abroad
Any idea on whether the democrats in Wisconsin will be able to offset the money advantage enjoyed by Walker? That's probably the biggest issue right now is that he can attempt to drown out the opposition (god does this country need serious campaign reforms that shut down this kind of garbage), on the plus side most of the big guns are going to be busy funding the national elections, so the money gap isn't as big as it could have been.
That's not going to work with a million though
Doesn't he already have $12 million in his war chest? If that is true, he doesn't need to break out any more "big guns" to have an insane financing advantage.
I'd suggest rallies, door-knocking, and other "traditional" electioneering, but unfortunately Walker may have the advantage there as well since the people with the most spare time to do that sort of thing are the welfare leeches in the Tea Party (/lolcheapshot).
Snidery aside the 3 problems I see with those things are that they have limited returns, they require a lot of people, and ANY amount used will have an initial negative effect (which can then be overcome) when the kleptocrats paint it as "union thugs steal tax dollars to pay for illegal campaigning." I believe this can be overcome if the same network that worked its ass off getting those signatures starts doing the same passing out buttons and bumper-stickers and such.
Sits weird with me but our political culture is completely different. If a member of a party is not able to be present to vote for whatever measure in the Danish parliament someone from the opposing side will abstain so that the vote reflects the actual number of seats held and not the number of representatives present. This is standard practice and it's not even official policy but an informal agreement. Honestly the zero sum nature and hostility of American politics is fucking frightening.
I'd love to know who's responsible for that. Carl Rove? I Just remember reading the debacle when Kennedy got a brain tumor and everyone was talking about how the Democrats didn't have enough votes now.
https://gofund.me/fa5990a5
Overhearing some talk at work, in just raw numbers the amount of challenged signatures Walker is submitting is just about equal to the amount of signatures we've already throw out due to errors (Not providing an address, not filling the date out, Circulator not filing out the footer fully [this piss me off], or having the smallest part of the header/footer missing [this does as well]) and those raw numbers still give enough signatures to move forward with the recall.
And I don't care how much money Walker has, we got one-fifth of the entire state's population to sign his recall and everyone of those people are of voting age. That's not something to overlook and if everyone of those people vote the recall is a sure thing.
Technically if a Republican abstained during that period the Democrats still wouldn't have had enough votes. You need 3/5 of all sitting, not just present, Senators to break a filibuster. Abstaining (or being absent) is effectively the same thing as voting no.
The greatest deliberative body in the world, people.
If there were 600k signatures walker might have a leg to stand on
With a million it's pretty much impossible to realistically challenge them
However in his paperwork, he told the GAB Rey should use the information found by a tea Party group called Verify the Wisconsin Recall, something that is illegal for the GAB to do