Brendan Fischer's News Articles

-- By Brendan Fischer and William Dooling.

MADISON -- Claims by an out-of-state Tea Party group that the campaign to recall Governor Scott Walker is fraught with error do not stand up to even limited scrutiny.

Findings released this week from the Tea Party-led "Verify the Recall" effort allege that recall proponents fell short of the 540,000 signatures necessary to recall Governor Scott Walker. However, a cursory review of the pages they allege are erroneous actually include the information they claim is missing. Signatures the groups deem "ineligible" are very clearly legitimate. Some of the problems appear to arise from data entry errors on the part of True the Vote volunteers.

After news outlets reported Monday that Governor Scott Walker would not be challenging recall signatures, the governor quietly submitted a request asking that the state elections board accept challenges from an effort involving a Texas organization with a history of voter suppression.

Questionable challenges to recall petitions for Wisconsin State Senator Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau) bear a resemblance to a "voter caging" scheme led by Tea Party groups in the 2010 elections. Those same Tea Party organizations are also involved in the recall "verification" effort.

Fitzgerald is one of four Senators facing recall for supporting Governor Scott Walker's plan to limit public sector collective bargaining and cut education funding, among other issues. Governor Walker is also facing recall.

While the popular understanding of the U.S. Supreme Court's Citizens United decision is that it opened the door to unlimited corporate spending, last week's FEC filings showed that many of the millions that Super PACs received in 2011 came not from corporations, but from deep-pocketed individuals and corporate CEOs. What remains unknown is just how much corporate money is secretly flowing through another vehicle being used to influence political outcomes, the 501(c)(4) nonprofit.

Notably, the Tea Party-affiliated FreedomWorks Super PAC received more than $1.3 million in contributions from its associated 501(c)(4). Under current law, the FreedomWorks (c)(4) is not required to disclose its donors to the public -- unlike a Super PAC -- suggesting one way that corporate donors can disguise their political spending.