Walker supporters begin checking petitions for challenges

WAUKESHA COUNTY -- Page by page, volunteers have begun the time-consuming task of checking all the recall signatures submitted to recall Governor Scott Walker.

Copies of the petitions were delivered to the Waukesha County Republican Party headquarters on Friday afternoon, and immediately people got to work.  Waukesha is one of a dozen sites throughout the state where Walker's supporters are reviewing petitions.

From 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Saturday, volunteers took turns working three hour shifts.  Earlier in the week, a Dane County judge granted them an additional 30 days to file challenges. "It's amazing.  Just the amount of people coming in, taking time out of a Saturday to do this," Chris Walters, a Walker supporter said.

Wisconsin Democrats are confident they've submitted enough valid signatures to trigger a recall of the governor. "The Democratic party took pains to make sure that they were turning in signatures that were valid.  If there were any mistakes in terms of the names or addresses, those were taken out," Sachin Chheda with the Milwaukee County Democratic Party said.

Volunteers in Waukesha County say they don't necessarily expect to find enough invalid signatures to stop a recall election, but say they want to verify the actual number of valid signatures collected. "There probably will be enough signatures to start a recall election, but the people, they just don't believe anything coming from the other side," Keith Best of the Waukesha County Republican Party said.

Volunteers are scanning petitions, looking for incomplete names, incomplete dates and mistakes made by the petitioners -- all of which could serve as potential challenges. After the petitions are checked by hand, they're entered into an online database to be reviewed by the Wisconsin state Republican Party.

After volunteers tackle the recall petitions filed against Governor Walker, they'll move onto checking those filed against Lt. Governor Rebecca Kleefisch.