They'll tell us it's a polka dot sky and expect us to believe it.

Tuesday afternoon I watched live streaming of boxes and boxes of recall petitions being delivered to the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board in Madison.

They were said to weigh 3,000 pounds and contain more than 1 million signatures to recall Governor Scott Walker and 900,000 signatures to recall Lieutenant Governor Rebecca Kleefisch plus 21,000 signatures each to recall four Republican state senators. The million is just under the 1.1 million that put them into office after the 2010 elections.

I am proud to have gathered my share of signatures, one of thousands of volunteers across the state.

What would cause a person to stand in the Wisconsin cold from November through January for a couple of hours at a time or to knock on doors seeking signatures? It seems pretty darn crazy to me.

The real reason, I believe, is determination of the Republicans to call the sky polka dot and expect us to not just believe it but love it.

Ben Sparks, communications director for the Republican Party of Wisconsin, said of the recall petitions that there would be an army of Republicans looking for  fraud. “Our sole focus is to ensure Wisconsin electors are not disenfranchised,” he said.

Republicans concerned about voters being disenfranchised is the clearest definition of chutzpah that I have ever seen. It even beats the standard example from the Joy of Yiddish book in which a son on trial for murdering his parents asks for the “mercy of the court because I am an orphan.”

Only after a million signatures to recall Walker – and 900,000 for his lieutenant governor – are delivered were Republicans suddenly worried about voters being disenfranchised.

Why is this chutzpah? In Wisconsin and across other states, states that turned red after the 2010 elections initiated very restrictive voter ID laws supposedly designed not to prevent voter fraud, but really to keep their lock on power as were many other actions.

What the voter ID bill really does is make it hard to vote for those most likely to cast their ballots for Democrats – the poor, people of color, students and the elderly.

I spent an hour and a half Tuesday getting trained to be a special deputy to register people to vote. I was among folks of similar political bent but we will never ask prospective voters what their politics are. We strongly believe in democracy. I don’t believe the Republicans do.They also have redrawn political districts to make sure they keep majorities in the Legislature.

Another polka dot sky comment in the La Crosse Tribune today came  from our supposedly nonpartisan Mayor Matt Harter about his vetoes of two advisory referendums that would be on the April ballot. “This issue will require a great deal of discussion and education,” he said. “Hitting them all at once with four questions in one election is simply too much.”

He thinks we are just too dumb to handle more than one referendum question? Isn’t taking away the opportunity for voters to voice their opinions on referendums disenfranchisement?

Harter wants only one referendum – one asks if we support a city administrator – on the ballot. His hope, of course, is that the measure is defeated.

La Crosse County achieved great savings by having a county administrator. Tax savings is something that Harter and his Republican supporters claim to want, but not when there would be a real opportunity to do so with professional management. They prefer  crony-management in city government.

Harter wants to keep his job. And those who put him in office want to keep  their control of  city government. Incidentally, his family waste removal business has the city’s single largest contract.

One of the vetoed referendums would reduce the City Council from 17 to 13 seats so district lines would match the redistricted county board wards. Voters will be confused when they go to the polls and discover they are in one district for city representation and another for county. It makes sense to make districts uniform. And fewer council members also would save money.

The other veto was on a referendum on off-premise digital billboards in the city. We have a huge digital billboard just outside the city limits that was hurriedly put up while there was discussions underway about whether we want them or not. This billboard has a startling, in-your-face glare and disrupts the exquisite natural beauty of our community, which is located between scenic bluffs and the Mississippi River.

Some 200 people – including myself – went to a hearing on digital signs a few weeks ago. Most – but not all – were opposed to them. We live in a beautiful area that has more billboards per capital than just about any city in Wisconsin and our state has more billboards per capital than just about any other state.

I would hate the billboards to block views of our polka dot sky.

But worry not. Super Pacs will blast us with millions of dollars in ads on television and in that digital billboard to make us believe in the polka dot sky they gave us and to be grateful for it.