One Million Recall Signatures and Only 650k Votes?

The numbers don’t lie, do they? That all depends, I guess, on which numbers you mean.

After a year of protesting and fighting to recall Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, an interesting number peered its way into the public yesterday–the primary vote tally. The total number of votes cast in the Democratic Party primary for Governor was only 650,725.

Why is this number so interesting?

Well, because we have all heard for months now how many furious Wisconsinites there are in the dairy state. And, of course, how they accounted for over one million signatures to recall Governor Walker. Over one million! That’s right, over one million Wisconsinites supposedly signed the petitions, but only 650,725 showed up to vote. That’s about 40% fewer voters than signers. How likely is that?

There has been much speculation over the past couple months that a large number of the signatures submitted were fraudulent, and this may very well be the best indicator of truth to the speculation–as well as an indication of just how many signatures were not legitimate. Since Governor Walker was denied adequate time from the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board to review and challenge the signatures, over 600,000 of them were never evaluated.

And since only 3.1 percent, a total of 19,591 people, voted for Scott Walker’s primary challenger, “fake republican” Arthur Kohl-Riggs, the lack of voter turnout in the Democrat primary could certainly not be accounted for in the Republican primary–unless a whole lot of republicans signed petitions too. Which leaves us wondering still, how many of those signatures turned in by unions and radicals alike were, in fact, legitimate?

If you signed a petition to recall your governor, what is the likelihood that you wouldn’t show up to vote on Election Day?

Chart Source: Ballotpedia.org