Recall group fails to collect enough signatures to recall MPS Board members Marva Herdon, Jilly Gokalgandhi and Erika Siemsen

A group attempting to recall four Milwaukee Public School board members failed to submit enough signatures to trigger recalls against at least three of the board members.

The group, the MPS School Board Recall Collaborative, was hoping to recall board president Marva Herndon, vice president Jilly Gokalgandhi, board member Erika Siemsen and at-large board member Missy Zombor.

Information posted on the Milwaukee Election Commission 's website shows that the petitions for Herndon, Gokalgandkhi and Siemsen were thousands short of the required number of signatures. Milwaukee Election Commission executive director Paulina Gutierrez confirmed those results.

The commission is still counting the signatures for Zombor due to the number of petition pages it received for Zombor's seat.

Gutierrez said the commission plans to upload all the petition pages for Zombor's seat Thursday, but said she did not know when that would be completed. Petition pages for Herdon, Gokalgandhi and Siemsen have already been uploaded and can be found at bit.ly/MPSrecallpetitions .

The group submitted the petitions Aug. 12 , which was the deadline for collecting the signatures. It needed to collect 25% of the votes cast in a board member's district in the 2022 governor's election to trigger recall elections.

To recall Herndon, the group needed 5,137 signatures, it submitted 1,549 signatures. For Gokalgandhi, the group needed 7,759 signatures, but submitted 290. For Siemsen, the group needed to collect 6,809 signatures, but submitted 203 signatures. The group needs to collect 44,177 for Zombor's seat.

The MPS School Board Recall Collective wanted to collect over 60,000 signatures to trigger recall elections for all four board seats to take place before the board members would normally be up for election. School board elections usually take place in April of any given year.

Tamika Johnson, one of the recall organizers, said Thursday she was waiting for all of the numbers to come in before responding to the results.

Gokalgandhi said she was thankful the Milwaukee Election Commission was able to verify the amount of signatures "in such an efficient manner to keep the public abreast."

"I believe in their verification process," Gokalgandhi said.

Siemsen did not immediately respond to a reporter's phone calls seeking comment. Zombor was not immediately available to comment.

This story was updated with additional signature totals, and will be updated as available.

Reporter Rory Linnane contributed to this report.

Contact Alec Johnson at (262) 875-9469 or alec.johnson@jrn.com . Follow him on Twitter at @AlecJohnson12 .

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Recall group fails to collect enough signatures to recall MPS Board members Marva Herdon, Jilly Gokalgandhi and Erika Siemsen