Mike McAlpine, organizer of the “Recall Hudak Too” signature gathering effort, told 850 KOA’s “Mike Rosen Show” today that the effort is “at about 92% of where we need to be.” McAlpine said he thought the number of signatures gathered so far was “solid right now, but solid isn’t good enough.”

The recall campaign needs roughly 18,900 valid signatures to prompt a recall election of State Senator Evie Hudak. The drive has until Tuesday, December 3, to collect the needed signatures to force a recall election on Hudak’s senate district.

Afterwords, McAlpine told CompleteColorado.com by phone that the 92% figure includes a “modified overgoal.” In other words, the campaign has a target number of signatures above and beyond the 19,000 figure to give the petition effort room for error after some signatures are disqualified for any number of reasons. McAlpine did not disclose what the “overgoal” was. However, based on his response, it’s reasonable to assume that the effort already has more than 19,000 signatures, but the question then becomes what percentage of those signatures are valid.

The “Recall Hudak Too” campaign has been attempting to model their petition gathering methods off those developed earlier this year in the Pueblo recall of former State Senator Angela Giron. In that petition drive, organizer Victor Head employed iPads to access voter information from the Secretary of State’s website in order to to eliminate bad signatures before they ever got on to the petition in the first place. The Giron petition only had 6% of the submitted signatures deemed as invalid, a remarkably low rate.

This weekend, however, the Hudak drive hit a speed bump as the Secretary of State’s website was down for scheduled maintenance at the same time the petition gathering effort was making a heavy push. With the website down, petition gatherers were not able to follow the “Pueblo model” and establish validity of a signer.

The Hudak recall carries even more political significance than the recalls of former state senators John Morse and Angela Giron. If Hudak is successfully recalled and a Republican fills the seat, it would tip the balance of power in the senate to the GOP.

Audio to the Mike Rosen Show embedded below, McAlpine’s remarks start at 25:45.

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