As explained in Justice Thomas' dissent, an individual state does not possess the authority to effectuate a recall to cut short the term of a sitting Member of the United States Congress, and such Member is beyond the reach of the people of the state "until the next election":. In keeping with the complexity of our federal system, once the representatives chosen by the people of each State assemble in Congress, they form a national body and are beyond the control of the individual States until the next election.
The dissent in the Term Limits case thus conceded that, regardless of their view of the authority of each state in setting qualifications or conditions on the "selection of Members of Congress" under the Tenth Amendment, once a Member of Congress is seated, such a Member is not subject to recall, and the only way to remove that Member prior to the expiration of his term is expressly delegated to that Member's house of Congress in the expulsion clause of Article I, Section 5.
As again explained by Justice Thomas, even if a state wishes to "punish one of its Senators The Senator would still be able to serve out his term; the Constitution provides for Senators to be chosen for 6-year terms The Framers may well have thought that state power over salary, like state power to recall, would be inconsistent with the notion that Congress was a national legislature once it assembled.
As to the Tenth Amendment and the "reserved" authority of the states, the United States Supreme Court has clearly explained that determining qualifications and terms for federal offices, created within the United States Constitution, were "not part of the original powers of sovereignty that the Tenth Amendment reserved to the States," and thus whatever authority states have over the terms, qualifications, and elections of federal officers must be a "delegated" authority from the Constitution.
Petitioners' Tenth Amendment argument misconceives the nature of the right at issue because that Amendment could only "reserve" that which existed before. As Justice Story recognized, "the states can exercise no powers whatsoever, which exclusively spring out of the existence of the national government, which the constitution does not delegate to them No state can say, that is has reserved, what it never possessed.
Re-emphasizing this meaning of the Tenth Amendment's "reserved" authority vis-a-vis federal officials, the Court later explained in Cook v. Gralick :. The federal offices at stake "aris[e] from the Constitution itself. Because any state authority to regulate election to those offices could not precede their very creation by the Constitution, such power "had to be delegated to, rather than reserved by, the States.
Members of Congress are clearly federal officials, not state officers, and owe their existence and authority solely to the federal Constitution. As explained by the Supreme Court:. In that National Government, representatives owe primary allegiance not to the people of a State, but to the people of the Nation. As Justice Story observed, each Member of Congress is 'an officer of the union, deriving his powers and qualifications from the constitution, and neither created by, dependent upon, not controllable by, the states Representatives and Senators are as much officers of the entire union as is the President.
As noted in the previous section, even the dissenting Justices in the U. Term Limits case, who would have found under the Tenth Amendment a "reserved" authority in the states with respect to the "qualifications" of Members of Congress, explicitly conceded that no such authority exists in the states to "recall, which the Framers denied to the States when they specified the terms of Members of Congress.
The United States Constitution establishes the exclusive qualifications for congressional office, sets the specific length of terms for Members of the House and for Senators, and expressly delegates to each house of Congress the authority to judge the elections and qualifications of, and to discipline and to remove its own Members.
State attorneys general, as well as state judicial bodies, when considering the merits of the issue of a proposed recall of a Member of Congress under state provisions have consistently found that such recall is neither provided for, permitted by, nor is it consistent with the provisions of the U.
The attorney general of Oregon in , for example, ruled that the state's recall provisions could not apply to a Member of Congress who is not actually a state official, but who holds his office pursuant to the U. Constitution and is a federal constitutional officer. The opinion found that such recall provisions would interfere with the Congress's exclusive constitutional authority over the elections and qualifications of its own Members, noting that the "jurisdiction to determine the right of a representative in Congress to a seat is vested exclusively in the House of Representatives In Nevada, in , an attorney general opinion found that "there is no provision in [the U.
Constitution] for the removal of federal legislative officers prior to the end of their terms other than Article I, Section 5," and "[t]herefore, only the United States Senate or the House of Representatives can remove its own Members prior to the end of the terms for which they were elected, pursuant to Article I, Section 5. In , the attorney general of Kansas, finding that "Members of congress are neither state officers nor local officers" as defined by Kansas statutes, and finding that the U.
Constitution "reserves to the houses of congress" the authority to punish and remove from office their own Members by way of expulsion, provided a formal opinion that U. Representatives and Senators could not be "recalled" under state provisions. Congress, the attorney general found:.
As such power has been delegated to the federal government by the United States constitution, the United States constitution does not provide for any reservation of authority to the states to remove from office congressional officeholders. In a similar manner, the attorney general of Louisiana ruled in that a Member of Congress representing the people of a congressional district in Louisiana could not be recalled under Louisiana law.
