Essay:Why Recall Elections Are Essential

A recall election is a special election resulting from a petition drive by the people to "recall" or fire a public official. Conceptually it is analogous to a master firing a servant. Typically the recall election requires a massive number of signatures (for example, 25% of all registered voters in New Jersey) and a majority vote in the special election. On the same day a replacement is chosen by the voters, and often (including New Jersey) the recalled official may be candidate for the election to replace him.

The justifications for recall elections range from the philosophical to the practical:

• public officials are public servants, meaning they serve at the whim of the master (the people)
• recall elections provide greater accountability, which is desirable
• without a recall mechanism, there is no check and balance on contempt by the public official for the people
• without a recall mechanism, there is no way for the people to deal with an incapacitated official who refuses to resign
• recall elections have been very successful when used, as in recalling a California Chief Justice (Bird) and Governor (Davis), and a corrupt North Dakota Governor (in 1921)
• recall elections are the only meaningful deterrent against lying by candidates during campaigns, or candidates switching parties after election
• recall elections are preferable to the alternatives of a constitutional crisis, a Con Con, and widespread public discontent
• recall elections enfranchise voters, rather than the disenfranchisement of voters that Justice Anthony Kennedy stressed in the 5-4 decision invalidating term limits

In 2010, Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI) sponsored a Voters’ Bill of Rights package ("HJR 71") to support and expand a recall mechanism for congressmen.

Legal Objections

1. The U.S. Constitution does not expressly permit recall elections for congressmen.

Response: True, but the Constitution does not expressly deny the power either, and the Tenth Amendment is clear that:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Indeed, there has never been an amendment to the Constitution that establishes a right or power by states to do something that is not prohibited by the Constitution. Such an amendment would duplicate the Tenth Amendment, which is already fully effective.

2. The U.S. Senate was designed to be insulated against frequent elections.

Response: Perhaps the Senate as a whole was designed with the alternative election cycles (one-third of the Senate is elected every two years) in order to immunize the entire Senate from transient political fluctuations, but there was no intent to protect the jobs of individual senators. Quite the contrary: Alexander Hamilton stressed the importance of elections in promoting responsiveness by individual senators to their constituents.