Starting at midnight tonight, Governor Scott Walker’s opponents have 60 days to gather recall signatures. Can they gather more than 540,000 signatures in that amount of time? Based on the 20,000 gathered for each state Senate recall earlier this year, University of Wisconsin political scientist Charles Franklin is betting they can. “We have 33 senate districts, 33 times 20,000 would be 660,000 statewide.” said Franklin. Recall backers actually plan on gathering 600,000 to 700,000 signatures to act as a cushion against inevitable challenges. Franklin believes the organizers of this effort have laid the necessary groundwork, with “volunteers trained in the technicalities of how to get recall petitions signed, how to have them valid.” Others aren’t as sanguine about the effort’s chances. “I must be the only one that thinks getting that many signatures is not for sure,” said UW-Milwaukee political scientist Mordecai Lee in a weekend interview with Wisconsin Public Television. “I’m skeptical,” Lee said.
AUDIO: Bob Hague reports (:60)
“The biggest negative is, you only have 60 days,” said Franklin. “Let’s call it 600,000 signatures, so you need 10,000 signatures every day for 60 days. And that’s a period that includes Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s, times when you would think it would be harder to gather signatures, not easier.”