The attorney general found that the "Constitution does not provide for, nor does it authorize, the recall of United States officials," that the power to remove a Member of Congress before the expiration of the Member's term is expressly delegated in the "United States Constitution to the respective House of Congress The attorney general of North Dakota ruled in , in an opinion upheld by the North Dakota supreme court, that "neither the Constitution nor laws of the State of North Dakota allow for the recall of a congressional officer, specifically a United States Senator.
It may be noted that in one instance in the s an attorney general of a state declined to find that a state administrative agency is barred from accepting a recall petition directed at a Member of Congress. In interpreting a state recall statute, the attorney general of Wisconsin noted in an opinion on May 3, , that an administrative agency, the state election board, upon presentation of a valid petition to recall a Member of Congress under the Wisconsin constitution, had no authority, in itself, to adjudicate and reject such petition without a ruling from a court.
When such matters have on rare occasions generated a ruling from a court, however, the courts which have decided the issue have thus far found that state recall laws are ineffective to override and substitute for the provisions of the U. Constitution concerning the terms of and removal of federal officials such as Members of Congress. A federal court in , for example, dismissed a suit which attempted to compel the Idaho secretary of state to accept petitions recalling Senator Frank Church of Idaho.
In the unreported judicial ruling, the court found that Senators are not subject to state recall statutes, and that such a state provision is inconsistent with the provisions of the U.
Similarly, in , a state court in Michigan dismissed a petition effort to recall a Member of Congress under that state's recall statute. Although an administrative entity had earlier approved the language of the recall petition, and despite the express language of the state law, the court granted an injunction against the continuation of the recall effort, finding "that pursuant to the text of Article I of the United States Constitution and by operation of the Supremacy Clause of the United States Constitution, the recall provisions under Michigan law are ineffective to recall a Member of Congress.
In New Jersey, an intermediate appellate state court in refrained from ruling on the constitutionality of that state's recall provision, and refused to enjoin a recall effort against a sitting United States Senator, since the recall effort had not at that time garnered sufficient signatures to invoke an election under state law, and thus the court found that the matter was not yet ripe for adjudication.
Senators are unconstitutional From U. Supreme Court rulings and explanations regarding terms and qualifications of Members of Congress, as well as from several state judicial rulings and attorneys general opinions, it would appear that for a recall provision to be enforceable against a Member of Congress a constitutional amendment authorizing such a recall procedure would need to be adopted by the requisite number of states.
Although there have been some calls for a constitutional amendment authorizing national "referenda" or "initiatives," there has not been significant movement for a national recall provision. Supporters of recall provisions see this mechanism as a device to assure regular and close oversight of elected public officials, and to make elected officials more continuously, rather than periodically, responsible and responsive to the will and desires of the electorate.
Those who oppose recall note that recall petitions generally need only a relatively small minority of the electorate to force a recall election of an official. With the threat of a recall election ever present, it is argued that an official may be deterred from, and penalized for, taking strong and clear political positions that could offend even a small, but vociferous and active political group.
It is contended that such small special interest or "single-issue" groups might effectively stymie an official by constantly occupying the official with the potential need to campaign and run in a recall election.
It is also argued that complex governmental programs and policies may often need to function and to be evaluated over time; but with the threat of immediate recall, Members may be deterred in supporting long-term plans and programs for the country which may not bring immediate, short-term benefits to constituents. House of Representatives [Deschler's precedents], Ch. Term Limits, Inc. Thornton, U. Gralike , U.
Term Limits, Inc , U. Brown and Johnson, House Practice, th Cong. Powell v. McCormack , U. Disqualification of a Member on such grounds would still appear to require the specific action of the relevant house of Congress. See case of Senator William Blount Tenn. Bartlett , 68 Mass. In addition to actual expulsions, note House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct's recommendations for expulsion of a Member for bribery in "Abscam" matter H.
It should be noted, however, that the Senate Select Committee on Ethics recommended the expulsion of a Senator in who was not convicted of any crime, but who was found by the Committee to have abused the authority of his office in making unwanted sexual advances to women, enhancing his personal financial position, and for obstructing and impeding the Committee's investigation.
The expulsion order regarding Senator Sebastian was later revoked. Senator William Blount of Tennessee, July 8, In , Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker survived a recall election. Frazier, but also the attorney general and the commissioner of agriculture. In , Arizona voters submitted enough signatures to trigger a recall election for Governor Evan Mecham, but he was impeached by the state's House of Representatives before the scheduled recall election.
