MADISON, Wis. — Supporters of former President Donald Trump submitted 16 more valid signatures than needed to force a recall election of Wisconsin’s top elected Republican depending on what district the recall should be held in, based on a review by the state elections commission released Tuesday.

The Wisconsin Elections Commission will meet Thursday to vote on whether to order a recall election targeting Assembly Speaker Robin Vos. But the key question for the commission will be whether signatures to force the recall needed to come from the district Vos was elected to represent in the 2022 election, or if they should have come from his district created under new maps in effect for the 2024 election.

If the old maps are used, petition circulators gathered just enough signatures to force a recall, the elections commission staff said. If the new maps are used, they fell more than 3,000 signatures short. The staff took no position on which maps should be used.

The commission’s decision on whether to call the recall election can be appealed to circuit court.

Recall organizers targeted Vos, the longest-serving Assembly speaker in Wisconsin history, after he refused calls to decertify President Joe Biden’s narrow win in the state. Biden’s win of about 21,000 votes has withstood two partial recounts, numerous lawsuits, an independent audit and a review by a conservative law firm.

Vos further angered Trump supporters when he did not back a plan to impeach Meagan Wolfe, the state’s top elections official.

Vos, who has derided those targeting him as “whack jobs and morons,” said in a statement that he was confident the petitioners have not gathered enough legal signatures and will make that argument to the commission on Thursday.

The elections commission asked the Wisconsin Supreme Court to clarify whether any recall election should take place in the district where Vos was elected to serve, or under new district boundary lines that take effect for the regular November election.

The court in April declined to further clarify or amend its December ruling that found the current maps to be unconstitutional and barred their future use.

Vos asserted that the recall effort must be rejected because of the Supreme Court’s order barring any future elections using the old district lines. But petition circulators said it can go forward because the state constitution allows for the recall of any incumbent.

Elections staff did not take a side, leaving it up to the bipartisan commission to decide what to do.

If the commission decides to order a recall election, it would be held on Aug. 6. If more than two candidates run in a recall election, the primary for that would be Aug. 6, with the recall election Sept. 3.

The state’s regular fall primary election, where Vos will be on the ballot seeking another two-year term, is Aug. 13. Even if there is a recall election and Vos loses, he would only be out of office through the end of the year. He could win the general election and be back in office starting in January. The Legislature is not scheduled to be in session again until January.

Trump supporters, including former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman, on May 28 submitted more than 9,000 signatures to trigger the recall election.

They needed 6,850 valid signatures to force a recall election in the district where Vos was elected to serve. There were 6,866 valid signatures collected from that district.

There needed to be 7,195 from Vos’s new district for a recall, but only 3,807 were collected from that one, the elections commission report said.

In March, the group submitted more than 9,000 signatures, but the elections commission determined that only 5,905 of them were valid.

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Out of the more than a dozen relatives gathered at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport on Tuesday to welcome 3-month-old Greyson Leo Phillips to Minnesota, Grandma Lori got first dibs.

“Oh, my heart is full,” said Lori Tocholke, Greyson’s maternal grandmother, as she reached in the stroller to pick up the wide-eyed infant. “Everybody’s here, and we’re all back together again, and everything is complete. It just feels right. We’re all family again, and that’s the biggest, biggest thing, I think.”

Greyson, who was born three months prematurely in Brazil, finally got to return “home” to Minnesota on Tuesday after his parents, Chris and Cheri Phillips, worked for months to secure an array of U.S. and Brazilian documents needed to let him leave Brazil and enter the U.S.

Greyson, who was featured in more than a dozen newspaper and magazine articles and TV segments, wasn’t fazed by the homecoming in baggage claim that also included a number of TV cameras and reporters.

“He actually traveled really well,” Cheri Phillips said. “He slept. I don’t know how he slept most of the time on the flights. He got a little cranky during the 9-hour flight from Brazil.”

Greyson, who was 2 pounds, 12.6 ounces when he was born on March 12, 2024, spent the first 51 days of his life in the neonatal intensive care unit of Ilha Hospital e Maternidade in Florianópolis. He’s been making good progress in his first three months.

“He’s doing great,” Cheri Phillips said. “He’s growing. He’s eating a lot. He traveled really well. He’s slept a lot. His favorite place is to be held, so he was not going to complain for nine hours straight of being held.”

The Phillipses, U.S. citizens who had not planned to have a child born in Brazil, had to spend almost four months getting Greyson’s documentation squared away.

Among the issues: Brazilian officials wouldn’t issue Greyson a birth certificate because the Phillipses’ passports, like all U.S. passports, don’t list their parents’ names. Without a birth certificate, U.S. officials in Brazil wouldn’t issue him an American passport. Without a passport, his parents couldn’t take him home to Cambridge, Minn.

Media attention helped get the Brazilian government to work with the Phillipses, Chris Phillips said. Greyson’s national identity card – the last piece of Brazilian paperwork the baby’s parents secured, just in case it is requested – was secured on Thursday. Greyson’s U.S. passport arrived two weeks ago.

