any one could explain me why the recall election needs 50% to keep the

[Charlls]

Governor Davis? Common-sense dictates that it should have to be 50% for removing him, not for keeping him! Done like it is right now abstentionism plays at the favor of Schwarsnegger, and hence of Bush


this means we can call a recall on Bush and he would have to get 50% of votes to keep the job? if not, why not?

[Dookus]

1. the only reason...

is that's the way it's written in the constitution.


But I'm missing your math. If 50% +1 vote to keep him, he stays. If 50%+1 vote to remove him, he's gone. It seems like just the inverse.

[GOPBasher]

2. You're right, because it's just one or the other.

There's no third option here, so whichever vote gets one more vote than 50% is the winner.

[Charlls]

5. mainly because people that doesnt want Davis out

_Should not_ have to be interested in the recall election. This means that those people are likely to not vote. To me personally the fact that people has to go to a vote to say yes to a current governor its wrong. For me it makes more sense that i have to vote on a recall if i want him out, and the number of voters that recall him should be a sensible percentage of the number of voters that elected him in first place.

But anyways, i think these recalls elections are just ugly patches to the currently fundamentally flawed system, and it wont be solved until continuous election systems begin to be more known and irrational fear on them decreases enough to be tried, at least at the level of states

[not systems]

3. It is biased to throw the bastards out.

In this case it is having the opposite effect
by throwing the bastards in.

It was writen in a time that assumed the entrenched
leaders were the problem.

It is a populist idea of the same type as term limits.

No recall Yes Cruz No 53 No 54

[bowens43]

4. More then 50% have to vote in favor of the recall

to remove davis. It takes a clear majority of the voters.

[greenwow]

6. No!

> It takes a clear majority of the voters.

No it doesn't. Davis will probably get more votes than any of the candidates, but still have his job stolen by the repugs. Do you really think any one of those candidates are going to get more votes than Davis did? There's no chance of that. He'll get the majority and the will of the people will not be respected.

[Nederland]

8. Be fair

Yes, Davis will get more votes than any of the other candidates, but only because the Republican vote is split between Arnold and McClintock. Personally I will be surprised if he gets more votes than those two Republicans do combined. If this were a straight up match between Arnold and Davis, Davis would get slaughtered.

[elperromagico]

9. Let me get this straight

You're saying that if Arnold had to run a full-length campaign (none of this thief-in-the-night bullshit), had to debate his Democratic opponent (a REAL debate), and had to develop a solid stance on the issues---

He would still win?

[Nederland]

11. Probably

That's just my opinion obviously, but one based upon the fact that Davis has a 22% approval rating. Its not that hard to beat an opponent that is despised to that degree. Now if Arnold were up against Bustamante, I think he'd lose...

[elperromagico]

14. Touche

Okay, I'll grant you that if he ran against Davis, he might win. But remember that, although Davis has a 22% approval rating, support for recall hasn't climbed above 55% at any point (to my knowledge). So, 23% or more of the voters who think he's doing a miserable job don't think anyone else in the race could do the job better.

I'm simply of the opinion that if Arnie had to run a real campaign, lasting nine months to a year (or more), you would see a considerable drop in his approval ratings. He's a lot of flash and little substance.

Why did he refuse to face Davis in a no-holds-barred debate? Because he knew Davis would cream him on the issues. Just observe his performance at the 9/24 debate. He said nothing of substance, just nice 10-30 second sound bytes. Look at the polling figures on him: The majority of voters felt that he didn't clarify his positions on the issues enough. So this groundswell of support is derived from A. The length of the campaign (2 months and a day) and B. His name recognition.

Increase A, and B starts to lose its glimmer. Then C comes into play: The issues. It might be a close race, but I doubt Schwarzy could defeat Davis in a long-term contest.

[HitmanLV]

17. i dunno about that....

Based on the leaked exit polls, it looks like recall wins 59-41, and it looks like arnold gets 51% of the vote.

Arnold will get many more votes than Davis did tonight.

[elperromagico]

7. It comes down to this:

You have two choices: Yes or No.

If you only had two choices in the Presidential election (hasn't happened much lately), then one of the candidates would need over 50% to win.

The reason why a candidate can win on the second half with less than 50% is because there are 130 candidates on the ballot, which means that a candidate could (conceivably) win that part with only 0.76923076923076923076923076923078% of the vote. So, let's say 15 million votes were cast in California. A candidate could win with 116,000 votes.

My math may be a bit "fuzzy," but I believe that's a correct statement.

[gemini_liberal]

10. 50 percent? If the results are tied

The negative prevails, I believe. I could be wrong though, but that's usually the rule.

[Dookus]

12. I don't think ...

we need to worry about an exact tie. With 16 million voters, I don't think they'll split exactly down the middle.

[azrak]

15. 16 million voters?!

So to how many signatures will we need to recall AS? 3 million??

[ma4t]

13. two answers

Short answer - Because that's the way the law is written.

Long answer - Because the recall provision, like so many other populist "reforms", was not very well thought at the time it was proposed and enacted. This is the classic case of the cure being worse than the disease.

[HalfManHalfBiscuit]

16. It is called math

Two choices. Yes or no.