-By Warner Todd Huston
The idea of a recall of elected officials was and is a good idea, especially in this, the most corrupt state in the union. Just think if we had a good recall amendment during this past mess with Governor Rod Blagojevich.
Well, we did get a recall amendment on the ballot here in 2010. Unfortunately, the language in this recall amendment makes the whole thing useless.
There are two major drawbacks to this amendment. First it only affects the position of Governor. Instead of applying to all elected officials (as it should) the language of this particular amendment is limited only to the governor. This is a bad limitation and if this passes would make Illinois the only state that has a recall amendment that limits the recall just to the position of governor.
Secondly, and even more egregious, is the “permission slip” provision. In the amendment that is on the 2010 ballot the only way to initiate a recall of an elected official is to have 30 legislators sign a sort of permission slip to allow the recall to go forward. This is idiotic. As voters we are expected to believe that the political machine will allow 30 legislators to sign a document giving permission to proceed to recall? We are expected to believe that we could get 30 legislators that would sign onto a document that would cause no end of ill will for the party in power? Come on, seriously?
With the “permission” provision in this amendment we would be setting up a situation where the recall amendment could never be implemented because the barrier of this “permission slip” provision is so high that recall could simply never occur.
The fact is that this amendment is too flawed to accept. Everyone should vote no on this amendment.
John Bambenek participated in a great video to explain why this recall amendment is no good…
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
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