Posted on 04/17/2012 9:04:05 AM PDT by knittnmom
The state elections board voted Tuesday morning to allow six Republicans to run as Democrats in upcoming recall elections against Gov. Scott Walker, Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch, and four Republican senators.
The Government Accountability Board said that the six candidates could not be blocked from running under Wisconsin law. The vote followed a board staff recommendation in a memo Monday that elections officials did not have the legal authority to keep the six fake Democrats, or "protest candidates," from the ballot.
The Republican Party of Wisconsin recruited six candidates — Gladys Huber, Isaac Weix, Gary Ellerman, Tamra Lyn Varebrook, James Engel and James Buckley — to run as Democrats in the recall elections. Republicans said the strategy made sure all six primaries will be held on May 8, and the general elections will be June 5.
Democratic Party of Wisconsin attorney Jeremy Levinson filed a complaint with the GAB accusing the candidates and the Republican Party of committing fraud and said they should be blocked from getting on the ballots. He accused the GOP of manufacturing a false primary.
"We need to take them at their word that this was the scheme to manipulate the elections that they told us it was," he told the board Tuesday.
Levinson added that "these kind of shenanigans and swindles cannot be allowed to continue."
But Joe Olson of Michael Best & Friedrich law firm, the attorney for the Republican Party of Wisconsin, told the board that Wisconsin's open primary system allows anyone to run and the elections are about "the will of the electors, not the will of the political elite." And he said there was nothing secretive about the GOP strategy.
"If it's public and obvious, how can it be secret and nefarious at the same time?" Olson said.
The board voted to deny the complaint after hearing from attorneys for Democrats and Republicans as well as Democratic recall candidate Lori Compas, who is challenging incumbent state Sen. Scott Fitzgerald, the Senate Republican leader, in the recall, warned of widespread confusion among voters.
"Just this past weekend a woman asked me for some sort of proof that I was the 'real' candidate," Compas said. "She asked me if the ballot would indicate which candidates were fake."
But elections staff said in the Monday memo "that Wisconsin law does not permit the board to deny ballot access to the protest candidates."
GAB staff counsel Mike Haas told the board that Wisconsin election laws do not require candidates to be members of the party they file to run as on ballots, and said elections officials can't investigate the motivations of candidates.
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Ok, but I’m still missing something.
Are the republicans “fake democrats” currently in office and are now listed as democrats so they can be on the democrat recalls election day?
In the WI recalls, there must be a qualified competitor on the ballot or it is delayed. Note the term “competitor”. Recalls are non-partisan so party affiliation is moot.
Calling someobne a “fake democrat” is a diversion. One only needs to be a qualified “competitor”. The Dhimmicrat strategy of delaying the recalls by not qualifying anyone in these races backfired.
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