Recall efforts play an important role in our democracy, but recalling a duly elected official should never be easy. It's a drastic remedy that should be used only in extraordinary circumstances. Louisiana lawmakers should bear that in mind as they consider a pair of bills that would significantly change Louisiana's recall laws.
Under current law, a recall drive begins when organizers file an official petition with the secretary of state's office. That's the easy part.
The petitioners then have either 90 or 180 days, depending on the size of the targeted official's district, to gather enough voter signatures to trigger a referendum on whether to remove or retain that elected official. That's the difficult part.
The question now before legislators is how many voter signatures should be enough to trigger a referendum.
Current law ties the signature threshold to the number of "active" voters in the targeted official's district. The threshold ranges from 40% of the active voters in small districts to 20% in districts with 100,000 or more active voters.
In recent years, the only recall efforts that succeeded occurred in relatively small districts. In larger cities and parishes — particularly in New Orleans and Jefferson Parish — even the 20% threshold seemed impossibly high. At least, that's the claim of some after failed attempts to recall Mayor LaToya Cantrell and then-Jefferson Parish President Mike Yenni.
In addition, doubts about the accuracy of New Orleans' active voter list — and the definition of the term itself — led to voter confusion, a headline-grabbing lawsuit, a closed-door settlement agreement, and allegations of voting rights infringement during the late stages of the Cantrell recall effort.
All of which inspired House Bill 212 by state Rep. Paul Hollis, R-Mandeville. Hollis' proposal would tie the signature threshold to the total votes cast in the last regular, contested election in a targeted official's district, rather than to the number of active voters. Because voter turnout always falls far short of total voter registration, Hollis would raise the signature threshold in large jurisdictions to 50% of the total votes cast in the last regular election, a difficult but not impossible threshold.
That's an intriguing approach that strikes us as fair and practical. It would remove any questions about whether local voter rolls are accurate, and bypass public confusion over the difference between active and inactive voters, by replacing the current benchmark with one that's not open to question. Special election turnouts would not be used as benchmarks under Hollis' bill.
Moreover, if HB 212 had been the law during the recall drive against Cantrell, the effort would still have failed. The signature threshold would have been lower — 37,663 (based on 75,325 votes cast in Cantrell's last election) rather than 45,000 (based on the controversial settlement) — but even that lower threshold is well above the roughly 27,000 signatures organizers gathered.
Meanwhile, Senate Bill 123 by state Sen. Cameron Henry, R-Jefferson, addresses several technical but important issues with current law, including when petition signatures should become public records.
Current law makes every petition signature a public record immediately, which presented logistical problems when this newspaper requested a copy of all signed petitions against Cantrell.
Henry's bill would make all signatures public 90 days after the first signature. That provision would prevent recall opponents from filing vexatious records requests from day one or intimidating petition signers who fear retribution. At the same time, it would allow citizens and the media to ascertain, as a petition's deadline nears, whether recall organizers have mounted a serious effort.
On balance, we think both bills would bring needed clarity to Louisiana's recall laws.