To my mind, a recall election should have just one question: do you wish to recall elected official X?
If the majority votes no, that’s the end. If the majority votes yes, then the candidate is removed from office and a new election is held following the appropriate process.
Obviously this leaves a bit of a power gap between elections should the answer be “yes” so CA back in 2003 decided to streamline the process with a two question ballot.
Q1: Do you wanna recall Davis?
Q2: Yes? OK then, who do you wanna vote for?
Now, this runs into issues of not having a primary, streamlining the candidates, yadda yadda yadda. At least they asked the question.
As I learned yesterday, and correct me if I’m wrong, WI voters won’t even get asked the question! There was a petition. Enough people signed the petition. Now there will be a vote. But it’s not a vote on whether you want to recall Scott Walker. Scott Walker just has to run again like he did last year. That’s not a recall. That’s just an annoyance.
Well - that’s semantics. A vote for Davis is logically and intuitively equivalent to a ‘No’ vote on your Q1. So are you just complaining that the ballot doesn’t ask the question the ‘right’ way? Or that not being in a separate question deprives Davis of a psychological advantage with voters that you think he’s entitled to from having been elected?
Note: it’s Walker. Davis was the recalled Gov from CA.
I figured “semantics” would be the first response given. I guess that’s it. Right now Walker has to run in a primary. I haven’t looked it up but I imagine if he has competition at all it’s throwaways at best because who’s going to go up against the sitting Gov of their own party? So Walker’s going to be in the general. But the thing is that it doesn’t matter who he’s running against. To me, that’s not the point. A recall election isn’t a regular election. The question put to voters isn’t “would you rather have Scott Walker or Democratic Candidate X?” It’s “Do you want Scott Walker to remain Governor?” Full stop. End of question. To me, there’s a real difference, even if the results may end up being the same.
It’s not just “semantics” because California isn’t the end all be all of the definition of a recall. A recall election is a referendum on whether to remove an elected official from office before the term is up. That’s it. The exact mechanism is immaterial.
If a couple of Teamsters asked me to sign a petition, I would sign it rather than get in a big confrontation with a group of high pressure collectivists. But in the privacy of the ballot box, I tend to vote for less government, which is what Scott Walker accomplished.
Giving someone an up or down vote is pretty different from voting for Candidate A or B. One year prior to losing office in the recall, Gray Davis had won re-election without a majority and with low approval numbers – basically, he won because the Republicans nominated a poor candidate. Also, while we replaced him with a Republican, we also could’ve replaced him with another Democrat. WI’s recall doesn’t give voters the option of voting to recall Walker, and electing another Republican in his place.
A “CA-style” recall would have a somewhat greater chance of succeeding, I think. Gray Davis needed a majority to survive his recall election, whereas Walker will only need a plurality.
No. There is only one question in a Wisconsin recall election. A recall election there essentially forces the incumbent to run for re-election early. That also means that only the person with the most votes can win. There is no possibility of being recalled by 51% of voters and replaced by someone who only got 47%.
This is a choice made by the Republicans, who put up primary candidates in BOTH parties for all six of the recall elections being held. This gives the sitting candidates more time to campaign because having a primary delayed the general election.
Not quite. There was going to be a Democratic Party primary for governor regardless. Falk, Barrett, Vinehout, and one other are running. The Republicans put up candidates for lt gov and the four senators to force primaries and align all six elections on the same schedule.
If they hadn’t, on May 8 you would’ve had the Dem primary for governor and the general elections in the other five. It was a tactical move to remove what they felt was a disadvantage.
Yes, it does. Walker could potentially lose in the primary. Not likely, since he has a lot of support among Republicans and no actual Republican filed against him. In contrast, Davis would have likely been toast at that stage if California had Wisconsin rules.
Technically true, but the third party candidates will not take much of the vote. The winner of the election will have a majority.
For the purposes of the Wisconsin decision, probably the best way to think about it is that the recall is recalling the outcome of the election - i.e. nullifying it - rather than recalling the particular incumbent. That gives the electorate another chance to vote definitively on whether they want to keep that person or not.