The person getting recalled already had their chance - they had over 50% of people say “this person should not be governor”. They lost and are disqualified.
Now it is a new vote. The vote on whether that person should stay governor is done and that percentage doesn’t matter anymore. The winner of this new vote may have a smaller percentage due to the large field of candidates, but that’s fine. They still won. If people who supported the governor want to avoid that, then they should coalesce around an alternative choice and narrow the field ahead of time in case the recall passes. That’s one of the jobs of the political party, to get someone from that party elected. If they can’t manage to do that, that is party incompetence not anti democratic.
I can see an argument that it should be more than 12% to trigger the recall election, but once the election is triggered it is disingenuous to argue that it is anti-democratic.
I think it’s the “narrow the field” point that raises the weakness in the California system. There isn’t a plausible mechanism to do that, given the size of the state, and the relatively short timelines implied/required by a recall process.
Given the nature of politics, I’m not a fan of the recall process. I think that in a representative democracy, the proper way to dismiss a poor executive is via impeachment (which arguably might need a few tweaks), or by having more frequent elections (which has its own downsides).
But if you’re going to have a recall process…or even for elections in general…there needs to be a process by which a clear majority winner is identified in the event the recall is successful. I like the concept of IRV or preference-rank voting for such a purpose, but a runoff system might be sufficient alternative given the potential issues/concerns with IRV/preference voting.
Additional thought: One advantage of a Westminster-rules parliamentary-style government is that a successful no-confidence vote in the legislature can trigger a change in leadership of the government. I don’t know that could be translated to US-style government systems, but it would at least be less wacky than what California does today.
I think you need an immediate successor to a recall election. You don’t have time for a runoff. If the recall is successful, you need an immediate successor - I would think you’d be better off promoting the Lt. Governor.
impeachments are for when illegal acts are committed while in office.
recalls are for incompetence.
Newsom has not been charged/accused of any illegal activities
Actually, if you go back to the debates surrounding the framing of the US Constitution, you find that some of the Framers argued that impeachment was also the mechanism to remove incompetent individuals from the executive or judicial branches.
If you have a President/Governor who is “that bad”, there needs to be some mechanism to remove them before the next election. I accept recall as one such mechanism…but I’d prefer there to be some buffer between actually taking such a drastic step and the mob’s desire for such a drastic step to be taken.
In your example - who is President between the recall election and runoff election? Is there going to be a transition period before the new president is inaugurated?
What happens if there is no need for a run-off, is the new president immediately sworn-in after the recall election? Is there a transition period?
There should be no new candidates - that only complicates things. Immediately after the winner of the recall election is determined, either retain the office or promote the VP, Lt, 2nd in charge. all others wait until the next general election.
Instant runoff because you rank your choices. Only one election.
How did it work when Davis was recalled? What was the lag before Schwarzenegger took over? Was Davis’s Lt Gov ever promoted to either Gov or Acting Gov?
I think the lag from the polls closing to Schwarzenegger’s swearing in was pretty quick at any rate. Do the same thing here. You should know the results of the runoff within 24-48 hours of the recall election polls closing.
Certainly not a couple of days if you have the Lt Gov as Acting Gov.
I would think you’d want someone designated as actual or acting Governor in case there was some sort of emergency that required the deploying the National Guard or something.
24 to 48 hours is a little optimistic for a by mail election isn’t it? Unless the results are overwhelming, often they have enough ballots outstanding even 48 hours after the election that the outcome is not clear.
Here is the timeline from the 2003 recall. Vote was Oct 7 and Arnold was sworn in on Nov 17. Davis was governor during the interim.
Following the election, all 58 of California’s counties had 28 days (until November 4, 2003) each to conduct a countywide canvass of their votes. Counties used this time to count any absentee ballots or provisional ballots not yet counted, to reconcile the number of signatures on the roster of registered voters with the number of ballots recorded on the ballot statement, to count any valid write-in votes, to reproduce any damaged ballots, if necessary, and to conduct a hand count of the ballots cast in 1% of the precincts, chosen at random by the elections official. Counties then had seven days from the conclusion of canvassing (November 11, 2003, 35 days after the election) to submit their final vote totals to the California Secretary of State’s office. The Secretary of State had to certify the final statewide vote by 39 days (until November 15) after the election.
The vote was officially certified on November 14, 2003. Once the vote was certified, governor-elect Schwarzenegger had to be sworn into office within ten days.[33] His inauguration took place on November 17, 2003.
I’m too lazy too but I would suspect it would be possible, though highly unlikely since most of the elections are partisan and each party gets to put up one official candidate. But the possibility would come in if enough other parties had candidates that got decent amounts of the vote and/or there were write-in candidates that managed to siphon away party votes from the party’s official candidate.
Though wasn’t the 12% number thrown out as the % of VAP or VEP? Not of actual turn out. Yeah, I’m even too lazy to go up and look.
VAP = Voting Age Population
VEP = Voting Eligible Population
CA actually has one of the smallest ratios of VEP/VAP because of the number of non-citizens.
I guess my main point is… it shouldn’t take materially longer due to the instant runoff situation than it would take if you just let the 12% (or 25% or whatever) plurality guy win.
So whatever the current timeline is… go with that.
The only reason there is a recall election is because a judge extended the deadline for signatures by 4 months. as of the original decline lay November they only had a bout half the required signatures.
I guess we’ll know tomorrow if Newsom is still gov or Elder is taking over.