Heart­en­ing news from the Bad­ger State:

In anoth­er sign that the Wis­con­sin GOP’s quick pas­sage of the bill to roll back bar­gain­ing rights is only caus­ing the fight to esca­late, Dems have now col­lect­ed over 45 per­cent of the sig­na­tures nec­es­sary to hold recall elec­tions for eight GOP state sen­a­tors, the Wis­con­sin Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty tells me.

Dems have now col­lect­ed over 56,000 sig­na­tures sup­port­ing the recall dri­ves, accord­ing to par­ty spokesman Graeme Zielin­s­ki, after anoth­er surge in orga­niz­ing activ­i­ty over the week­end. That’s up from roug­ly 14,000 after last week­end. This means Dems are well ahead of sched­ule: In each tar­get­ed dis­trict, Dems need to amass the required sig­na­tures — 25 per­cent of the num­ber who vot­ed in the last guber­na­to­r­i­al elec­tion — by a dead­line of 60 days after first fil­ing for recalls, which hap­pened near­ly two weeks ago.

Recall orga­niz­ers have approx­i­mate­ly forty-five days left to fin­ish gath­er­ing sig­na­tures. As read­ers here in the Pacif­ic North­west know, they need to col­lect more than the min­i­mum required for each recall effort because not all sig­na­tures will be valid. Hav­ing a cush­ion is absolute­ly essen­tial to a suc­cess­ful peti­tion drive.

Although Wis­con­sin has the recall (it was intro­duced in 1926) the state does not have the ini­tia­tive or referendum.

So peti­tion dri­ves there aren’t the com­mon sight that they are here.

Wash­ing­ton has all three instru­ments of direct democ­ra­cy. While our ini­tia­tive process needs reform, our recall process is already pret­ty sound. That’s because the Leg­is­la­ture has cre­at­ed checks and bal­ances to pre­vent abuse of the recall.

In Wis­con­sin, no jus­ti­fi­ca­tion is required to file a recall peti­tion. Con­se­quent­ly, the Repub­li­can Par­ty is attempt­ing to recall some of the state’s Demo­c­ra­t­ic sen­a­tors at the same time the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty is try­ing to recall the Repub­li­can sen­a­tors. If most of the peti­tion dri­ves are suc­cess­ful, much of the Wis­con­sin Sen­ate could be up for elec­tion… in an off-year.

Arti­cle XIII of the Wis­con­sin State Con­sti­tu­tion spells out the process, pro­ce­dures, and time­frame for recall of elect­ed offi­cials. Here’s a sum­ma­ry of the provisions:

• Recalls of any elect­ed offi­cial may be launched after the offi­cial has served one year in office. Recall orga­niz­ers do not have to show that the offi­cial they wish to recall has com­mit­ted wrongdoing.
• Recall attempts only move for­ward if enough valid sig­na­tures are col­lect­ed. The min­i­mum num­ber is equiv­a­lent to twen­ty-five per­cent of the per­sons vot­ing for gov­er­nor in the last elec­tion in the juris­dic­tion where the elect­ed offi­cial is serv­ing (in this case, Sen­ate dis­tricts).
• If enough sig­na­tures are col­lect­ed, a recall elec­tion is sched­uled for the sixth week after the date of the fil­ing of the petition.
• If mul­ti­ple can­di­dates from the same par­ty file for the recall elec­tion, a “recall pri­ma­ry” is held dur­ing the week pre­vi­ous­ly mentioned.
• The actu­al recall elec­tion is held four weeks after the “recall pri­ma­ry”, if there is one. Each par­ty is rep­re­sent­ed by its nominees.
• The per­son who receives the high­est num­ber of votes in the recall elec­tion is elect­ed for the remain­der of the term.

You can read Arti­cle XVI­I­I’s sev­en pro­vi­sions for your­self at the Wis­con­sin Leg­is­la­ture’s web­site. They’re not too dif­fi­cult to understand.

Wis­con­sin Democ­rats only need to flip three seats to regain con­trol of the state Sen­ate and estab­lish a bul­wark against Scott Walk­er’s regime. If all eight of their sig­na­ture dri­ves are suc­cess­ful, they could lose more than half of the recall elec­tions and still take back the state Senate.

By approv­ing Scott Walk­er’s unde­mo­c­ra­t­ic union-bust­ing leg­is­la­tion, Wis­con­sin’s Sen­ate Repub­li­can cau­cus poured fuel on the fires of the recall efforts. They effec­tive­ly declared war on work­ing fam­i­lies. Now work­ing fam­i­lies are fight­ing back.

On Fri­day, Dane Coun­ty, the state’s sec­ond-largest local juris­dic­tion, filed suit to block the union-bust­ing bill from being imple­ment­ed. (See a copy of the legal fil­ing).The judge assigned to the case refused to grant the coun­ty’s request for a tem­po­rary restrain­ing order, or TRO, but has sched­uled a hear­ing for Wednes­day where Dane Coun­ty will be able to make its case.

We’ll keep you post­ed on devel­op­ments on the recall dri­ves and the lawsuit.