A statewide push to recall Republican Gov. Rick Snyder will fall short of the number of signatures needed to put the issue on the February ballot, supporters of the effort said Tuesday.The Recall Rick Snyder campaign collected more than 500,000 signatures statewide ? including about 9,000 in Livingston County ? toward the roughly 1.1 million signatures needed to put the issue before voters next year, a mass mailing from the county effort read.
The grass-roots campaign needed to collect the signatures before the end of the month to appear on the February ballot.
"We have given it our best, and we have met some fantastic people as we went through this adventure. However, we did not reach our 1.1 million signatures that were needed to recall Governor Snyder at this time," organizers Dawn and Mike Lewkowicz said in the e-mail
"We will be forever grateful to have met all of you, and will forever be grateful for your help and efforts to stop this horrible take over of our government," the couple continued in the mailing.
To clarify the above passage, the actual signature requirement was 806,522. A goal of 1.1 million was set in order to have a cushion in the inevitable circumstance that some of the signatures turned out to be invalid. At this time, while the Committee to Recall Rick Snyder is still engaged in the final count to determine exactly how many signatures they gathered, it is likely that the final total will be roughly two-thirds of the minimum requirement and one-half of the overall campaign goal.
Given that this was an all-volunteer effort put together by 6,000 grassroots activists, multiple political operatives in Michigan have expressed astonishment to organizers over the large signature haul. Considering further that the campaign was backed by less than $75,000, more than half of which was raised by the Daily Kos community, the effort has proven that it is possible to recall Rick Snyder for a lot less money than what some political analysts in Michigan previously postulated.
In addition to proving that it is possible to recall Rick Snyder?something which should really give him pause?this effort has identified over 500,000 Michiganders hostile to his agenda. Many of those 500,000+ are Democrats, but a substantial number are actually Independents or even Republicans. That sort of information will prove extremely useful in a wide range of future campaigns in the Wolverine State. For example, several of the dozens of local recall efforts in Michigan have already received big boosts because of this.
What we really gained in this campaign is a new wave of grassroots activists in Michigan. Very few, if any, of the organizers central to the effort had ever done any professional political work of any sort. For many of the volunteers, this was the most engaged they had ever been in any political campaign. There was even one amazing volunteer who personally gathered 10,000 signatures (some campaign really needs to hire that volunteer, and fast).
Currently, the volunteers are talking over ways to restructure their organization and continue to work together in the future. They will not simply slip into the ether.
The over 2,000 Kossacks who volunteered for the campaign, and the over 3,000 who donated, made a huge impact. During the first 30 days of the campaign, only 10,000 signatures were gathered. However, half a million were gathered in the last 90 days, significantly because we were able to use your contributions to provide experienced field consulting and also to sign up thousands of more volunteers though online ads. Even many of the petitions the volunteers circulated were only able to be printed because of your donations.
All of the volunteers and donors deserve our gratitude. Thanks also goes out to those organizations who engaged their members in this effort, including Eclectablog, the Michigan Education Association, Michigan Forward, MoveOn.org, Democracy for America and the Progressive Change Campaign Committee.
Thank you to everyone. Keep fighting.
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