Conservative Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice David Prosser, an ally of Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI), is currently facing ethics charges due to allegations that he placed a fellow justice in a chokehold during an argument. Walker, however, now appears to have adopted a selection process for new members of this commission that will ensure Prosser will receive favorable treatment in the future:

Gov. Scott Walker relied on recommendations from a former Assembly speaker who once worked for state Supreme Court Justice David Prosser in appointing members of a commission investigating Prosser, newly released records show.

Three of the five people Walker appointed to the state Judicial Commission earlier this year were presented to the governor by former Assembly Speaker John Gard, the president of Wisconsin Businesses Inc. and a former lobbyist for school voucher proponents School Choice Wisconsin.

Gard told an aide to Walker that he had found people for the commission who were “fiercely conservative” and “will never wimp out,” according to an email recently released along with other documents under the state’s open records law. Gard also wrote that he’d told one of the appointees “what we were looking for and (he) said he would do it if needed,” but Gard’s email didn’t provide more specifics than that.

If it were not for the fact that a state governor’s decisions actually impact millions of lives, this kind of backroom dealing would be comic. Here we have a corporate lobbyist and former staffer to a prominent politician handpicking the people who will investigate whether that same politicians violated ethics rules — and all the time promising that these “fiercely conservative” appointments can be relied upon to toe the party line on an ethics commission.

The mere fact that in Scott Walker’s Wisconsin there is a party line to be toed on ethics is itself extraordinary.

From Eau Claire to Beloit, voters across Wisconsin are relaying stories via Twitter, Facebook and online message boards about anonymous “robocalls” from allies of Scott Walker, telling them–incorrectly–that if they signed petitions to recall Governor Walker, their vote in today’s crucial election has been recorded.

An NBC reporter tweeted that a family friend was one recipient of the call:

Dad just emailed, a WI friend of his got the ‘If you signed the petition you don’t have to vote tomorrow’ robocall #wirecall

— Keva (@Synergy3k) June 5, 2012

Tom Barrett, the mayor of Milwaukee and the Democratic nominee to unseat Governor Scott Walker, told MSNBC host Ed Schultz last night that his campaign began receiving complaints yesterday that voters had been contacted with the misinformation. This morning, Salon reported on the robocalls too, and included comments from Carol Gibbons, a Wisconsin resident who got the call herself. And a local CBS affiliate is even reporting that the caller sounds eerily similar to Tom Barrett, suggesting the group behind the call may have hired a Barrett impersonator.

So far no recording of the call has surfaced, but the reports from voters was enough to prompt the Barrett campaign to make calls of its own, warning voters not to listen to the first call. For its part, the Walker campaign denied any involvement in or knowledge of the robocall or who was behind it.

Election day antics were a near certainty in Wisconsin. In the last week, reports of other campaign antics surfaced, including an attempt by Walker supporters to disable the Barrett campaign’s phone lines by flooding their call centers with spam phone calls.

MADISON, Wisconsin — Voter ID will not be in effect for today’s recall vote in Wisconsin, but that won’t stop last year’s anti-voter bill from disenfranchising thousands of students across the state.

A year ago, Wisconsin Republicans pushed through Assembly Bill 7, which enacted one of the worst forms of voter ID in the nation. Since then, two state judges have blocked voter ID from taking effect because the Wisconsin state Constitution guarantees that “[e]very United States citizen age 18 or older who is a resident of an election district in this state is a qualified elector of that district,” regardless of whether or not they have an ID.

However, a little-noticed provision in AB 7 will likely prevent thousands of college students from voting in today’s recall election.

Section 12 of the new law increases the time period a citizen must live in one location in order to register there from 10 days to 28 days. Though seemingly innocuous, the problem is that the five largest colleges in Wisconsin — University of Wisconsin-Madison (40,000 students), University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (27,500 students), Marquette University (11,500 students), University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh (11,500 students), and University of Wisconsin-Whitewater (11,000 students) — all had their graduations either the weekend of May 12 or the weekend of May 19, 24 days and 17 days ago, respectively.

Therefore, any student at these schools who registered to vote at school but is now home for the summer will not be permitted to update their registration at their parents’ house because they will have been home for less than 28 days. Under the old law, a student not on campus for the summer would have been permitted to update her registration at the polls and vote because she will have been home (or elsewhere off-campus) for more than 10 days.

As a result, thousands of Wisconsin students will likely be barred from taking part in today’s recall vote.

Wisconsin Secretary of State Doug LaFollette worried about the impact it could have on turnout. “It will really have a negative impact among college students,” LaFollette told ThinkProgress.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) has been guarded, to say the least, about a corruption investigation going on in Wisconsin of which he may or may not be a part. He has transferred money from his campaign into his legal defense fund, but simultaneously insists that he has no need — as of yet– for that fund.

But in court last week, one of Walker’s closest confidants contradicted the Governor’s claim that he’s been fully cooperative with the investigation, which has already claimed three of Walker’s former staffers and associates. The probe is aimed at locating government officials who engaged in a range of criminal activities while employed by Walker when he was Milwaukee County executive.

Tim Russell, an old Walker adviser who has himself been charged with felony embezzlement, told a local reporter that Walker has not been cooperative with the corruption probe. In fact, Russell’s information shows that Walker has been ‘stonewalling’ investigators. Esquire offers more detail:

The most significant turn of events came last week, on May 31, just as Walker and Barrett were preparing to debate that night, when Daniel Bice, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter who’s been an absolute bulldog on this investigation, published a damaging piece in which Bice said that, contrary to Walker’s repeated insistence that he had called for the John Doe investigation himself, the investigators on the case opened the investigation themselves after two years of stonewalling by Walker and his administration. Bice’s story was based on a document filed with the court in the Russell case. [...]

Tim Russell’s lawyer — and, therefore, Tim Russell — had made public damaging information about Scott Walker and undermined the whole ethical basis of the governor’s response to charges that he had misused his public office for private gain. It is not unreasonable to assume that this either was a warning shot — take care of me or you’re going down, too — or evidence that Russell already has rolled.

Russell’s might have “rolled,” as Esquire phrases it, because he knows it will lead to a significantly less harsh sentence for himself. But in light of the fact that tomorrow is Wisconsin’s recall election, the potential consequences are only growing for Scott Walker.