Three more UW-Eau Claire students have admitted to circulating a petition at the Aug. 18 rally for President Bush in Chippewa Falls in order to get Independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader on the Wisconsin state ballot. The confessions bring the total number of former and current students involved to six.

Sophomore Jim Nania and seniors Ryan Raymond and Crystal Schmidt join sophomore Alex Edland, junior Kyle Vorachek and former student James Taylor as admitted participants in the drive by state Republicans that generated about 3,200 signatures statewide.

In the weeks before the rally, Schmidt called the local Bush-Cheney campaign headquarters offering to do work for the office and to procure tickets to the rally.

She said she spoke to Eau Claire County Republican Office Chairman Laurie Forcier, who gave her the contact information of Matt Holden. She told Schmidt that Holden needed volunteers and that he would be able to give her tickets to the rally. Forcier didn’t specify what type of work Holden was doing.

“She did not say anything about what we would be doing,” Schmidt said.

Holden is a College Republican from UW-Madison who collected signatures for Nader from around the state and brought them to Bill Linville, the state director for Nader’s campaign.

Schmidt and Raymond, along with at least nine other people whose names were given to The Spectator by Linville, met Holden at the event and were given instructions on collecting signatures.”Matt (Holden) said the Bush campaign didn’t know we were doing this,” Raymond said. “He stressed that it was legal.”

All circulators questioned asserted their beliefs that what they did was legal. However, state law requires all petition circulators to sign an oath saying they support the candidate for whom they are petitioning. Circulating a petition, signing the oath and not supporting that candidate is a felony in Wisconsin.

“I was absolutely misinformed by Matt (Holden),” Raymond said upon learning of the law.

Forcier, the lone Republican campaign official in Eau Claire County, was unavailable for comment Sunday as to her involvement, but denied being involved in the collection of signatures in an interview Tuesday.

Raymond stressed that the reason for his involvement in the signature drive primarily was to be able to see President Bush speak and secondarily was for the sake of promoting democracy.

Nania agreed, “Honestly, I feel people deserve the right to vote for someone other than Kerry or Bush. If they don’t like Bush and they don’t like Kerry, then they should still be able to vote.”

Raymond stressed his involvement has no reflection on the Eau Claire chapter of the College Republicans. “I don’t want this to come down on the College Republicans,” he said.

Of the six admitted circulators from Eau Claire, only one, Edland, is a member of the College Republicans.

– The Associated Press contributed to this article.