Wisconsin: None Dare Call It Vote Rigging

BushStole04
Bob Fitrakis

If vote-rigging prospers, none may call it vote-rigging. It simply becomes the new norm. Once again, the universal laws of statistics apply only outside U.S. borders. The recall vote in Wisconsin produced another significant 7% discrepancy between the unadjusted exit poll and the so-called "recorded vote." In actual social science, this level of discrepancy, with the results being so far outside the expected margin of error would not be accepted.

When I took Ph.D. statistics to secure my doctorate in political science, we were taught to work through the rubric, sometime referred to as HISMISTER. The "H" stood for an explanation of the discrepancy rooted in some historical intervention, such as one of the candidates being caught in a public restroom with his pants down and a "wide stance" soliciting an undercover cop. The "I" that came next suggested we should check our instrumentation, that is, are the devices adequately reporting the data?

Here's where U.S. elections become laughable. A couple of private companies, count our votes with secret proprietary hardware and software, the most notable being ES&S. Every standard of election transparency is routinely violated in the U.S. electronic version of faith-based voting. How the corporate-dominated media deals with the issue is by "adjusting the exit polls." They simply assume the recorded vote on easily hacked and programmed private machines are correct and that the international gold standard for detecting election fraud – exit polls – must be wrong.

They are not going to go through the rest of the acronym and check to see if the Sample makes sense, that the right Measurements are being taken, or whether or not there's been a breakdown in Implementing the exit polling. They won't check to see if the representative Size of the polling numbers are accurate, or if there are problems with the pollster's Technique, or if there was human Error, or if there's just bad Recording going on.

Of course, the machines could be recording wrong because they are programmed for an incorrect outcome. The easiest people to convince regarding the absurdity of electronic voting with private proprietary hardware and software are the computer programmers across the political spectrum. Statisticians and mathematicians also readily comprehend the obvious nature of rigged elections.

Exit Polls Suggest Fraud in Walker Recall

MarkCrispinMiller
Jonathon Simon

What we got tonight in Wisconsin was the same old stench, coming from the same old corner of the room. To wit, there was a huge turnout (highly favorable to the Democratic candidate Barrett), in fact they’re still waiting in line to vote in Milwaukee and elsewhere nearly two hours after poll closing; and the immediate post-closing Exit Polls had it a dead heat, 50%-50%. But the only place those polls were posted was as a Bar Chart in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Not a single network posted any Exit Poll numbers, though they all have been regularly posting them throughout the 2012 primary season within a few minutes of poll closing. But they all called the race “extremely tight,” since they were looking at the same 50%-50% Exit Poll that the Journal Sentinel at least had the courage to post in some format.

In short order, and quite predictably, the race was Walker’s, the networks anointing him the winner as the Exit Poll “Adjustment” Process played out. You could actually see it on the Journal Sentinel’s Bar Chart: the blue bars shrinking and the red bars lengthening every 20 minutes or so. It will take a bit of visual measuring but the adjustment process was egregious, on the order of an 8-10% marginal disparity between the Unadjusted Exit Polls and the Adjusted Exit Polls congruent to the eventually-to-be-announced “official results.”

We’ve seen this before, election after election, the familiar “Red Shift.” And it’s the Exit Polls that are always “off,” because the Votecounts must always be “on.” Except that the Votecounts are secret and in the full control of outfits, with strong right-wing affiliations, like Dominion Voting and Command Central. Votes counted by partisans in complete secret–is this sane?

Today massive robocalls were reported to have been placed to targeted Barrett supporters, telling them they didn’t have to vote if they had signed the recall petition, and others that they couldn’t vote if they hadn’t voted in 2010. An obvious question: is there a bright ethical line between making (whoever actually made them) targeted robocalls telling your opponents’ supporters they don’t have to vote if they signed the recall petition versus setting the zero-counters on a bunch of memory cards to, say, +50 (for Walker) and -50 (for Barrett) so at the end of the day the election admin sees a “clean” election and you’ve shifted 100 votes per precinct? Do you believe that operators who have clearly not blanched at doing the first would for some reason blanch at doing the second–much neater and more efficacious as it is?

