MADISON, Wis. — Supporters of former President Donald Trump, who organized an effort to recall Wisconsin’s top-elected Republican, have not collected enough signatures to trigger the recall election, based on an initial assessment by the state elections board released Tuesday.
However, questions remain about whether additional signatures can be counted. There are questions about what district boundaries should be in place for the recall effort targeting House Speaker Robin Vos because of newly drawn maps the Legislature passed last month.
It will be up to the six-member Board of Elections, evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans, to decide whether there are enough signatures to trigger the recall election. The committee held an emergency meeting on Tuesday and immediately went into closed session to discuss the matter.
The circulators needed to collect 6,850 valid signatures to force the recall of Vos, who angered Trump supporters when he refused to oust the official overseeing elections in the battleground state after President Joe Biden’s narrow victory in Wisconsin in 2020.
Recall organizers said they submitted nearly 11,000 signatures to the Wisconsin Elections Commission on Monday. But after an initial review of those signatures, commission staff said there were 9,053 potentially valid signatures. And of those, only 5,905 were from the district where Vos was elected to serve.
Under the new boundaries, which Vos voted for, the district he was supposed to represent in Racine County in southeastern Wisconsin would be split in two. Only 3,364 signatures have been collected in the new Assembly district where Vos lives, which would also not be enough to collect the necessary number of signatures.
The initial review was broad and a further review could change the totals, Commission staff warned in its memo.
Given questions about district boundaries, commission staff said they needed guidance on how to conduct the second review of signatures.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court in December threw out the maps that existed in 2022, the last time Vos won the election, and banned their use in future elections. However, the new maps signed by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers last month won’t take effect until November.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Friday declined to grant Evers’ request to clarify whether Wisconsin’s newly approved legislative district maps apply to elections before November, creating uncertainty over whether signatures for the recall effort should instead be collected in the newly elected district of Vos. The committee said in its Tuesday memo that if a recall were to occur, the primary election would likely take place on May 21, with the general election on June 18.
Election commission staff noted that Vos now lives in the new 33rd Assembly District, on maps signed by Evers, but some of his previous voters are in the new 66th Assembly District. He was elected to serve the 63rd Assembly District.
Petition organizer Matthew Snorek said Monday he believed all the signatures collected came from voters living in the district Vos was elected to represent, and not those under the newly adopted maps. Snorek did not immediately return a message seeking comment Tuesday.
Vos also had no immediate comment on the signature review totals.
Vos is the most powerful Republican in the Republican Party-led parliament. He was first elected in 2004 and is the longest-serving Speaker of the Assembly in the state’s history, having held the position since 2013.
Vos angered Trump and his supporters in Wisconsin by rejecting calls to decertify Biden’s narrow 2020 victory in the state. Vos further angered Trump supporters when he backed a plan to impeach Meagan Wolfe, the state’s top election official.
Vos has repeatedly questioned the validity of signatures collected in the effort to recall him.
Petition organizer Matthew Snorek, a native of the southeastern Wisconsin city of Burlington and owner of an extermination company, said he believes there are enough valid signatures to trigger a recall.
The committee has 31 days to determine whether the petition has enough valid signatures. This can be appealed to the court. If a petition is determined to be sufficient, a recall election must be called six weeks later.
The committee said in its Tuesday memo that if a recall were to occur, the primary election would likely take place on May 21 and the general election on June 18.