Wisconsin Recall Gets Underway On Tuesday

[Elmore Furth]

The fun is about to begin.

The political future of six GOP senators will be on the line Tuesday as voters head to the polls for Wisconsin’s recall election.

But the turnout may also shed light on two other important issues: The future of Gov. Scott Walker’s controversial political agenda and how voters are feeling going into the 2012 national elections.

Voters will cast ballots in six Wisconsin districts as part of the first round of the Democratic State Senate primary elections. The badger state’s elections agency called the primaries after Republicans slated six “protest” candidates; each of them is sympathetic to the incumbent Republican facing an August Recall General Election.

Wisconsin Recall Gets Underway On Tuesday

[Yon_Yonson]

1. Wis. GOP’s Fake ‘Democrats’ To Cost Taxpayers More Than $400K

TPMDC

Wis. GOP’s Fake ‘Democrats’ To Cost Taxpayers More Than $400K

Eric Kleefeld | June 14, 2011, 10:09AM

The Republican strategy of planting fake Democratic candidates in the state Senate recall elections won't just add some serious time to the process. It's also going to cost local governments and taxpayers throughout the state over $428,000, in just a partial estimate.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports:

Election clerks estimate the cost of a Democratic primary in the districts of the recalled GOP lawmakers as follows: Sen. Rob Cowles of Allouez, $86,000; Sen. Alberta Darling of River Hills, $69,700; Sen. Sheila Harsdorf of River Falls, $27,000; Sen. Randy Hopper of Fond du Lac, $84,200; Sen. Dan Kapanke of LaCrosse, $101,000; and Sen. Luther Olsen of Ripon, $60,200.

Those are only partial figures. Two counties in Harsdorf's district, two counties in Olsen's district and one county in Kapanke's district did not provide estimates. The figures also do not include the costs for some of the municipalities within those counties.The key here is that the six recalls were to be scheduled for July 12. (Three more recalls have been scheduled against Democrats, for July 19, and those races have attracted actual, legitimate Republican primaries.) If there were only one Democrat against each one Republican -- and the Dems did indeed originally unite around one candidate in each race -- then the July 12 date would be the general election. But with additional Democrats, the July 12 date would then become the primary, giving the incumbents more time to campaign for a general election on August 9.

Since then, the Democrats came up with their own novel solution to the problem: Running their own fake candidate in the same Dem primaries, too, in order to further disrupt Republican efforts to crash the primaries or to pick and choose which races would go ahead in July and which might wait for August.

[MoDupey]

2. FYI-Harsdorf District

I am in Harsdorfs district and I just pulled this from The Recall Sheila Harsdorf facebook page.

"From Cathy Larson Leaf - HUGE ISSUE... There's a robocall being made by the right-to-lifers, telling people absentee ballots are in the mail and telling them NOT to go to the polls tomorrow. It's coming from the 703 area code (D.C.), and we need to get a recording of it and the phone number. SPREAD THE WORD and ask people to help. Trying to track more down on this..."

Just want to make sure that people know that these robocalls are trying to get people to not go to the polls. It's a lie of course.

[Bella Boo]

3. 100 Yards

We tried to take exit polls in Menomonee Falls. The police came with a measuring tape and told us we had poll 100 yards from the polling place, which made it impossible to poll people.