And if you’re thinking “well the pre-election polls predicted a Walker win,” you should know that the methodology for all of those polls, even the ones run by left-leaning outfits, was the Likely Voter Cutoff Model (google it, by all means), which disproportionately eliminates Democratic voters (students, renters, poor, minority) from the sample and so skews it conveniently anywhere from 5% to 10% to the right (the pollsters all would have been out of business by now if they had kept using a sound methodology and getting competitive elections wrong with it).

This election was dubbed “the second most important election of 2012;” it will “foretell” November just as the Massachusetts Special Senate Election (Coakley-Brown) “foretold” November 2010. And there was a massive red shift and even more than the usual indicators that it was rigged. Can anyone live with that, just give it a pass, and sleep tonight?

–Jonathan Simon

Chrysler’s New Super Bowl Ad Whitewashes WI Union Signs

PR Web
Mary Bottari

Wisconsin made a brief, unexpected appearance at the Super Bowl yesterday. A new ad by Chrysler, “It’s Half Time in America,” voiced by Clint Eastwood, included a short clip of the historic Wisconsin protests from February 2011. Many in Wisconsin recognized the misty evening shot of the King Street entrance to the Wisconsin Capitol with Colonel Hans Christian Heg, who led the all-Scandanavian Regiment into the Civil War, in the foreground. Recognizing the shot, Wisconsinites went wild on Facebook and Twitter.

But what the cheeseheads quickly started to realize is that they did not recognize the protest signs in the shot. Apparently,  Chrysler was comfortable using the Wisconsin Capitol shot as a symbol of the nation’s discontent, but actually using pro-union signs was too much for the bailed-out car company. Somewhere along the line, red hearts and text were removed from the “Care for your educators like they care for your kids” signs. Plus, Madison Teachers Inc. signs -- MTI in a circle -- were weirdly written over as can be seen by this screen shot. At least there were no palm trees.

RT's Best of 2011

Walker intends to charge citizens fee to protest

Jim Crow Demos!

Rawstory
David Edwards

Scott Walker

Free speech is getting expensive in Wisconsin.

Following demonstrations earlier this year which drew up to 100,000 people to the Wisconsin Capitol, Republican Gov. Scott Walker has proposed new policies that would require future protesters to pay in advance to stage an event, at a cost of $50 per hour, per Capitol Police officer.

Police may also require a liability insurance or a bond, according to The Milwaukee Journal Sentinal.

Demonstrators will also be on the hook for any damage and cleanup following protests. Walker’s administration had claimed that the pro-union protests earlier this year had costs as much as $7.5 million, but later admitted that the actual costs were far less.

Under the new policy, permits will be required for groups of four or more people who want to do any activity inside the Capitol. Groups of 100 or more gathering outside the Capitol must also apply for a permit 72 hours in advance. Police will have some leeway if unforeseen events lead to spontaneous gatherings.

American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin executive director Chris Ahmuty agreed with the state’s allowance for spontaneous protests, but worried that some groups might have their right to freedom of assembly curbed because they could not afford to pay.

“It leaves too much discretion to the Capitol Police,” Ahmuty told the Journal Sentinel.
For their part, many activists are vowing not to be cowed by the new rules.

“This will only embolden people and get them to protest louder,” Nicole Desautels, who participates in a daily pro-labor, sing-along protest, explained to The Chicago Tribune.

“We are exercising our free speech rights,” Kimi Ishikawa, who also takes part in the sing-along, insisted. “Nothing will stop us.”

Organizers said Monday that they had gotten half the signatures needed to force a recall election of Gov. Walker.

“Every day, every week and every month that goes by, the voters of my state will more clearly see the benefits of the [anti-union] reforms,” Walker told the Republican Governors Association Thursday. “People have a clear choice.”

Senate president can’t gavel down truth: Voter ID bill is voter suppression bill

The Cap Times

Democratic senators march around the
Capitol Square to the cheers of thousands
of supporters during the Capitol protests
this past spring. Mark Miller is front left,
and Fred Risser is front right.

Senate President Mike Ellis, under pressure from Gov. Scott Walker and the out-of-state political interests that seek to game our politics, lost it last week.

