Monday, January 16, 2012

Enter The Chief's Recall Total Pool

The rules are simple:
  • Estimate the total number of signatures United Wisconsin will submit to the GAB tomorrow in the comments section below. Forecast any of the individual races or go for the grand total.
  • The winner gets a limerick composed in their honor written by yours truly.
The Chief's official guess is 789,623 for Walker. 532,687 for Kleefisch. 22,777 for Moulton. 23,337 for Wangaard.  23,783 for Galloway. 25,448 for Fitzgerald. That's a grand total of  1,417,655.


How did we arrive at our guess? The Dems passed along that they are in possession of over 3000 pounds of signatures in a fund-raising plea today. I assume that's for everyone: Walker, Kleefisch and the four senators.

If we assume that each petition was printed out on twenty pound bond paper, which is standard for copying paper, then the Recall Effort will have collected no less than 295,857 sheets of paper -- presuming that one ream (or 500 pieces) weighs 5.07 pounds.

And this is where things start to get dicey. Some petitions have enough room for five signatures, some ten. Assuming each petition is filled out completely (an extreme unlikelihood), that gives us a window between 1,479,285 -- hypothetically more than enough to initiate recalls for all six targets -- and almost three million.

If the drive does exceed our expectations -- and here we're just talking about the Walker drive -- these are a few important milestones:
  • 1,004,303 -- The number of people who voted for Tom Barrett in 2010.
  • 1,080,480 -- 50% of voters who voted in 2010
  • 1,128,159 -- The number of people who voted for Scott Walker in 2010.
We'll explain how we arrives at our numbers on Wednesday. Spoiler Alert: it was mostly guessing.

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