When we look at the California recall election, what do we see? Actors, porn stars, career politicians, prisoners, mortgage brokers, railroad conductors, directors and a comedian are all running for governor. Over the past two months, the East Coast media corporations have turned the purest form of democracy into a carnival.
As a Democrat, you would assume that I would be quick to claim this as a "right-wing conspiracy," like we did during the impeachment of President Clinton. Not this time. I'm not going to give the Republicans the benefit of allowing Democrats to claim this historic symbol of voter's rights - to hold their representatives accountable - a conspiracy. The original idea that led to the law of allowing the people to recall the governor was that of a liberal third party whose agenda was absorbed into the Democratic Party's agenda in California.
As many of us have learned in Government 101, we do not live in a direct democracy, but rather we live in a representative republic. This fact alone makes this idea of a recall one of the most radical structural laws that has ever passed into law in United States history. The recall in California has set a precedent in our nation to shift from a representative democracy into a direct democracy in the coming years; California is the leader in this shift.
The intent of the recall is not flawed, but the procedure is. How is it that a petition of 900,000 people in a state of 35 million (2.5 percent) can recall a governor? The recall puts an extremely small minority of the people of California in control of the state agenda. If the intent is to give the people more accountability in regard to their representatives, and if there is a need for the people to recall, then what is the harm in raising the level to 15 percent? The 15 percent amount is the same guideline used by the federal government to determine if a candidate in the last general election got enough of the population's vote to receive federal funding for his or her campaign.
To be placed on the ballot in California, a candidate has to get 65 signatures and give $3,500 to the state. This is the sole reason why the media on the East Coast has targeted California and reinforced their prejudice that Californians are all a bunch of pot-smoking, hippy jokers. Being a native Californian, I take offense to this. The media exploits the state not because of the pool of candidates, but because the election laws are too lax for anybody to take the election seriously. If the minimum guidelines required 2,000 signatures, then you won't necessarily see the pool of candidates decrease, but they would conduct themselves in a more serious manner.
To attack California's candidates for not being the most professional candidates is idiotic. In our nation's past we have had a peanut farmer, an architect, a magician, sailors, an actor, a police chief, a tailor, a journalist, a professor, an engineer, a clothing storeowner, a baseball club owner, a football player and two oil tycoons as our presidents. So don't attack Gary Coleman or Gallagher for facilitating their civic duty, especially when an average of less than 50 percent of Americans vote in general elections. Maybe we should not be focused on attacking the system or making fools of those involving themselves in it, but rather we should attack ourselves for not voting and allowing these people whom we don't want running our government to ruin our lives.
So how am I placing my vote? I will vote no on the recall, because the last thing this disabled state needs is an administration change. Even if a Democrat is put in place of Davis, it will still send the state into further economic woes. I do not feel safe voting for any of the major candidates, especially Schwarzenegger, Bustamante, or McClintock. I was going to vote for Huffington, but now I might have to vote for Kurt E. Rightmyer, a middleweight sumo wrestler from Los Angeles. If you can have a former junky and AWOL National Guardsman as president, then why not a sumo wrestler for governor of California?
