Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker will not challenge any of the 1 million petition signatures seeking his recall because his staff did not have time to examine all of the names, the Los Angeles Times reports. The recall effort was sparked by Walker's successful elimination of most collective bargaining rights for public employee unions.
He had until 5 p.m. on Monday to challenge signatures submitted last month. But despite receiving a 20-day extension to pore over the petitions, the governor's staff was able to review only about 400,000 of them, campaign spokeswoman Ciara Matthews said, according to the Times.
She said the campaign determined that 10% to 20% of those 400,000 were erroneous, including entries that listed fake addresses and names, such as Donald Duck.
"We have essentially been given an impossible deadline," Matthews said.
The Government Accountability Board, which oversees Wisconsin elections, still has three weeks to determine the validity of at least 540,208 of the signatures, the minimum needed to trigger an election. And Walker's campaign asked the Government Accountability Board on Monday to consider the findings of two tea-party-affiliated groups that have been examining the signatures independently …
This was not about impossible deadlines. More likely: Walker's staff members failed to count the petitions after charging fraud because even they did not believe their allegations.
Read more at the Los Angeles Times.