According to United Wisconsin, a political action committee set up primarily for the purpose of recalling Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, the effort to recall Walker is well under way. They claim that in the first twelve days of the recall effort, that they had over three hundred thousand of the over five hundred and forty thousand signatures that are needed to recall Scott Walker, which would be a first for this Midwestern state. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL.org), the number of signatures needed to recall a governor of Wisconsin is: "twenty-five percent of the total amount of votes cast in the last gubernatorial election." So the total number of signatures to recall Governor Walker is actually 540,208.
The current recall effort is moving at a rapid pace."The movement to recall Walker continues to move quickly. In the first 28 days, Wisconsin voters signed the petition at a rate of over 18,000 per day. In the first 12 days, more than 300,000 signatures were collected from all 72 counties in Wisconsin." The rate of signatures works out to about "one-thousand and forty signatures an hour", according to the grass roots United Wisconsin organization. A call to the United Wisconsin's main office in Madison, on Wednesday, December 14, revealed that more information, and a new total of the recall signatures would happen at a press conference the next day.
At this press conference on December 15, 2011, the recall signature total was updated. According to the United Wisconsin website: "Just four weeks into the recall campaign, and as Scott Walker continues to mislead voters, United Wisconsin announced that 507,533 people have already signed a petition to recall Scott Walker and is releasing its new signature collection goal of 720,277 – nearly 200,000 more than needed." This new goal is an apparent attempt to strengthen the case for, and attempt to further legitimize Governor Walker's recall, and any attempts by the governor to disavow the recall effort.
Progressive United is a political action committee that was started by former Wisconsin U.S. Senator Russ Feingold. So with the recall of Governor Walker seeming to be a forgone conclusion, a call was placed to Progressive United's Madison office, in an effort to see if Senator Feingold had any aspirations of running against Walker in the Governor's recall election. According to Chris at Progressive United: "Russ Feingold has publicly stated many times that he is not running for public office, of any kind, in 2012." So the Democrats will have to find someone else to run against Walker in the upcoming recall election.
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