I haven’t written much at all about the recall effort in Wisconsin. This isn’t because I don’t find it interesting or important or worth supporting. It’s mainly a combination of a general aversion to writing about state and local politics for a national/international audience, and a lack of knowledge on my part about the details of Wisconsin’s internal political climate and culture. Simply put, too many of my readers don’t care, and I don’t have anything of value to add.
I do note, however, that the whole recall effort has created a kind of bureaucratic clusterfuck that costs a lot of money and takes a lot of time to litigate and arbitrate. And, it occurs to me, that it might be a few election cycles before Wisconsin sees an end to this kind of permanent campaign. Generally speaking, it’s best to let elections speak for themselves and not seek to overturn elections prematurely through recall campaigns. I didn’t like it when it was done to California Governor Gray Davis. I didn’t like it when Tom DeLay had Texas’s districts redrawn mid-decade. So, the only reason I’m supportive of the effort in Wisconsin is because the governor there is being so incredibly aggressive about screwing over important Democratic constituencies. By seeking to destroy public service unions and disenfranchise minorities, Gov. Walker isn’t merely governing; he’s waging war against the left. And I don’t shy away from that kind of war.
Yet, when this is all over and the Democrats have restored sanity to the Badger State, I suggest that progressives reexamine the recall laws. I say this because the next time we win power in Wisconsin, the GOP will instantly move to have recall elections and overturn the result. It’s not like a move like this will be restricted to ‘extraordinary circumstances.’
In general, people should be free to serve the full terms they were elected to serve, and any exceptions should be because of actual criminal activity, not policy differences. Impeachment is a more appropriate remedy than recall petitions. That is, of course, unless your opponents are looking to completely destroy you.
Which, for the foreseeable future, might now be the consistent policy of one of our major political parties.
Speaking as a WI resident, the dual threshold of …
… this threshold is pretty high. How would you make it more difficult, without removing the right of recall entirely?
In Ohio they will have a ballot referendum on the removal of collective bargaining rights which has already passed the legislature. I would prefer that to the drama of multiple recall elections. It’s a stronger rebuke on specific policy.
I don’t know. The threshold is pretty high.
I might reconsider my position. Part of me thinks recall provisions are a bad idea in general. But with a high enough threshold, it can be made to work only in extraordinary circumstances.
Republicans are also running recalls here in WI against a few of the Democrats who left the state to avoid giving the Reps a quorum. One of those Dem happens to be my local assemblyman. Unfortunately, Paul Ryan is my congressman so it all balances out.
I’d like Feingold to return to the Senate but he would have the best chance to defeat Walker for Governor.
Republicans just ended same-day voter registration here and passed voter id laws that will be in effect for these recall elections. That will be a factor in 2012.
Not only do Scott Walker and Rick Snyder support your position. So does Ali Abdullah Saleh. Elections should be final, regardless of popular sentiment.
The Republican war on democracy will end when the public finally figures out what they are doing. The Medicare debate has caused some eye-opening moments, no matter how hard John Boehner tries to sweep the under the carpet.
The failure of our politics is a failure of political discourse that has nearly completely gutted the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
The Republican war on democracy will end when the public finally figures out what they are doing.
Then we’re probably doomed. Since at least the time of Delay’s shenanigans on the House, I’ve been thinking:
Surely this time people will see what they’re up to. OK, OK, surely THIS time.
In the House…
That’s kind of a cheap shot.
I didn’t say that we should have sham elections.
Exactly my point. With the amount of media disinformation saturating Wisconsin, Michigan, Florida, and to an only lesser extent the rest of the country, the failure to honestly air the issues made November 2010 a sham election. Walker, Snyder, Scott, and a whole bunch of legislators got elected on false pretenses. When they swung into action, the public realized they had been deceived—time for making noise in the streets and a recall. In principle, no different from the Yemeni election that “legitimized” Saleh or the judicial selection that put George W. Bush in office.
The only problem with the Gray Davis recall was that it was based on deception, not that he should not have been recalled between elections on principle. Enron screwed Californians and the GOP and Schwarzenegger displaced their anger to Gray Davis.
In this case, the public is ahead of the campaign strategists; the public is driving these recalls.
People in Wisconsin are used to voting a lot. We have elections in April and November. The April elections are for county and municipal government, and for all judicial posts. There are February primaries for the April elections and September primaries for the November elections. If making frequent trips to the polls was seen as a burden, the voters in Wisconsin would have at some point enacted a more streamlined process. It’s much better to have an extra election or two than to be stuck for four years with a government that you don’t want.
However, I don’t think the recall elections will accomplish much. The senators who were recalled won in 2008, a huge Democratic year. To win against the tide, they had to be pretty popular in their districts. I think enough of them will survive to recall so that Republicans will still control the whole legislature.
I think the effort is all coming too late though. Where was everybody last fall? I felt last October that the 2010 elections would be the most significant election of my lifetime, and that they would be disastrous. With voter ID and Republicans in complete control of redistricting, I don’t think that that Republican control of Wisconsin is essentially permanent.