A special web cam that is taking viewers inside the secret petition-processing room. Wis. recall feed draws thousands

The process of validating signatures for the Wisconsin recall election is about as exciting as watching paint dry — but amazingly, a special webcam that is taking viewers inside the secret petition-processing room has already drawn some 30,000 spectators online.

The single camera currently provides a continuous live stream feed for anyone interested in how the politically charged petitions — expected to force a recall election of Gov. Scott Walker — are being processed.


Tony Kapela, the vice president of technology at a Madison-based company called 5NINES who set up the camera in the room Tuesday night just hours after organizers behind Walker’s recall announced their historic achievement of gathering 1 million signatures backing their cause, joked that he may be the one person in Wisconsin who knows the secret location of the room.

When 5NINES was recently approached by the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board, which is processing the petitions, about its wish to provide a peephole to the mysterious room, the company readily agreed.

“I know how powerful moving pictures are, and it seems like a good opportunity to put to good use the kind of work we do,” Kapela said. “And maybe this is a bit of a brazen attitude, but I also felt that if they had gone to someone else, they would have gotten a far worse result. But seriously, when was the last time you saw a clean, high-definition webcam of anything?”

And the GAB couldn’t be happier with the results. At the peak of traffic, the live stream had some 500 people watching at once, and has received close to 30,000 visitors since it was created.

The board’s staffers are currently in the preliminary stage of scanning every single one of the 3,009 pages of papers that organizers across the state turned in earlier this week. The location of the state-owned facility has been kept a secret for security reasons, and the sound on the live stream was turned off to protect the privacy of the men and women who are busy at work.

“If you take all the petitions and put them someplace where nobody can see what’s going on, in the absence of information, rumors are going to be generated and nobody needs that,” said Reid Magney, a spokesman for the board. “It’s honestly not the most exciting thing, but I think some people are having a little bit of fun with it on Twitter.”

That’s a reference to Twitter handle @RecallCam.

“AGH! I fell off the file cabinet! And Scott Walker took away health care for state owned webcams! AAAAGGGGHHHHH!” @RecallCam tweeted Friday morning.

@RecallCam’s favorite topic? The nameless men and women employed by the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board (who have been assigned nicknames like Sideburns, Bald Stockton, Ginger and Flirty), whose every move it captures as they sit in the bare, white-walled room flipping through stacks of papers, running documents through scanners and inputting data into their desktop computers.

“Things still a little icy between Sideburns and Flirty so far today. He might need to cast his net a little wider,” @RecallCam noted earlier in the day, only to speculate a few minutes later: “Sideburns probably told her that his estranged wife came back and threatened to ruin the recall with scandal if he didn’t go with her.”

@RecallCam now has close to 400 followers. The one person it follows is @TheRevAl.

Vowing that he is not the man behind @RecallCam, Kapela said he is thoroughly enjoying the attention that the live stream is receiving.

“It’s hilarious. I actually wanted to put the ‘Mystery Science Theater 3000’ silhouette across the bottom of the screen, but I’m pretty sure they have no sense of humor about this,” he said. “I’m hoping the Twitter account will be many spoofs of this — maybe when all of this is over, someone can rebroadcast the feed and superimpose animated avatars over it?”

Fortunately, the live stream is not costing Wisconsinites a single dime.

“I would normally bill out my time at a lawyer-like rate — $250 an hour or up, and it took me about 20 hours to set it up,” Kapela said. “But Wisconsin has gone through a lot of political turmoil in the past, so this is something we thought was a little piece we could do to help democracy.”

This article tagged under: Wisconsin

Recalls