Recall Elections and Total Political Warfare

A recall election in Wisconsin tonight could result in the Democrats taking back the state Senate and remove Republican Gov. Scott Walker's ability to pass his agenda on a party-line basis. Great! On a substantive matter, I think it would be awesome if the Democrats win these recalls, and pretty sweet if Russ Feingold kicks Gov. Walker's ass in a recall of his own next year, too. But here's the thing: recall elections are a really, really bad idea. There are reasons why we let our legislatures sit for fixed terms of several years. You want government responsive to the people, definitely, but you don't necessarily want it to be a weathervane that follows every swirling breeze of public sentiment. Striking the balance between those competing desires was a big part of what the people who designed our government were thinking about. A recall process that allows for a new election at any time kind of destroys that balance. In theory, anyone who gets sufficiently mad about anything a politician has done to spend the money gathering signatures can force a recall, and once that happens all hell breaks loose (see: California, 2003). Recalls are a bad idea.