Right to Recall.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A recall election (also called a recall referendum or representative recall) is a procedure by which voters can remove an elected official from office through a direct vote (plebiscite), initiated when sufficient voters sign a petition. Recall has a history dating back to the ancient Athenian democracy and is a feature of several contemporary constitutions.

Canada

The Province of British Columbia enacted representative recall in 1995. In that province, voters in a provincial riding can petition to have a sitting representative removed from office, even a Premier presently leading a government. If enough registered voters sign the petition, the Speaker of the legislature announces before the House that the member has been recalled and a by-election follows as soon as possible, giving voters the opportunity to replace the politician in question. By January 2003, 22 recall efforts had been launched. No one has been recalled so far, but one representative, Paul Reitsma, resigned in 1998 when it looked as if the petition to recall him would have enough signatures to spur a recall election. Reitsma resigned during the secondary verification stage, and the recall count ended.

Switzerland

While recall referenda are not provided for at the federal level in Switzerland, six cantons allow them:

• Bern: Recall of the executive and legislative is possible since 1846. 30,000 signatures (4% of all adult citizens) are required to trigger a recall referendum. There has been one unsuccessful attempt to recall the executive in 1852.
• Schaffhausen: Recall of the executive and legislative is possible since 1876. 1,000 signatures (2% of all adult citizens) are required to trigger a recall referendum. There has been one unsuccessful attempt to recall the executive in 2000.
• Solothurn: Recall of the executive and legislative is possible since 1869. 6,000 signatures (3% of all adult citizens) are required to trigger a recall referendum. There has been one unsuccessful attempt to recall the executive and legislative in 1995.
• Ticino: Recall of the executive is possible since 1892. 15,000 signatures (7% of all adult citizens) are required to trigger a recall referendum. There has been one unsuccessful recall attempt in 1942. In addition, recall of municipal executives is possible since 2011. Signatures of 30% of all adult citizens are required to trigger a recall referendum.
• Thurgau: Recall of the executive and legislative is possible since 1869. 20,000 signatures (13% of all adult citizens) are required to trigger a recall referendum. There have been no recall attempts.
• Uri: Recall of the executive and legislative is possible since 1988. 600 signatures (3% of all adult citizens) are required to trigger a recall referendum. In addition, recall of municipal executives and legislatives is possible since 2011. Signatures of 10% of registered voters are required to trigger a recall referendum. There have been no recall attempts either at the cantonal or municipal levels.

The possibility of recall referenda (together with the popular election of executives, the initiative and the legislative referendum) was introduced into several cantonal constitutions after the 1860s in the course of a broad movement for democratic reform. The instrument has never been of any practical importance – the few attempts at recall so far have failed, usually because the required number of signatures was not collected – and it was abolished in the course of constitutional revisions in Aargau (1980), Baselland (1984) and Lucerne (2007). But the possibility of recalling municipal executives was newly introduced in Ticino in 2011, with 59% of voters in favor, as a reaction to the perceived problem of squabbling and dysfunctional municipal governments.

United States

Recall first appeared in Colonial America in the laws of the General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1631. This version of the recall involved one elected body removing another official. During the American Revolution the Articles of Confederation stipulated that state legislatures might recall delegates from the continental congress.^[3] According to New York Delegate John Lansing, the power was never exercised by any state. The Virginia Plan, issued at the outset of the Philadelphia Convention of 1787, proposed to pair recall with rotation in office, and to apply these dual principles to the lower house of the national legislature. The recall was rejected by the Constitutional Convention. However, the anti-Federalists used the lack of recall provision as a weapon in the ratification debates.
Several states proposed adopting a recall for U.S. Senators in the years immediately following the adoption of the Constitution. However, it did not pass.
Along with the initiative, the referendum, and the direct primary, the recall election was one of the major electoral reforms advocated by leaders of the Progressive movement in the United States during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, although it was initially proposed in William S. U'Ren's Oregon newspaper. Recall elections do not take place at the federal level. The majority of states allow recall elections in local jurisdictions, but only eighteen states permit recall elections to remove state officials and a nineteenth state, Illinois, allows it for Governors only.^[4] The modern day father of the recall is considered to be Dr. John Randolph Haynes, who formed the Direct Legislation League of California in 1900. Los Angeles became the first major city to adopt the recall in 1903.
Only two governors have ever been successfully recalled. In 1921, Lynn Frazier, Governor of North Dakota, was recalled during a dispute about state-owned industries, and in 2003, Governor Gray Davis of California was recalled over the state budget. Additionally, A recall was approved against Arizona Governor Evan Meacham, but he was impeached and convicted before it got on the ballot.
In Alaska, Georgia, Kansas, Minnesota, Montana, Rhode Island, and Washington, specific grounds are required for a recall. Some form of malfeasance or misconduct while in office must be identified by the petitioners. The target may choose to dispute the validity of the grounds in court, and a court then judges whether the allegations in the petition rise to a level where a recall is necessary. In the November 2010 general election, Illinois passed a referendum to amend the state constitution to allow a recall in light of ex-Governor Rod Blagojevich's corruption scandal. In the other eleven states that permit state-wide recall, no grounds are required and recall petitions may be circulated for any reason. However, the target is permitted to submit responses to the stated reasons for recall.
The minimum number of signatures and the time limit to qualify a recall vary between states. In addition, the handling of recalls once they qualify differs. In some states, a recall triggers a simultaneous special election, where the vote on the recall, as well as the vote on the replacement if the recall succeeds, are on the same ballot. In the 2003 California recall election, over 100 candidates appeared on the replacement portion of the ballot. In other states, a separate special election is held after the target is recalled, or a replacement is appointed by the Governor or some other state authority.