Recall Madness

Is there any chance that the Wisconsin electoral system won't be permanently rejiggered so that recall elections are always happening one year after someone is elected? I'm not saying the challengers will always win, but it's just not that hard to muster the signatures to get a recall race on the ballot.

Anyway, we're reaching the home stretch of the Wisconsin State Senate recall elections. Democrats need to win a net three seats to take back the chamber; my original prediction was that they'd get two. Dan Kapanke has been a dead man walking since the race started, and Randy Hopper is scandal-plagued and thus unusually vulnerable. The question is who would get them over the hump.

If internal polls are to be believed, the answer is Luther Olsen. Along with Kapanke and Hopper, reports are the Democrats polls have the good guys ahead against him as well. The same story also indicates that things are razor-thin against Robert Cowles, Sheila Harsdorf, and Alberta Darling. I don't have the specific numbers in front me, so I don't know how close is close, but unlike many of her peers Darling started off the recall campaign with her head above water, topping her hypothetical challenger 52/44. But she's been shooting herself in the foot with statements like claiming that people making over $250,000 "aren't wealthy people".

It's definitely the case that Republicans are nervous, as they've been hard at work trying to suppress the vote by sending out false information to Democratic voters about voting absentee while posing as a government agency. Sounds like a decent place for the DOJ to throw an elbow to me.