By M.D. Kittle | Wisconsin Reporter

MADISON — The state Government Accountability Board will spend $100,000 for software and support services to better vet recall petition signatures, a move that appears to bring the board in compliance with a judge’s order.

Members of the agency, which administers elections and campaigns, received the update at Thursday’s GAB meeting.

The board is buying high-level optical character recognition, or OCR, software to take PDF scans of the expected hundreds of thousands of recall petition signatures and turn them into a database. GAB staff then will refer to the database to ensure there are no duplicate signatures, said GAB spokesman Reid Magney.

“The thing we couldn’t do before is find duplicates,” he said. “Our options were either to hand enter all of the names and information into a database directly or use OCR technology to do most of that work. It’s not going to get every name correctly, but it does fairly good job.”

GAB’s purchase follows Waukesha County Circuit Judge J. Mac Davis’ ruling earlier this month ordering the elections board take affirmative steps to identify and strike duplicate, fictitious or unrecognizable signatures while reviewing recall petitions anticipated to be filed against Gov. Scott Walker and Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch.

Last month, the Republican Party of Wisconsin filed a lawsuit in Waukesha County Circuit Court, demanding the GAB more thoroughly vet the signatures, after board officials said it would be up to incumbent campaigns to check for duplicates and phony names, such as Mickey Mouse.

Magney said the software meets the judge’s standard.

“With the exception of the duplicate signatures, we were already planning to do everything the judge ordered us to do,” Magney said. “In the event the ruling would be overturned because of the appeal, we would still go forward with this (software).”

The Democratic Party of Wisconsin, which contested the GOP’s lawsuit, is appealing the decision.

Ben Sparks, spokesman for the Republican Party of Wisconsin, said the party is “encouraged by the efforts of the GAB to strike fraudulent or duplicate signatures.”

“Our primary goal is to ensure that Wisconsin voters are not disenfranchised during the recall process,” Sparks said.

The software and support raise the recall bill for Wisconsin taxpayer’s, an expense already pegged at north of $9 million for one statewide general recall election, according to a GAB estimate.