The Neenah Republican was literally sputtering, grumbling “shut up” and banging his gavel in order to silence senators who sought to raise legitimate objections about the rush to pass a voter ID bill. The legislation in question was written by Washington-based political strategists with an eye toward disenfranchising students, the elderly, people of color and low-income urban and rural citizens going into the 2012 presidential election.

Ellis tried to silence the senior member of the Wisconsin Legislature — indeed, the senior legislator in the nation — but state Sen. Fred Risser, D-Madison, calmly continued to outline the fundamental flaws in the voter ID bill.

Ellis and his Republican colleagues may not have wanted to hear it, but Risser was saying something important, something every Wisconsinite should recognize.

“This legislation is nothing more than a voter suppression measure. It will have a significant negative effect on the ability of many individuals — seniors, students, rural residents, and people with disabilities — to vote,” said the state senator.

“Supporters argue this measure is necessary to stop voter fraud, which has proven to be practically nonexistent in Wisconsin. The truth is that the bill’s supporters want to impose as many roadblocks as possible to make it more difficult for certain segments of the population to vote,” he added. “Wisconsin should work to find ways to strengthen election procedures and voter turnout without erecting additional barriers to disenfranchise our citizens.”

Those are hardly the sort of incendiary remarks that needed to be silenced by the Senate president’s gavel.

But they do represent the truth. And in Wisconsin these days, there are a lot of powerful people who fear the truth.

Share your opinion on this topic by sending a letter to the editor to tctvoice@madison.com. Include your full name, hometown and phone number. Your name and town will be published. The phone number is for verification purposes only. Please keep your letter to 250 words or less.

Boston meeting discusses Libya, Palestine, Wisconsin

Workers World
By Frank Neisser 

A multinational crowd filled the room at the Action Center here on April 16 for a World View Forum featuring Joyce Chediac, editor of the new book, “Gaza: Symbol of Resistance.” Chediac’s topics were the U.S.’s real aims in Libya and the central role of the Palestinian struggle.

Chediac discussed the current imperialist war that has been launched against Libya and analyzed the role of the U.S. She pointed out how terms like “democracy” mask what is really going on, and that the only way to make sense of it is to start from the role of imperialism. Chediac showed on a map how at the beginning of the 20th century the imperialists had carved up the territory of the Arab world to suit their own interests and described how every imperialist intervention for “humanitarian” purposes has actually harmed the people and served only to tighten imperialist control, citing recent events in Haiti as an example.

Chediac also highlighted the heroic role of the Palestinian people in resisting Zionism and imperialism, pointing out that the recent Arab uprisings show that the Israeli settler state remains imperialism’s only reliable police force in the Middle East. Israel is prepared to take any military action to further imperialism’s control of and access to the resources that belong to the people of the Middle East — above all, oil. A lively and vigorous discussion followed, and at the end of the evening many copies of “Gaza: Symbol of Resistance” were sold, signed by the editor.

The program was rounded out with a dynamic eyewitness report from the workers’ struggles in Wisconsin presented by Ed Childs, chief shop steward of UNITE/HERE Local 26, Harvard University’s cafeteria workers. Childs gave a vivid sense of the surging rise in mass consciousness that is palpable in the workers’ resistance movement in Wisconsin. He cited as an example an anti-war demonstration that became a workers’ demonstration with the unions, leading the way, carrying anti-war signs.

Fox News Airs Random Protest Video To Make Wisconsin Demonstrations Appear Violent

ThinkProgress

Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly isn’t happy that protesters in Wisconsin have been calling out his network for its shoddy journalism practices. Last week, O’Reilly sent his ambush goon Jesse Watters out to badger people protesting Fox outside their studios in New York. On Monday during an interview with Fox News’ Mike Tobin, who is reporting from Wisconsin, O’Reilly was at it again, calling chants that “Fox lies” from pro-union demonstrators “some kind of organized deal.” But during the interview, Fox aired b-roll of some unknown protest that contained physical confrontations among demonstrators and simply labeled it “union protests,” as if it was coming out of Wisconsin. Watch it:



Digby asked of the video, “What’s wrong with this picture?” adding, “If you guessed the snowless ground and palm trees in Wisconsin you win a big prize. Your sanity.”