Recall efforts against state legislators are more common, but still unusual. Recall attempts against legislators have gathered enough signatures to trigger an election just 39 times. Eleven of those occurred in a single year, Forty-five percent of all legislative recall elections that have ever occurred were held between and However, only eight of those 17 elections succeeded in unseating a legislator.
Additionally, two legislators resigned after petitions with sufficient signatures to force recall elections against them were submitted. Many more recall efforts are started and never make it to the election stage; either they are abandoned by their sponsors, or they fail to gather enough valid petition signatures to trigger an election. For example, in in Colorado, a petition to recall Representative Rochelle Galindo was approved for circulation, but Galindo resigned from office before the petitions were turned in.
The following is a list of every recall election of a state legislator throughout U. The fact that these elections occurred means that, in each of the following cases, enough signatures were gathered on petitions to trigger a recall election. Officials on this list who "survived recall election" are people who were not voted out of office in the subsequent recall election. Officials who were "successfully recalled" on this list are people who were voted out of office in that election.
This view maintains that an elected representative is an agent or a servant of their constituents, not their master. Opponents argue that recalls can lead to an excess of democracy: That the threat of a recall election lessens the independence of elected officials; undermines the principle of electing good officials and giving them a chance to govern; and can be abused by well-financed special interest groups and give them undue influence over the political process.
The recall process varies in its details from one state to another, but in general, recall campaigns follow these steps:. File an application to circulate a recall petition some states allow petitions only if they contain certain grounds for recall.
Circulate a recall petition and gather a specified number of signatures in a specified period of time view the detailed petitioning requirements. Submit petitions to election officials for verification of signatures. If enough valid signatures are presented, hold a recall election. In most of the recall states, any registered voter can begin a recall campaign for any reason.
For example, in , Republican senators in Wisconsin faced recalls for supporting the governor's effort to reduce the influence of public employee unions, and in Arizona, a senator faced recall for sponsoring a controversial immigration bill.
Georgia: Act of malfeasance or misconduct while in office; violation of oath of office; failure to perform duties prescribed by law; willfully misused, converted, or misappropriated, without authority, public property or public funds entrusted to or associated with the elective office to which the official has been elected or appointed. Discretionary performance of a lawful act or a prescribed duty shall not constitute a ground for recall of an elected public official.
Kansas: Conviction for a felony, misconduct in office, incompetence, or failure to perform duties prescribed by law. No recall submitted to the voters shall be held void because of the insufficiency of the grounds, application, or petition by which the submission was procured.
KS Stat. Minnesota: Serious malfeasance or nonfeasance during the term of office in the performance of the duties of the office or conviction during the term of office of a serious crime Const. Montana: Physical or mental lack of fitness, incompetence, violation of oath of office, official misconduct, conviction of certain felony offenses enumerated in Title No person may be recalled for performing a mandatory duty of the office he holds or for not performing any act that, if performed, would subject him to prosecution for official misconduct.
Rhode Island: Authorized in the case of a general officer who has been indicted or informed against for a felony, convicted of a misdemeanor, or against whom a finding of probable cause of violation of the code of ethics has been made by the ethics commission Const. Washington: Commission of some act or acts of malfeasance or misfeasance while in office, or who has violation of oath of office Const. In , Michigan passed a law requiring that a recall petition must clearly and factually state the reason s for the recall, which must be based on the elected official's conduct during his or her term of office M.
For example, under this Michigan law a voter could initiate a recall against a legislator on the political grounds that the legislator voted against an issue the voter supports.
As long as that allegation is stated clearly and factually, it would presumably meet this new criteria. The recall process is similar to the ballot initiative process in that it requires the submission of citizen petitions. The number of signatures necessary to trigger a recall election, however, is often significantly higher than the number required for ballot initiatives. The required number of signatures is generally equal to a percentage of the vote in the last election for the office in question, although some states base the formula on the number of eligible voters or other numbers.
These requirements can be demanding and are listed in the table below. Six states let local governing bodies handle it independently by voting out an official who might, for example, be shirking his or her duties of office: Kentucky mayors only , Delaware, Vermont and Iowa if provided in the municipal charter , and Indiana and South Carolina.
The state statutes provide for local recall, which conflicts with the state Constitution. At least half of the population in Texas lives in a community with local recall; other municipalities without recall have no alternate mechanism for independently removing local officials in the rest of the state. In North Carolina, 26 municipalities have local recall — elsewhere, there is no mechanism for removal from office without involving the state legislature.
Sign up for our weekly newsletter. Skip to content.
0コメント