By M.D. Kittle | Wisconsin Reporter

MADISON —The board that oversees the state’s election and campaign laws has endured a litigiously busy year.

The Government Accountability Board, or GAB, has been named in at least 16 lawsuits in the state, frequently as defendant, according to a review of the online Wisconsin Court System’s Consolidated Court Automation Programs and confirmed by the Wisconsin State Law Library, an agency of the state Supreme Court.

Many of the lawsuits include the names of the former judges who make up the board, and many of the cases have been closed in the GAB’s favor.

And several more federal lawsuits involve the GAB, including litigation into the GOP-driven redistricting maps and the legal haggling over if and when the maps drawn to reflect the 2010 census and shift in population should be in play.

More recently, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a federal lawsuit in the Eastern District Court in Milwaukee on behalf of 17 people who said they cannot vote under the state’s voter ID law, set to go into effect next year.

GAB is named in that lawsuit, as well as companion state lawsuits from immigrant rights group Voces de la Frontera and the Milwaukee branch of the NAACP, each asking that the voter ID law be overturned. 

Also last week, Gov. Scott Walker’s campaign and the Republican Party of Wisconsin filed a lawsuit against the board challenging the legality of GAB’s process for reviewing signatures.

Campaigns are under way to recall Walker, Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch and four GOP state senators.

Last week, GAB staff members said they would flag, but not throw out, questionable names on recall signatures, such as Mickey Mouse or Adolf Hitler. But the signatures would not be stricken without challenge, presumably from representatives of the incumbent politician.

Walker’s lawsuit, filed in Waukesha County Circuit Court, asks the court to order GAB to eliminate the names that are obviously fake, duplicated and ineligible.

Walker, at a news conference Monday, said the lawsuit is aimed at protecting the integrity of the recall petition process. The GOP’s argument is that allowing duplicates or phony names infringes on the rights of those who chose not to sign the recall petition.

“If people want to sign it — and they have every right to in this state — it should be enforced that they can sign it once and they actually have to sign it with a real name related to a real voting location in this state,” he said, according to a story in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Earlier this year, the GAB, dealt with the legal complexities of a state Supreme Court election recount, a process that awarded the election victory to incumbent Justice David Prosser and was listed in a bevy of challenges to an unprecedented wave of state recall petitions.

Among the Senate recall litigation, was the case of state Rep. John Nygren. The board unanimously voted to leave the Marinette Republican off the ballot in the July 19 recall of state Sen. Dave Hansen, D-Green Bay.

The board found Nygren fell two votes shy of collecting the 400 signatures needed to be placed on the ballot. Nygren originally submitted 424 qualifying names, but GAB found 26 were invalid.

The decision left David VanderLeest, convicted of two misdemeanor disorderly conduct charges connected to alleged domestic violence, as the sole Republican candidate against Hansen, who easily won the political contest.

It has been an unprecedented year for litigation for the elections watchdog, said political observers like Joe Heim, professor emeritus of political science at University of Wisconsin-La Crosse.

“I would bet the six members of that board never anticipated this. Of course, who could have,” Heim said.

Reid Magney, spokesman for the GAB, said the board does not have any comment on the lawsuits, individually or collectively.

He said GAB staff was preparing for a hearing on Dec. 29 on the litigation filed by the governor’s campaign concerning recall petition review and could not complete Wisconsin Reporter’s request for the exact numbers of lawsuits or the costs to taxpayers in defending them.

“The only comment I might make is that you should differentiate between the lawsuits we are involved in (i.e voter photo ID and redistricting) because we administer laws passed by the legislature, and those that are the result of some Board action (recall administration),” Magney said in an email to Wisconsin Reporter.

GAB is named or listed as a defendant in election and campaign lawsuits merely due to the nature of its mission.

The defense of the board throughout has been consistent from the recall petition review process to voter ID: GAB is simply administering the law.

“The plaintiffs are challenging the rules that have been established by statutes and administrative code, and which have been in place since the late 1980s,” GAB Director Kevin Kennedy told The Associated Press news service last week in response to the GOP lawsuit. “Since then, these rules have been used in every state and local recall petition effort against incumbents of both parties.”

Now, the GAB, the bipartisan creation of lawmakers who were fed up with what they saw as the partisanship and gridlock of the GAB’s predecessor, may have to fight for its existence.

Assembly Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald, R-Horicon, offered that the old state elections and ethics board had its charms.

Heim said the GAB has been praised for its nonpartisan administration, although Republicans have criticized GAB staff member David Buerger, the election specialist who publicly noted the board’s position on screening recall signatures.

Republicans said Buerger used his personal Twitter account to praise a blog posting ridiculing state Sen. Mary Lazich, R-New Berlin, as “Crazy Mary.”

“I would say in this day and age, people have to be careful about what they do in social media. They’ve got to know it’s all public,” Heim said.

Still, he said Republicans and Democrats have attacked the GAB for political purposes, more so the GOP these days because of their majority status.

“We are in a litigious society,” the professor said. “It seems like the sign of the times, that politics has become such a blood sport that leaves no prisoners, no strategies behind. Civility and deference are no longer rules of the game.”