Total Recall
I’ve been waiting all day to use that headline from the really bad Arnold Schwarzenegger film. As you know by now the voters of Wisconsin exercised some common sense and chose NOT to recall Governor Scott Walker.
I thought it was interesting that Walker won the recall vote by a slightly higher margin than when he got elected Governor in 2012. In 2010 he won 52-46. This time around he won 54-46 and voter turnout was only a few percentage points higher than the previous election.
That said, the entire ordeal underlines my belief in voter recalls, I don’t. They are a bad idea at best. And at worst, they should only be used for high crimes and misdemeanors. And I am bi-partisan on this one. I was not a fan of the Gray Davis California recall back in 2003. Unless someone is caught with a live boy or a dead girl, you’re stuck with them. Move on and find a better candidate. Which by the way, it struck me as odd that Democrats and labor would choose the same guy to run against Walker who lost against him the first time.
I view voter recalls with the same disdain that I do term limits, they only enable lazy voters. I argue we already have recalls and term limits, they’re called elections. They tend to happen every two, four or six years. And if you don’t think a long-term incumbent can be beat just ask Richard Lugar and Bart Peterson. You may have to work at it, but the sooner you accept that fact the easier you will sleep. Recalling someone just because you don’t like their policies is silly. And apparently, as shaky as some of the exit polling was in the Wisconsin race, 60% of the voters thought recall should only be used when the officeholder is charged or convicted of a serious crime or felony. None of that was true in the Walker case. His biggest crime was making public employee unions mad. He should have gotten a medal for that, if you want my personal opinion.
There’s a reason that there have been less than half a dozen successful gubernatorial recalls in the past 100 years, it’s because they’re stupid. And at the end of the day recalls only enable stupid, lazy voters to keep making stupid, lazy decisions instead of learning to deal with the consequences of their actions.
