Kansas: MoveOn puts forth online, obviously unofficial, recall petition against Governor

Left wing political action group MoveOn,org has launched an online petition against Kansas Governor Sam Brownback (R). Brownback, who has faced a fair degree of criticism from both parties, won reelection in November, 49.8% to 46.1%. Of course, the petition has no value, as online petitions are not an acceptable way to launch a recall. The petitions are reported to have nearly 7800 signatures as of Wednesday, though I always find that info for online petitions useless.

But, let's discuss this from a theoretical perspective. There is no way Brownback will be facing a recall. Kansas law is very tough on a number of fronts. It requires signatures of 10% of turnout just to move to second stage requiring 40% of the turnout, which would be somewhere in the neighborhood of 350,000 signatures). This is way too expensive and difficult, and the replacement would likely be a Republican anyway.

Since Kansas is a Malfeasance Standard/Judicial Recall state, there would need to be a showing of cause. Fortunately enough, in 2011 Kansas had a recall that met the "incompetence" level of a recall. This are rare (we have one in Washington a couple of years ago as well). Even with the showing of incompetence, the recall didn't get to the ballot.

I should also note that MoveOn is a called progressive, which is fine generally. But as I've explained before, the term progressive is one that a blog dedicated to recall elections has to be very careful using.