The board estimated its costs at about $652,700 in November. Since then, though, the board has secured additional office space to process recall petition signatures and a Waukesha County judge has ordered the board to actively scour the signatures for fraud, a task the board has left to political parties in the past. The judge’s decision alone means $100,000 in additional software and technical support costs, GAB Director Kevin Kennedy noted in a memo.

Walker triggered a firestorm last year when he introduced a bill that stripped most public workers of almost all their collective bargaining rights. Walker said he needed to make the move to help close the state’s $3.6 billion deficit. Democrats saw it as a blatant attack on unions, one of their key constituencies.

The Republican-controlled Legislature passed the measure and Walker signed it into law in March despite weeks of around-the-clock protests at the state Capitol. Now Democrats and their allies want payback.

Last summer they forced nine GOP state senators into recall elections, defeating two of them. Now they’ve launched efforts to recall the governor, Kleefisch and four more Republican state senators. The group pushing to recall Walker announced last month they had collected 507,000 of the 540,208 signatures they need by Jan. 17 to force an election.