“It was an ordeal – that’s the first word that comes to mind,” Chris Phillips said Tuesday. “It’s not something we ever expected. We went down for 17 days just to visit my daughter (Melory) on her birthday and have a great time. We were planning to come back to the United States, come back to Minnesota, sell our condo, buy our house, get settled into that for a couple of months, and then have a baby. Nothing went to plan at any stage, and along this entire process, it seemed like every time we made some progress, it was one step forward, three steps back.”

Chris Phillips started crying as soon as he saw his 93-year-old grandfather, Bill Halverson, waiting for him in the crowd. He ran over to hug Halverson, of Edina, who said he was thrilled to finally meet his 27th great-grandchild.

“I’ve been looking forward to it,” he said. “We’ve been following this story day-by-day-by-day for over three months, and, finally, the happy ending is today.”

Cheri Phillips holds her baby Greyson at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport after the family came home from Brazil on Tuesday, June 25, 2024. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

Cheri Phillips said she was overjoyed to be back in Minnesota.

“My heart just exploded,” she said. “I’m excited. I’m ready to settle in finally, you know, be our little family at home. I mean, obviously, we’ll be missing Melory. Like we said, she’s gotten the time with her brother, but I just. I’m so excited for my space and my language and my culture.”

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MADISON, Wis. — Local election officials in battleground state Wisconsin will be allowed to send absentee ballots to disabled voters electronically in November’s presidential election, a judge ruled Tuesday.

Dane County Circuit Judge Everett Mitchell issued a temporary injunction that allows voters who self-certify that they can’t read or mark a paper ballot without help to request absentee ballots electronically from local clerks. The voters can then cast their ballots at home using devices that help them read and write independently. They will still be required to mail the ballots back to the clerks or return them in person, the same as any other absentee voter in the state.

The injunction is part of a larger lawsuit that Disability Rights Wisconsin, the League of Women Voters and four disabled voters filed in April. The plaintiffs argued in the filing that many people with disabilities can’t cast paper ballots without assistance, compromising their right to cast a secret ballot, and struggle to return ballots through the mail or in-person.

“While we expect the decision to be appealed, this is an exciting day for Plaintiffs and other voters with print disabilities who have been fighting for the dignity of voting like everyone else: privately and independently,” Debra Conmiller, executive director of the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin, said in a statement.

Any eligible voter can vote by paper absentee ballot in Wisconsin. Anyone could request an absentee ballot electronically until 2011, when then-Gov. Scott Walker signed a Republican-authored law that allowed only military and overseas voters to use that method.

Attorney General Josh Kaul, a Democrat, opposes allowing disabled voters to request electronic absentee ballots. His lawyers argued during a hearing on Monday that state election officials don’t have time before November to train Wisconsin’s roughly 1,800 local clerks in how to handle electronic ballot requests from disabled voters and create ballots that can interact with the voters’ assistive devices. They warned the move would only create confusion and raise security risks.

The plaintiffs countered that an electronic ballot delivery system already exists for military and overseas voters and disabled voters deserve the same treatment. They also have a constitutional right to cast a secret ballot, they maintained.

More than 30 states allow certain voters to return their ballots either by fax, email or an online portal, according to data collected by the National Conference of State Legislatures and Verified Voting, a nonpartisan group that studies state voting systems. The method has expanded in recent years to include disabled voters in a dozen states. Experts have warned, however, that electronic ballot return carries risks of ballots being intercepted or manipulated and should be used sparingly.

The plaintiffs’ lawsuit requests that Mitchell let disabled voters in Wisconsin return their absentee ballots electronically, an accommodation no other absentee voter in the state is permitted. They did not include that ask in their request for the injunction after Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe testified the set-up would take months and present technical issues, but the demand remains in play as the judge considers the merits of the case going forward.

State Justice Department spokesperson Gillian Drummond had no immediate comment on the injunction.

Questions over who can cast absentee ballots and how have become a political flashpoint in Wisconsin, where four of the past six presidential elections have been decided by less than a percentage point.

People with disabilities make up about a quarter of the U.S. adult population, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A little more than a million Wisconsin adults, or one in four, are disabled, defined by the CDC as having difficulty with mobility, cognition, independent living, hearing, seeing, dressing or bathing.

Disabled people have engaged in several legal battles in recent years over access to the polls, as many Republican-led states have restricted how and when people can vote. Among the issues they have fought are limits on the types of assistance a voter can receive and whether someone else can return a voter’s mailed ballot.

Nearly 100,000 Wisconsin adults suffer from vision difficulties, according to statistics compiled by state health officials. A little more than 307,000 adults have difficulty moving, including difficulty walking, climbing stairs, reaching, lifting or carrying things.

Doug Poland, one of the attorneys for the plaintiffs, said he has no estimates of how many disabled people who haven’t voted in the past because they couldn’t fill out absentee ballots on their own may vote in November thanks to the injunction.

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