On the one hand, I’m generally in support of recall and other methods that citizens can have to keep politicians on a short leash. OTOH, I don’t like the way that the CA recall is set up.
Let’s say 45% of the voters vote for keeping the current governor and 55% don’t. Now the candidate that wins only has to have a majority of what’s left. It’s looks probable right now that Arnold will win with about 25% of the vote and Davis will be somewhere in the 40’s.
Something just seems wrong about that to me. One candidate could get nearly twice as many votes as the other and still lose to the other!
I think the recall should be seperate from the election of the new candidate, or those who vote for Davis should be allowed to vote for someone else as well.
Actually, if I’m not mistaken, it is seperate, so in fact one can vote not to recall Davis and vote for a candidate to replace him should he be recalled.
What’s unfair about it is that Davis can’t run with the other candidates once he’s recalled, so it’s conceivable that 49% could vote to keep Davis, yet another candidate could replace him with a much smaller percentage of the vote.
To answer the question posed in the title, I think a recall law isn’t a bad idea per se, but the flaw in this law is that it doesn’t require any kind of misconduct by the Governor in order to take effect. Without such a requirement, it enables “sour grapes” recalls like the present one. I don’t think simply being a lousy Governor is sufficient reason to recall a duly-elected official, especially when he was fairly RE-elected after he had already done most of the things people are complaining about. If he was so bad, he would have simply been voted out of office. This recall is just some sort of sick partisan revenge.
If we were talking about governors serving 10 yr terms, this might be a good idea. With a 4 year term and the time it takes for a recall, it seems pretty silly. And I agree that once an election is held, kicking the guy out because “I changed my mind” is childish. I’d support an impeachment process of actual cirmes committed, but an arbitrary recall process is unecesary-- the next election isn’t that far away.
As for how the system is set up in CA, it does allow a strange situation where a candidate with less support wins. That could be pretty easily cleaned up with instant runoff elections or normal primaries. Of course the latter would add even more time to the recall and make it more of a moot point.
The real problem is how we elected this @#^% in the first place. It was not a matter of choosing a better candidate, instead, it was one of choosing the lesser of two evils. Perhaps the real problem with a two party system is that situations like this can occur. What good is a vote when it is cast for the lesser of two evils? It sends the wrong message to the winner, that is, that the public supports his/her platform.
This is what happened in California. Davis won against (unnamed opponent) because he (Davis) was the lesser of the two evils. Davis believes that 70 percent of the people support him, WRONG Davis, 70% just didn’t want the other guy.
This is why Recalls are necessary? Recalls are far better than any of the other alternatives for ousting a serving dipstick.
And blowero you are absolutely right, 1st vote is on whether to dump graymatterless, the second is to choose among the other lesser evils to replace the greater evil. You can vote no to recall, and then choose, just in case, too.
Had this been the pit, I might have told you how I really felt
As I understand it, Davis gets fired the moment he gets one more than half of the votes cast for recall. Once fired, he can’t run in the second half. He is out at midnight that night.
Bad idea. People should actually put some thought into who they vote for and expect to live with the outcome until the next election cycle. So what happens if Arnold wins the recall? Do the dems start an immediate recall action against him? Threshold seems low enough for that to happen.
So the 2-party system sucks. I’ve got news for you - It’s still a 2 -party system, so that problem is not addressed by the recall law.
Really? Here’s an idea - we could have voted him out of office, in, oh - I don’t know, THE ELECTION THAT WE RECENTY HAD? I don’t like the guy either; in fact I didn’t vote for him; but this recall is just about the losing party crying because they lost the election. It’s an utter waste of public resources.
You’re not mistaken. I stand corrected. Here’s a good FAQ.
If we were in a more healthy multi-party system, we would realize that getting more than 50% of the vote isn’t necessarily fair for any candidate. If Arnold only gets 25% what do you think his chances of surviving a recall are?
Instead I think it should take something like a 2/3 majority “No” to unseat a current official. That way voters have a way to respond to gross incompetence that doesn’t necessarily break any laws or a reversal of policy that wasn’t advertised in an election.
