By Selwyn Duke

Should recall elections be reserved only for politicians who
break the law? Columnist Rick Moran thinks so. Opining on an impending recall
election in Colorado, he writes:

The recall device should be
reserved for politicians who either break the law or are corrupt in some other
way. It shouldn't be employed because 10,000 people disagree with a particular
vote taken on an issue.

Recall elections are expensive and
turnout is usually about 1 in 5 eligible voters. It just isn't worth it when
the only issue is that some constituents disagree with the way a legislator
voted.

Mr. Moran is being consistent. He made this argument after
the recall designed to oust Republican legislators in Wisconsin, and now he
applies it to two Democrat Colorado state senators — John Morse and Angela
Giron — who have been targeted by the NRA after voting for an anti-Second
Amendment bill. That’s fair enough; however, his thesis overlooks some
important points.

Mr. Moran says that a recall is “unnecessary because the
legislators stand for re-election every two years, at which point voters can
punish the politicians for their votes.” The problem with this is that voters
have very, very short memories. Remember John McCain in 2007? After pushing his
amnesty bill, his approval rating had plummeted among Republicans and his
presidential campaign was in tatters; he seemed like a dead man walking. Yet in
2008 he became the GOP nominee.

Here’s a fact: Politicians know that the bulk of voters
don’t remember from one year to the next — and they bank on it. They know they
can get away with a lot — pushing bad policy in deference to big donors and
special interest groups, who will
remember failure to their bidding — as long as they don’t do it too close to re-election time. Because at that point,
only the relatively few high-information voters will remember the betrayal. The
solution to this lack of voter recall is the recall election.

In addition, low voter turnout isn’t a liability.

It’s a strength.

Any politics wonk knows that low turnout favors Republicans.
But a better way to put it is that it favors good government. The less an
election inspires interest, the
more only the interested cast ballots. And interest in something is a
prerequisite for competence. Recall elections help remove the idiot vote from
the equation.

If politicians knew that breaking an election promise or
stabbing good Americans in the back would result in an immediate recall effort,
they’d be more likely to mind their p’s and q’s.

Electoral justice delayed is too often electoral justice
denied.

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