Organizers of an effort to recall Assembly Speaker Robin Vos say they have enough voter signatures to trigger an election, although state election officials have indicated they think the group fell short of the mark in the effort to recall Vos.
The Wisconsin Elections Commission indicated Tuesday that the group did not collect enough signatures to force a recall under a number of different legal scenarios.
The recall effort has been thrust into uncertainty after a state Supreme Court decision to toss out old legislative maps and the enactment of new lines to elect state Assembly and Senate members.
Here's where things stand with the ongoing recall effort:
Why are people trying to recall Robin Vos?
The recall effort featured the importing of an Arkansas leader to marshal recall support, a visit from election conspiracy theorist and pillow mogul Mike Lindell and conflicts over Vos’ conservative credentials.
Vos has increasingly been targeted by supporters of former President Donald Trump, first for ordering an end to Michael Gableman’s review of the 2020 presidential election in Wisconsin and then for a refusal to move forward with articles of impeachment against Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe.
At a press conference Monday, Burlington resident Matthew Snorek, one of the recall organizers, said the effort was a challenge to "the status quo based on the ways Robin Vos has failed us in the 63rd Assembly District."
"Let this be a warning to all in positions of power who fail to serve the people — you could be next," Snorek said outside the state Elections Commission offices.
Moments later, Snorek delivered the 10,702 signatures to the commission, which will now review and verify the signatures before determining a next step. In order to trigger a recall election, petitioners must deliver signatures representing 25% of those who voted in the 2022 gubernatorial race in Vos' district. In this case that is around 6,900 signatures.
Vos narrowly prevailed in 2022 against a primary challenger, Adam Steen, who pulled in 48% of the vote, or a little over 4,200 votes. Steen, backed by Trump, advocated for the decertification of the 2020 election and also mounted a write-in campaign in the general election.
The recall drama was further intensified when Steen, who is backing the recall, was revealed to be at the center of a Wisconsin Ethics Commission investigation. The commission is recommending felony charges be filed against Steen, a fundraising arm for Trump and others for allegedly attempting to evade state campaign finance laws during the 2022 campaign.
Why do new maps matter to the recall?
The plans to force a recall of Vos hit a legal road bump after the Wisconsin Supreme Court tossed out the old maps used to elect members of the state Assembly and state Senate in the 2022 elections.
Recall organizers said they collected signatures in the district boundaries that existed when voters elected Vos in 2022. They shrugged off the high court ruling, which "enjoined the Wisconsin Elections Commission from using the (former) legislative maps in all future elections.”
At the time the recall effort was started, the Elections Commission said it was conferring with the Wisconsin Department of Justice on the potential ramifications the redistricting case might have moving forward.
Gov. Tony Evers signed new legislative districts into law last month — but the law included language that some say cast doubt on whether the maps could be used for any recall or special elections before the fall.
The state attorney general’s office submitted a letter to the Wisconsin Supreme Court on Evers’ behalf, asking them to clarify which lines should be used for a recall or special elections. Legislative Republicans sent a message of their own saying they believed the new lines should be used for any of those races.
But on Friday, the court said it was not yet planning to weigh in on the matter, as the letters were not official motions asking the court to take any steps.
It is unclear whether the attorney general or Evers will file a motion seeking to clarify those questions. But the Elections Commission on Tuesday asked the Wisconsin Department of Justice to seek clarity from the state Supreme Court on which district lines should be used for any recall efforts.
"I’m lucky enough to be a lawyer and it is very, very murky to me," Elections Commissioner Mark Thomsen said Tuesday. "If you’re out there signing papers or being asked to sign papers, nothing is clear about this process."
What does the Elections Commission say?
The Wisconsin Elections Commission has not yet ruled which of the district lines should be used when determining if a recall should be held.
A memo prepared for the commission found that the bulk of the signatures were collected from voters in Vos' old district. The review found 3,364 signatures from voters in Vos' new district, which would put recall organizers short of the number they would need to trigger a recall.
Even if signatures from Vos' old district were counted, however, the organizers would seem to be short of the number required, as there were only around 5,900 people who signed who lived in the district Vos was elected to represent in 2022.
Elections Commission staff indicated their analysis was preliminary and that a more in-depth, secondary review of the signatures were needed.
The commission's review found over 1,000 of the signatures were not valid at all, meaning they were either residents from outside any of Vos' districts or, in some case, people living out-of-state.
What happens next?
The next step is to see if Vos ultimately challenges the allowability of some of the signatures submitted as part of the recall effort. He has 10 days in which to do so and indicated in a statement on Monday that his campaign was reviewing the petitions.
Vos said that "almost every person in Racine County – not just those living in the 63rd district – has been accosted by out-of-state recall circulators over the past two months."
“It’s truly sad that a group of people who didn’t get their way in the 2020 election are wasting resources and effort working with Democrats to settle a political score rather than better using their time to defeat our ineffective Democrat President," Vos said.
The petition to recall can be signed only by residents of voting age in a particular district and must be dated by the signer. People who circulate the petitions must also properly fill out a separate document that certifies the signatures' veracity.
Snorek said a legal challenge over the matter was "probably going to happen" but said he was confident the signatures would stand up. If the effort failed, he said, the group will consider its options heading into the August partisan primary.
If Vos files a challenge to the petition, recall organizers would have a chance to respond and then the Elections Commission would have 14 days to make a determination as to whether the recall can move forward.
If it was deemed that there were not enough signatures to trigger a recall, organizers could attempt to correct or respond to the mistakes, though it is unclear whether that would ultimately change the outcome.
