Time for a New Recall Process?

No, I’m not going to repeat some politicians’ calls for limiting recalls to cases of official misconduct. While I, personally, would not recall a duly-elected politician for policy choices, I think people who do feel that way should be able to start a recall.

But take a good look around at what’s going on with the current attempt to recall a statewide office holder:

• Recall opponents have threatened to collect and then destroy or fail to turn in petitions.
• Recall proponents have repeatedly trespassed on private property.
• Public officials have unlawfully used government resources to support the recall.
• Recall proponents are encouraging supporters to sign multiple times.
• People are signing petitions repeatedly with the purpose of cheating.
• Opponents and proponents have had physical fights.
• People on both sides have shown, let’s say "less than civil" behavior, behavior, behavior.

This is not the exclusive fault of either side: both have displayed some truly awful behavior and called the integrity of the process into question.  The fault here lies in the archaic system of requiring untrained, unsupervised individuals to panhandle in public and private gathering places around the state.  The system is just far too open to abuse by either side.

It takes only an iota of political cynicism to question the wisdom of having the people most interested in recalling a particular politician in charge of collecting and verifying signatures. I’m not claiming they’re all going to cheat, but they certainly have the least incentive to make sure the signatures they turn in are valid.

For an example of how riddled the system is with abuse and error, look at Ohio, where more than 25 percent of all the submitted signatures were invalidated.  Most of those invalid signatures appeared to be due to mistake rather than abuse, but valid signatures being thrown out because the circulators messed up is just as problematic as invalid signatures being counted because circulators cheated.

Above and beyond all that, we have a government "no"-accountability board charged with upholding the integrity of the election process asking for more money while refusing to actually uphold the integrity of the election process.

I think it’s time to get rid of the idea of passing a piece of paper around town trying to get people to sign it. Something as serious as a recall deserves a more formal process. 

In my next post I’ll talk about some suggestions I have. In the meantime, what do you think?