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker gives $140 million in tax breaks right before announcing this fiscal year's deficit of $137 million

The Nation

It should be the sound of the other shoe dropping, but you’ll have to listen hard to Governor Scott Walker’s budget address because most media will miss most of it. It’s a funny thing about covering budgets. Cutting spending garners a whole lot more attention than cutting taxes.

How many Americans know, for example, that Governor Walker gave $140 million in tax breaks to corporations—right before he announced this fiscal year's deficit of $137 million? The good people I met last week at the Wisconsin Budget Project call that a structural deficit. I’d go further. It’s not only structural; it’s structured—to bring about exactly this phony budget crisis.



As Scott Walker refuses to budge on his so-called budget repair bill, Wisconsin is bracing now for his actual budget. It's anticipated to cut almost a billion from education, literally scuttling public schools in heavily African-American cities like Milwaukee. And we already know Walker’s plans include shrinking Medicaid while privatizing public utilities, shrinking yet more routes for revenue.

Tea Partyers convening in Phoenix this week, sprang to their feet at the mention of Walker. But they’re only one side of this argument. According to a New York Times poll this week, Americans oppose weakening the bargaining rights of public employee unions—as Walker would—by a margin of nearly two to one. Given a list of options to reduce the deficit, 40 percent said they would increase taxes; only 3 percent opt for cutting education.

What’s really playing out here isn’t a battle over numbers. It’s that debate: What is government for? Stripping profit of all responsibility to people, or protecting the public welfare? Walker’s making his answer clear. And the conflict, as “Fighting Bob” LaFollette said, has been joined by the people. It’s wealth vs. the common weal. Capital or community.

Wisconsin Governor Defies Court Order to Open Capitol

PRWatch

Local Sheriff's Department Refuses to be Part of the "Palace Guard"

Madison – In a dramatic turn of events at the Wisconsin State Capitol today, Governor Scott Walker defied a court order to open the Capitol for normal business operations. State legislator, Representative Marc Pocan, called the move "not only unprecedented, but contempt of court as well."

On Monday at 8:00 a.m., the Wisconsin Capitol building, which was the site of dozens of major protests in the last two weeks -- including one of over 100,00 on Sunday -- was virtually locked down as the Governor moved to limit protester access in advance of his scheduled budget address on Tuesday.

After untold numbers were turned away at the door Monday and told they could not speak to their legislators, Dane County Sheriff David Mahoney pulled his deputies from the Capitol saying it was not their job to act as "palace guard." Wisconsin has some of the strongest open meetings and open government laws in the nation, and the local sheriff's department had played a key role in allowing protesters to exercise their legal rights in a public space, while keeping the protests inside and outside the Capitol safe and incident-free.

On Tuesday morning, it became clear that nothing had changed. Former Wisconsin Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager petitioned the Dane County Court to open the Capitol. That petition was heard early on Tuesday and a temporary restraining order granting the request was issued promptly at 9:30 a.m.

The order said that the respondent, Walker's Department of Administration, "shall open the Wisconsin Capitol to members of the public during business hours and at times when governmental matters, such as hearings, listening sessions and court arguments are being conducted." The Capitol had dozens of hearings scheduled Monday and Tuesday. It has long been state law to allow unfettered access to the Capitol building when legislative business was underway. Now citizens are faced with a barrage of new rules. They could see their legislator, in some instances, if they called ahead and were escorted by an aide. (Some Republican legislators could not be bothered to ferry their constituents into the Capitol building.) They could attend a committee hearing if they called the Sergeant at Arms to register in advance. All people entering the Capitol are wanded. "Even after 9-11 we never did any of this stuff," one protester in the crowd said.

By 10:30 a.m., a crowd of about 500 had gathered outside the Capitol seeking to be let in, but were blocked by a coalition of police from around the state. The diverse crowd of protesters included a contingent from the Jackson Correctional Center in Black River Falls, a group of Janesville firefighters and representatives of the Menominee Indian tribe from Northern Wisconsin.

Someone grabbed a megaphone and read the court order, prompting emphatic cries of "Let Us In!" and "Whose house? Our house!" But as the day wore on and no additional access was granted, tensions were high and many were left dumbfounded and disbelieving. The state Department of Administration issued a statement late in the day, stating that the limited access measures they had in place were compliant with the court order.

The whole matter ended up back in court at 2:15 p.m. Hoping for a quick resolution that would allow the Capitol to open for the Governor's budget address, the burgeoning crowds were disappointed when the court hearing wore on and on and was eventually extended into the next day. In the mean time, well-dressed supporters of the Governor were granted tickets and escorted inside. Various lobbyists were seen entering and exiting the Capitol including the lobbyist for alcohol and tobacco interests in the state.

"You expect this kind of thing in Alabama not Wisconsin," said one person at the barred door, referring to the Governor George Wallace's attempted to deny black students their civil right to an education in 1963.

When the Governor's budget was unveiled at 4:00 p.m., it became quite clear why the Governor feared his constituents. No Wisconsinite will be unaffected by the bill. He cuts funding for schools and local governments by $1 billion, Medicaid and Badger Care by $500 million, ends state aid for recycling, expands school choice, gets rid of phosphorus rules that keep lakes and rivers clean, and cuts programs that poor college-bound students. He hands out $82 million in corporate tax breaks -- on top of the $100 million already approved -- while at the same time he takes away $42 million in tax credits for the poorest Wisconsinites. A crowd now registering many thousands made a ruckus outside that could be heard faintly inside the Assembly Chamber. The few protesters who managed to make it into the chamber were escorted out after one let loose a single "boo."

All this on top of his "budget repair bill" which guts collective bargaining for state workers -- a 50-year tradition in Wisconsin. "What we're seeing is a hostile corporate takeover of Wisconsin," State Senator John Erpenbach, one of the Wisconsin 14 currently visiting the great state of Illinois. Plus, the budget will result in the "absolute annihilation" of public education, according to state Rep. Tamara Grigsby.

Tomorrow a new day will dawn on Walker's Wisconsin. Already voters are expressing buyer's remorse. A new poll says if the election were held again today, Wisconsinites would elect Walker's opponent 52-45. If Walker keeps this up, Badger State voters may have a chance to do so in a recall election next year.

Koch Brothers “Prank” No Laughing Matter

Center for Media and Democracy

Embattled Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker came under fire today after news broke about statements he made in a 20-minute phone call from a Buffalo-area alternative news reporter, Ian Murphy of the Daily Beast, posing as David Koch, a billionaire whose corporate PAC directly supported Walker and who has given millions to groups that have run ads to aid Walker's rise to the state's highest office. (Listen to the call here.)
As the Center for Media and Democracy has reported, the Koch PAC not only spent $43,000 directly on Walker's race, but Koch personally donated $1 million to the Republican Governors Association which spent $5 million in the state. Besides the Governor, the Koch brothers have other “vested interests" in the state.
They include Koch Pipeline Company, which operates a pipeline system that crosses Wisconsin. It also owns Flint Hill Resources, which distributes refined fuel through pipelines and terminals in Junction City, Waupun, Madison and Milwaukee. Koch Industries also owns the C. Reiss Coal Company, a power plant company located in Green Bay, Manitowoc, Ashland and Sheboygan.
The Koch company opened a lobby shop in Wisconsin two days after Walker was elected.  Many protesters have suspected that the “budget repair bill” provisions allowing the no-bid sell-off of any state-owned heating, cooling, or power plant, plus new rules on pipeline transport may be of interest to Koch. The company has denied any interest in these assets. 

Pink Slips as Poker Chips Raises Legal Concerns

At the start of the call, Walker eagerly reports on all he is doing: 

 First, he tells the fake Koch brother about a plan to change Senate rules on pay to reel-in the out-of state Democratic senators who are holding out to protect collective bargaining. The new rule would force the Senators to pick up their paychecks in person. This rule was passed in a partisan vote in the Senate yesterday -- a move that went unnoticed by the mainstream press. 

The fake Koch asks Walker how they might get others in Senate to vote to stop collective bargaining. Walker responds that he's involved the Justice Department in investigating whether the union is paying the absent Democratic senators to remain out of state, or providing them with food, shelter, etc., saying it would be an ethics violation or potentially a felony. Wisconsin legislators are well aware of these rules and have already stated they are using their own money while they are out of state.

