WISCONSIN RECALL: FAKE NAMES WILL BE OKAY.

WISN reports that the Government Accountability Board will only check the addresses and dates that accompany the signatures. It will “flag” names that seem suspicious — e.g. Mickey Mouse — but “will not strike them without challenge.” . . . So the burden is on the target of the recall to find the duplicate signatures and phony names, for maybe over a million signatures, on a tight deadline! By “electronic copies,” I assume they mean scans of the handwritten signatures. I want typed-out names, so you can use a computer to do targeted searches. I mean, I’d like to know if anyone signed my name and address, but how would I check? Read the handwriting on all of the pages? . . .

What a mess! I hope they are planning to get the signatures quickly typed up and presented on a webpage so that everyone who wants to check names can do so. I am especially concerned about the appropriation of names of people (like me) who did not sign. I am genuinely afraid of fraud and don’t think we have anything close to decent safeguard in place.

And that doesn’t seem to be by accident. You know, events in Wisconsin have made me wonder if — despite its longstanding reputation for “good government” — civil society there is basically a sham, an overlay on a corrupt one-party machine. One expects this sort of thing in Illinois, but Wisconsin?

UPDATE: Charles Austin writes: “Sounds like Wisconsin is just ahead of Eric Holder’s news cycle.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Allan Erickson writes: “Wisconsin is just the preview of what the 2012 elections will be like. I am beginning to wonder if there can be fair elections in this country anymore.” That such concerns even come up is destructive.