Curmudgeon's Corner
cur-mud-geon: anyone who hates hypocrisy and pretense and has the temerity to say so; anyone with the habit of pointing out unpleasant facts in an engaging and humorous manner
GAB Makes News Again
The Government Accountability Board (GAB) finds itself in the news again this morning with its decision to withhold the signature petitions involved in the Walker recall effort. Supposedly this is for a brief period during which the GAB will ponder the request of some signers that their signatures and address information be kept from public view. One of the examples mentioned involves a person who was a stalking victim.
This sort of flies in the face of the fact that these are public documents. Any person who signs a public document has to understand that their signature and related information is going to be public.
This denies me my right to be sure my signature isn't among those collected since I didn't sign a petition of recall. This just further erodes the public's confidence in the accountability of the GAB. We may decide that we need a Government Accountability Board Accountability Board at this rate. This is a highly charged political situation. These folks are in the middle of this situation and this kind of action, even if temporary, adds to the questions raised about ET signing, etc., etc., and about the veracity of the documents themselves.
Unless and until we see the documents, the GAB is going to be taking rhetorical fire over their decision, and rightfully so from my perspective. The delay throws more wood on the fire since there is a very limited timeframe involved in which signatures are to be available for verification.
If nothing else, the information lines for those who have finally discovered they might be found and who sign notarized affidavits attesting to their fears, could simply be redacted on the documents to be released to the public. This fairly simple and straightforward approach might have served to keep the GAB out of the news. Surely someone on that Board must've considered this since the members are very much aware of the legal system and fairness issues.
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