But the Governor also explains how he is going to lay off thousands of Wisconsin workers as a tactic to get the Democrats to cooperate: "So, we’re trying about four or five different angles. Each day we crank up a little bit more pressure. The other thing is I’ve got layoff notices ready, we put out the at-risk notices, we’ll announce Thursday, they’ll go out early next week and we’ll probably get five to six thousand state workers will get at-risk notices for layoffs. We might
 ratchet that up a little bit too."
The move has been called “despicable” and “ruthless “ and “sickening.” But most importantly, if Walker is choosing to lay off workers as a political tactic when he wasn’t otherwise planning to do so, then it is not just morally repugnant, but legally questionable. State and federal contract and labor law has protections against this type of abusive behavior and inappropriate quid pro quo.

This morning the Capital Times quotes the state’s former Attorney General: “There clearly are potential ethics violations, and there are potential election-law violations and there are a lot of what look to me like labor-law violations,” said Peg Lautenschlager, a Democrat who served as Wisconsin’s Attorney General after serving for many years as a U.S. Attorney. The head of the state teacher's association, Mary Bell, reminds us: “He literally planned to use five to six thousand hardworking Wisconsin taxpayers as political pawns in his political game. He actually thought through a strategy to lay people off -- deny them the ability to feed their families -- and use it as leverage for his political goals."

Kids and Hired Thugs

Walker also says he considered then rejected the idea of hiring trouble makers to disrupt the rallies, which have been packed with elementary school children and highs schoolers. When fake Koch says “We’ll back you any way we can. But what we were thinking about the crowd was, uh, was planting some troublemakers.” Walker says: “we thought about that," but he rejected the idea in case it back-fired, but not in the way one might think.  He didn’t want to  “scare the public into thinking maybe the governor as to settle to avoid all these problems.”


Madison Police Chief Noble Wray said Thursday “very unsettling and troubling.” “I would like to hear more of an explanation from Governor Walker as to what exactly was being considered, and to what degree it was discussed by his cabinet members. I find it very unsettling and troubling that anyone would consider creating safety risks for our citizens and law enforcement officers,” the chief said.

Wisconsin Ethics Rules



 Wisconsin has the toughest ethics law in the nation. Public officials are prohibited from soliciting or receiving anything of value if it could reasonably be expected to influence or reward official actions. The rules against “pay-to-play politics” say a public official is prohibited from taking official action in exchange for political contributions, or anything else of value for the benefit of a candidate, political party, or any person making certain candidate-related communications. You can’t even take a cup of coffee from a lobbyist.

Earlier in the call, Walker had asked the fake Koch for help “spreading the word,” especially in the "swing" districts, in defense of his determination to break the unions, and help get calls in to shore up his Republican allies in the legislature. Walker benefited from a high-dollar "issue ad" campaign by groups funded by Koch group before the election. Americans for Prosperity, which Koch chairs, also promoted and funded a couple thousand counter-protestors last Saturday.

On the same day that the scandal broke here in Wisconsin, Americans for Prosperity went up with a $342,000 TV ad campaign in support of Walker –- an enormous sum in a state like Wisconsin. If such ads are effectively coordinated with the Governor's office, they may be subject to rules requiring greater disclosure of expenditures and contributors.



Toward the end of the call, the fake Koch offers to fly Walker out to California, after they "crush the bastards," and show him "a good time," to which Walker responds enthusiastically, "All right, that would be outstanding." But,Wisconsin rules bar state officials from taking action for something of value. After Walker agrees to the junket, the fake Koch adds, "And, you know, we have a little bit of a vested interest as well" to which Walker responds, "Well that's just it."



Conclusion

So while Walker did not apparently not recognize Koch's voice, he certainly recognized his name, eagerly recounting his efforts to crush collective bargaining in Wisconsin to an out-of-state billionaire backer and thanking him for all Koch had done for him. The entire conversation raises ethical concerns that warrant much closer examination, especially with Wisconsin's tough pay-to-play rules. A week ago the Center for Media and Democracy filed an open records request for the Governor's phone records, email records, and other communications. Perhaps these records will help us understand all the influences behind the Governor's recent radical actions.

Wisconsin is not Illinois; it has a reputation for being a squeaky clean state where lesser scandals than this have brought down political officials. Governor Walker likes to complain of “outside agitators.” It's hard to imagine an outside agitator with more influence and money than the Koch-family.