The recall election in California consists of two questions. I’m not sure on the exact wording, but…
Recall Gov. Gray Davis? Y/N.
If Davis is recalled, who should replace him?
Question 2 is irrelevant until 50% +1 vote yes for question #1. There is no separate election. They’re campaigning now.
This is why Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante is running a campaign for “No on the Recall, Yes on Bustamante.” He’s running as the strong Dem candidate, but opposing the recall so as to support his boss and the party.
Hum I looked at my post 4 or 5 times, I can’t find the word “sucks”anywhere?
I think my thrust was that a three party system would help us when we are faces with such a situation again. What good is a voting when the ultimate outcome is equally bad.
When we realized that wonderslug had gone through around 10 billion in state surplus $$$ in a 4 ½ year period,… and after doing the math,… it sure looked like he was leading us to a multi-billion dollar deficit by the time he left office. That’s when we saw the necessity of dumping wonderslug as soon as possible.
Ousting this clown is a matter of saving billions of dollars, not wasting public resources. Look at his support, 22% in the last pole I saw. Can 78% of the people be that far from reality. Oh, and wait until you get your vehicle registration for next year, mine only went up 318%. All because that lug nut can’t chew gum and walk at the same time.
Anyway, I’ll be there when the polls open October 7th, and. I’m not going to tell how I am going to vote! (and Davis, loose that d!@# blue shirt – don’t you have a white one)
I think recalls are a dangerous way to correct possible errors. I appreciate the notion that we should be able to attempt to undo mistakes to the best of our abilities, but really, if the guy is such a monumental fuck-up then a 67% “get him out of there” vote seems more appropriate than 50%. I would settle for 67% of the votes or 50% of the population (if, for example, CA has 100 citizens and 80 of them turn out, but only 54 vote for recall: this is 50% of the population but but not 2/3 of the voting population), whichever is less (in case there is a record turnout, for example, which itself is indicative of a lot given the rule, otherwise, of voter apathy). But that’s just winging the idea, really.
Whatever my own ideas are worth there, I do think this is not a very good way to handle it. It seems preposterous that someone with 25% of the vote could overturn an existing governor. I mean, might as well roll dice to determine who replaces him.
What I really don’t get is why the recall leads to a completely new election. To my mind, one major reason for having a separately elected Lieutenant Governor is so that they can fill the office of the Governor if need be.
Although I think it would mean that this particular recall wouldn’t have been attempted. Regardless, I think the recall should really be reserved for times when the governor needs to be removed immediately, before the next regular election, based on what voters learn after an election. It should be smoothly done (handing over to the Lt. Gov. would be fairly smooth) and any suggestions of new candidates should wait until the next regular election.
Otherwise, you may as well hold elections every couple of years.
When I was middle-school age, and we were playing games in gym class or at Camp Fire girls or in a vacant lot, there were certain people who would scream “Do over! Do over! That was just a practice” ever single time things didn’t go exactly as they hoped.
All the rest of us really hated them.
Like Hammer and blowero said, more or less, weekly elections are hardly efficient.
Let’s remember one thing. The recall was financed privately. Private funds paid to collected over 1,300,000 signatures, of registered voters, to recall Davis. The letter of the law was complied with. This is part of the political process designed to insure adequate and competent representation. What that fails, recall is the recourse. The state does not finance the recall, it is financed privately. The state finances the actual vote, after specific recall conditions are met.
This thing has been to state and federal court here, and each court has ruled in favor of continuing the recall. Yet the vast minority, that is the cry babies, still continue to cry. According to the last pole I saw, 78% of the people want him out. That fact is significant. The voters, the ones whose money we are talking about anyway, want him out, or, at the least they want to vote on it.
Who said anything about weekly? Who is that confused about this?
…spearheaded by Darrel Issa, Republican Congressman of California, who tossed in several million dollars to the fledgling recall effort, and whose telephone answering machine identified itself as the “Issa for governor campaign” even before the recall votes were certified. Yeah, that’s a real grass-roots frustrated-voter nonpolitical nonpartisan effort there. :rolleyes: