The deeper we get into this recall nonsense, the more annoyed I get at section 11322 of the Elections Code. It’s the section that provides for the election of a replacement.
See, to my mind, a recall should be a mechanism to get rid of a bad official, not to call a do-over of the election. A recall election should, therefore, simply take the official out of office, and he or she should be replaced in the normal way. In this case, the lieutenant governor should take office. That’s what the lieutenant governor is for.
But instead, we’ve given ourselves a situation where anyone with enough cash can force a do-over (let’s face it, you can get enough Californians to equal 12 percent of the last election’s turnout to sign anything if you take enough time), we’ve done it on terms where the official subject to recall faces a more difficult standard than the original election, the state gets to shoulder the cost of a special election at a time when our budget is in shambles, and we’ve now seen a world where Larry Flynt is a gubernatorial candidate. It ain’t right.
Besides, the current state of affairs promotes a distasteful level of game-playing, where the Democrats hesitate to advance a candidate lest a viable Democrat tempt voters to vote for the recall. This is not how elections should be, damn it.