Frederica Freyberg:

Two significant developments related to recall politics. This afternoon Governor Scott Walker through his campaign, Friends of Scott Walker, announced that he will be voluntarily meeting with Milwaukee county District Attorney John Chisholm to discuss the ongoing John Doe investigation into alleged illegal political activities among his Milwaukee county office staff. Also today, an appeals court agreed with a Democratic challenge and overturned a Waukesha County judge's ruling that required the Government Accountability Board to search for duplicate and false names on the Walker recall petitions. Even as the GAB continues its petition review, Waukesha County will have to hold another hearing on the issue, this time with the lawyer for the democrats in the courtroom. The impact on the process? The appeals court has yet to decide whether or not the GAB should stop searching for bogus names until that hearing occurs. Now, petition pages of signatures gathered to recall Governor Scott Walker are now online for the public to see. The GAB released them a day later than planned this week, after the American Civil Liberties Union raised concerns on behalf of, among others, victims of domestic violence. The ACLU has continuing concerns about the signatures and identifying information being put online in easy to search databases.

Stacy Harbaugh:

The ACLU has heard from a wide variety of individuals who do have concerns about their information being released from the internet, everything from domestic violence survivors and targets of stalking, to people who fear workplace retaliation and harassment. We really feel that at the minimum state law already provides for privacy protections for confidential electors and those same privacy protectors should be extended before any further publication of recall petitions is made available.

Frederica Freyberg:

What's online right now is more than 153,000 pages of unsearchable .PDF files. The GAB's Kevin Kennedy says it's not yet known if a searchable database will be made available online and any decision could await pending court action.