No, that’s not accurate. If it were just a re-vote, the candidates would be the same. Here’s what you said before:
That’s just plain wrong. A recount is when you take the votes already cast and count them again. It is not a recount, nor is it a “re-vote”. It is what it is: a recall.
I made no claim about the likelihood of anyone being sucessfully recalled; I said there is nothing in the law BARRING anyone from being recalled just because they are “popular”. In fact, it only takes 12 percent of the voters to have a recall. http://www.dailysouthtown.com/southtown/dsnews/087nd4.htm
So your point is that a recall probably won’t work if the governor is wildly popular. That doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do just because he’s not wildly popular.
If the case for removing Davis for office were SO compelling that it requires a recall, he would not have won re-election. This is just political folly.
As I understand it, the number of petition signatures has to equal 12% of the total vote in the election in question.
Question: assuming the Lt. Governor doesn’t take over the position, is the newly elected governor vulnerable to recall based on Gray Davis’ election, or the recall vote?
Special elections historically have lower voter turnout than regularly scheduled elections, so if the next recall is based on this recall vote, the threshold is even lower, even cheaper, and even easier to mount.
The only thing I can think of is this Issa fellow must think that he can get himself elected and then quickly re-write the recall laws to protect himself. But how in the hell is he going to do that with a Democratic staff and a Democratic legislature?
I’m sorry, man. I’m a Californian by birth, so I feel comfortable in saying that your damned state is just as looney as I am.
Is this a holdover from when the law was enacted? In other words, was it from when California’s population was smaller, making the magic number harder to attain? Or is the law specific to percentage? Heck, you could find enough virulant haters of Abe Lincoln and Mother Theresa in California to start a recall.
California has the 6th largest economy in the world. We may be witnessing the first historical example of an internal CIA coup-detat. Just as the CIA destabilized Allende’s government prior to the actual coup, Enron (a CIA front) destabilized the government of California to provoke this coup effort.
Interestingly, the coup is being spearheaded by Darrell Issa, a Lebanese-American petty criminal who was the target of Jewish terrorist Irv Rubin. After plotting to bomb a mosque and Issa’s office, Rubin was put in jail and mysteriously suicided.
ok Roger_Mexico… no more late afternoon martini lunches for you!
A coup de etat is a forced replacement of government leaders without the benefit of a democratic process. AFAIK no one has been forced out. Davis is still governor until (hopefully) October 7.
The California Constitution just states that you need get signatures from 12 percent of the total vote at “the last election for the office”.
As for successive recalls, I couldn’t find any prohibition against that. The only limitation is that if the recall against Davis is not successful on October 7, another one cannot be attempted for six months.
In this situation, a recall seems like a really bad idea. The guy was just elected nine months ago. It kind of cheapens the election process to allow do-overs after 9 months, doesn’t it?
But I have to quibble with something rjung said:
Hang on here… I think Davis IS responsible for that. First, he should have been more pro-active in getting more power sources for California. And second, Davis screwed up by not signing long-term energy contracts. When the chance to do that came up, he elected to continue to have California buy energy at the spot price on the open market. That was cheaper at the time, but the downside was the risk of the very price spikes that burned California later. He took a risk for short-term gain, and lost.
True, but don’t forget that many of those price spikes were artificially created by Enron’s criminal manipulations of energy prices. It seems possible that, had there been a “level playing field” in the energy market, California might not have been burned so badly (or at all).
Just in passing- I think “BobT’” points out things that many recall voters may not be considering, should a Republican be elected. In the past week, I have seen two photos of Gray Davis on CNN and Explorer websites, that show him shaking hands with two groups of children. If I were facing a recall, I think I would have my campaign manager provide photos of me shaking hands with persons of voting age.(?) Does this suggest that various newspapers have an agenda?
shit, I’d vote for Ariana Huffington in any election she choose to participate in. Of course, I don’t live in California(…yet…), so it’s kind of a moot point.
No Davis fan me, but the voters - i.e., the people who could be arsed to go to the polls - spoke. The Republicans could have fielded a better candidate, and they blew it. Tough luck, now wait for the next chance. That’s democracy for you.
The idea that having the moolah to hire enough people to collect signatures outside supermarkets will buy you a new election really does not sit well with me at all.
A common definition of a “criminal” act would be one that broke a law, no ? (Not that the idea of a law against bad governing is completely without merit, but I don’t believe one is currently on the books.)
None was needed, Simon defeated himself. He seemed to run a campaign based on him being a family man with no political experience whatsoever, as if that was a qualification. And when he decided to dabble in a little smearing - offering photographic “proof” of Davis taking a campaign contribution in a public office - it promptly blew up in his face when the much vaunted photos showed no such thing. His attempt at spin control - “It wasn’t my fault, it was my stupid underlings’” didn’t exactly help, either.
You’re not listening to talk radio much, are you ?
A sex toy, indeed! While I’m not ruling out that there is a product of that name in the adult novelty industry (not my field of expertise), that’s not where I picked up my handle. Spiny Norman is a character in a Monty Python’s Flying Circus sketch “The Piranha Brothers”. Norman is a giant imaginary hedgehog, eventually the nemesis of Dinsdale Piranha, who gets arrested for nuking Luton in an attempt to get at him.