Effort To Recall Gov. Tony Evers Falls Short

The organizer of an attempt to recall Gov. Tony Evers announced Monday the effort to gather hundreds of thousands of signatures has failed.

According to multiple reports Monday, organizer Misty Polewczynski announced the failure of the petition drive on Facebook.

“It is with a heavy heart we announce that after proofing and what came in over the weekend we have fallen short. We do not have enough signatures to turn in,” read a copy of Polewczynski’s post published on WisPolitics.

In order to force a recall election, organizers would have needed to turn in 668,327 signatures in 60 days. They began the effort Aug. 28, giving them a deadline of Tuesday.

Just last week, Polewczynski boasted that organizers had already crossed that threshold before sharing on Facebook that she planned to mislead media.

Polewczynski did not say in her statement Monday how widely organizers had missed their mark.

“No signatures will be turned in, leaving the ability for a recall to be filed again. And keeping the information from becoming public record,” she said.

While Democrats were able to gather more than 900,000 signatures to force a recall election of Republican Gov. Scott Walker in 2012, a petition drive of that size is no easy task. Walker’s recall effort was backed by both the state Democratic Party and organized labor.

The state Republican Party kept its distance from the effort to recall Evers, a Democrat, saying it was focused on the November presidential election. Some Republicans were critical of the effort, noting that it gave Evers the power to raise unlimited funds while the recall effort was underway.

Democrats said little about the effort to recall Evers aside from calling it “irresponsible and absurd.” They also pointed to Evers’ approval rating, which stood at 52 percent in the latest poll by Marquette University earlier this month.