In Wisconsin Fight, Officials Search Capitol for Democrats

Market Watch

By Kris Maher And Douglas Belkin 

Wisconsin state officials began searching for 14 missing state senate Democrats who failed to show up at a floor session at the capitol in protest of Republican Gov. Scott Walker's budget bill, which continued to draw massive protests from public-employee union members on Thursday.

The state senate's sergeant at arms searched the Democrats' offices in the capitol building as a first step in locating them, according to a staff member of Republican senate leader Scott Fitzgerald. The staff member said that because of all the union protesters crowding into the capitol, the search of offices was slower than it would have been normally.

The Democrats' action has halted a vote on the bill, which would strip state's public employees of most collective-bargaining rights, because the senate lacks a quorum needed to pass a fiscal bill under state law. Twenty members of the 33-member house need to be present, so the body's 19 Republicans will not be enough to pass the budget-repair bill without at least one Democrat present.

The state assembly has 60 Republicans and 38 Democrats, but it is unclear whether any Democratic lawmakers from that body have left the capitol.

The bill has sparked three days of massive protests by public-sector unions around the state capitol, as well as the closure of public schools in Madison as hundreds of teachers called in sick. On Wednesday President Barack Obama weighed in on the dispute, calling the bill "an assault" on unions.

It's not clear what immediate steps Republican lawmakers or other state officials would take in the absence of Democrats from the capitol. Chris Schrimpf, a spokesman for Mr. Walker, said "We remain confident that the legislation will pass. I think it will happen today."

Last night, at about midnight, the state's joint finance committee passed the bill, which set it up for a vote today by a session of the joint assembly. Mr. Fitzgerald said that Wisconsin is leading the country "in bringing the public sector back in line with the private sector." He added, "There are no easy solutions to the problems our state is facing."  

Thousands of union members and supporters have jammed the capitol grounds and the building itself for the last several days as a powerful legislative committee began hearings this week on a proposal introduced just a week ago by Mr. Walker.

The plan, which Mr. Walker calls a "budget repair" bill, would take away most bargaining rights for about 170,000 public-sector workers. It would limit collective bargaining for most state and local government employees to issues of wages, and exclude pensions and health care. It would also require government workers, who currently contribute little or nothing to their pensions, to contribute 5.8% of their pay to pensions, and pay at least 12.6% of health-care premiums, up from an average of 6%.
Mr. Walker said in an interview Tuesday that eliminating most bargaining rights would give local governments more flexibility to maintain jobs and services while finding ways to cut spending.
"We're giving these people the tools to balance budgets without laying people off," he said.
He said 5,500 state jobs and 5,000 local jobs would be saved under his plan, which would save $30 million in the current budget and $300 million in the two-year budget that begins July 1. Wisconsin faces a $137 million shortfall in the current budget that ends June 30 and a $3.6 billion gap in the coming two-year cycle.

Some union officials said organized labor needs to make the strongest stand possible in Wisconsin, if it hopes to fight off similar attempts to rein in collective-bargaining rights in other states for both public- and private-sector workers, moves that could eventually erode union membership, finances and political clout at a national level.

"This is a big deal," said Dennis Van Roekel, president of the National Education Association, the nation's biggest union with 3.2 million members. "Plain and simple, this is a politically motivated attack."

He framed the Wisconsin fight as being part of a broader debate about workers rights. "This is an important point where we think about what we want as a nation, and do we want to bring people together to solve tough problems. It's not about silencing people that you don't agree with," he said.
Mr. Van Roekel's union, which is also the biggest in Wisconsin with 98,000 members, has used Facebook and email to communicate with members all week. It asked teachers not to report to work on Thursday and Friday and go to Madison to join in protests, which prompted more schools to close on Thursday around the state. He said of Mr. Walker's bill, "It's galvanized our membership. They're on fire."

Separately, in Ohio, more than 5,000 teachers, fire fighters and other union members, many wearing red T-shirts, showed up at the capitol in Columbus to protest a bill that Republican Gov. John Kasich has proposed that would eliminate collective-bargaining rights for many of the state's 400,000 public sector workers.

Unions in Ohio say they delivered tens of thousands of emails, post cards and phone message to the state's lawmakers, opposing the bill.