MADISON, Wis. (AP) – Speaker of the Wisconsin Assembly Robin Fox On Friday, he challenged signatures on petitions filed seeking elections to recall him from office, saying there were not enough valid ones.
Wisconsin’s bipartisan election board has until June 28 to determine if there are enough valid signatures to trigger a recall election. The panel rejected the first attempt because there wasn’t enough.
Vos has been targeted by supporters of former President Donald Trump, including former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman, who submitted more than 9,000 signatures as of May 28.
They targeted Vos, the longest-serving Assembly speaker in Wisconsin history, after he refused to oust the official overseeing elections in the battleground state, angering Trump and his followers.
Vos said Friday that he has found thousands of invalid signatures, including 2,000 collected from outside his current legislative district, more than 400 that were signed more than once and nearly 350 that were collected outside the allowed period.
Vos also claimed that signatures had been collected at addresses that did not exist, were vacant or were not residential.
The committee that circulated the petitions emphasized that there were enough valid petitions to trigger the recall, calling Vos’ challenge “laughable” in a statement. They need 6,850 valid signatures to force a recall election in the district where Vos was elected to serve.
In March, the group submitted more than 9,000 signatures, but the election commission determined that only 5,905 of them were valid.
Vos angered Trump and those who wrongly believe the former president won Wisconsin in 2020 when Vos refused calls to decertify President Joe Biden’s narrow victory in the state. Biden’s victory by about 21,000 votes has withstood two partial recounts, numerous lawsuits, an independent audit and a review by a conservative law firm.
Vos further angered Trump supporters when he did not support a plan to oust Meagan Wolfe, the state’s top election official.
The recall is complicated because new legislative plans take effect during the fall elections.
The election commission asked the Wisconsin Supreme Court to clarify whether a recall election should take place in the district where Vos was elected to serve or under new district boundaries that take effect for the November regular election.
The court declined to further clarify or change the December ruling, which found the current maps were unconstitutional and barred their future use.
