Group submits signatures to recall Wisconsin Assembly speaker targeted by Trump

A group seeking to oust the Republican speaker of the Wisconsin State Assembly over his handling of Donald Trump’s 2020 reelection loss in the state submitted signatures Monday in hopes of forcing a recall election.

The group, Recall Vos, said it had collected 10,700 signatures, more than the roughly 7,000 signatures required from voters in the district Speaker Robin Vos represents. The deadline was Monday.

“The people of Racine County have spoken,” recall leader Matt Snorek said in a statement. “With more than 10,000 signatures on our recall petition, they’ve said it loud and clear: They’re tired of the status quo and demand new representation.”

Vos has cast doubt on the validity of the signatures and criticized the effort as a waste of time in a critical election year.

Trump supporters have been persistently targeting Vos since the 2020 election, when Trump narrowly lost Wisconsin, a crucial battleground state, after winning it four year earlier. While Vos launched an investigation into the results, he resisted Trump’s pressure to figure out a way to overturn the outcome, calling it impossible and unconstitutional. Biden’s 2020 win has endured throughout, and there has been no evidence of widespread fraud in the election.

In 2022, Trump backed a primary challenger to Vos, who prevailed by a slim margin.

Snorek filed the recall petition in January, saying Vos is “blocking fair elections.” Snorek also cited Vos’s December 2022 comment that he will “try as hard as I can to make sure Donald Trump is not the nominee” in 2024. Vos has since said he will vote for Trump, now the likely nominee, in November.

In a statement released Sunday, when the recall campaign announced that it had enough signatures, he said he has assembled a team to “evaluate each individual signature.”

“It’s truly sad that a group of people who didn’t get their way in the 2020 election are wasting resources and effort … to settle a political score rather than better using their time to defeat our ineffective Democrat President,” Vos said.

Under Wisconsin law, recall organizers are required to collect a number of signatures that equals at least 25 percent of the most recent gubernatorial vote in the district. The target of the petition has 10 days to challenge the signatures once they are submitted.

The Wisconsin Elections Commission, a bipartisan six-member panel, is ultimately responsible for deeming a petition sufficient and calling an election. The commission is scheduled to discuss the recall petition at a special meeting Tuesday.

Vos, who first became speaker in 2013, is the longest-serving speaker in Wisconsin history. He represents a district in southeastern Wisconsin, south of Milwaukee.