If you vote not to recall Davis can you still vote his replacement in the event the recall passes?
Yes. The second question is conditional on the answer to the first being “yes”.
Cite: absentee ballot mailed Tuesday.
wait… so you can’t vote for Cruz if you don’t vote to recall Davis?
Can you vote against the recall and still vote for a candidate?
Yes. Regardless of whether or not you support the recall, you can still vote for a replacement. But there is another court battle over whether voters can refuse to vote on the recall but still vote for a replacement governor.
http://slate.msn.com/id/2086755/
Yes, you can. You can vote yes or no on the first question (to recall) and for whomever you want on the second part of the ballot.
The point is that if a majority vote no on the first part, then the second part is meaningless.
People who like Gray Davis would, obviously, vote no in the first part. But, just in case the majority feel otherwise, even Davis supporters get to have a say in who should replace him.
Trinopus
<slight hijack>What puzzles me about the CA recall is the odd placement of the names on the ballot. They are in a random order, and I believe it varies from precinct to precinct. With 150-some names on the ballot, it could take a voter a fair amount of time just to find the candidate they want to vote for.
Here in Minnesota, such long lists of candidates (pretty rare anyway) are always in alphabetical order, but the starting point varies by precinct so the same candidate isn’t on top. So the list in your precinct might start with the F’s, with the A-E names at the bottom after the Z’s, in alphabetical order. Pretty easy to find your candidate in the list, but still fair to all.
The CA scheme is so strange, and other strange things (like the short time allowed, the lack of political party tickets & Lt. Gov candidates, the abillity to immediately do another recall petition against the winner, etc.) that it almost seems to me that this recall law was deliberatly written to be unworkable.
</slight hijack>
There isn’t really a lack of party tickets in a sense. Ahnold is running as a Republican. The big difference is that you don’t have to have over 50% to win. This is why there are so many candidates who aren’t just running as a joke. All you have to have is Other Guy +1.
It makes sense for a recall election to be held pretty quickly. Imagine the opposite: “You can recall the elected official, but you have to wait a year before getting a chance to unelect him.”
I think you mean that the Lt. Gov and Gov don’t run together. You’re right, it’s a bit weird. Many times they have been elected from different parties, and the Gov is afraid to leave the state because of what the Lt. Gov might do while he’s gone.
As for there not being a time limit on when you can recall an official, that also doesn’t make any sense: “It doesn’t matter if he was caught with his mistress, a goat, and Gov of Massachusetts, you can’t recall him because he hasn’t been in office a year yet.”
The California ballot isn’t quite random: it’s the alphabet that’s randomized - the names will still be in alphabetical order starting within each letter. There will still be 26 variations
Here’s an article from cnn.com that explains it.
There will still be 26 variations, the first starting R, W, Q…, the next W, Q, O, … with R at the end, and so forth.
What California is doing is sort of the same thing as what you describe for Minnesota, but with some significant twists. Here is the Secretary of State’s explanation of the procedure.
First, the alphabet was remapped at random. The list of candidates was then alphabetized according to this new order. You can see the order at the linked page: R-W-Q-O-J-…-Y-F-L.
In Assembly District 1, candidates are listed in strict “alphabetical” order according to this new alphabet. In District 2, everybody moves up one place and the candidate on top is kicked to the bottom. This process continues through all 80 districts in the state.
In most elections, this would have each candidate listed first on the ballot in quite a few places. However, since there are 135(?) candidates this time, some of them may never even make it onto the first page anywhere in the state.
(I don’t have my sample ballot handy, but I believe the candidate list was something like six pages long. Twenty-something per page. Since 55 candidates won’t be shuffled to the top, I’d expect that thirty-something will never even make it to the first page.)
Yes, you can vote no on the recall and still vote for a candidate. Here in California, Cruz Bustamente and several of the “lesser 130” candidates are saying in their campaign statements “Vote no on the recall, and vote for me to replace Davis.”
And California statewide elections have never required over 50% to win; in the last gubenatorial election, I believe Davis won with 46 or 47%. Which makes me chuckle when Davis (or others) make speeches about the recall going against “The will of the voters” when he didn’t even get a majority of the vote in the first place.
Ok, good point then. Another thing that has gotten all these people (including Ahnold) to run this time is that the campaign season was so short. Ahnold could afford to fund his campain almost by himself, because it wouldn’t last for more than a couple months of real spending.
My question is why the Republican party hasn’t officially endorsed a candidate.
And… if Mc Clintock splits the conservative vote and lets Bustamecha win, I’m just going to change his name to “Bull Moose”. I think that would be a very selfish move on his part.