Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Wisconsin: Op-ed from 1951 explaining the recall and two year/four year gubernatorial terms

Good blast from the past from Capital Times founder William Evjue. This was written on April 5, 1951. He is talking about the constitutional amendment to change the gubernatorial term from two years to four:
“A good argument might be made for the four-year term if we had an effective recall system in Wisconsin,” he wrote. “Without this, the people would be stuck for four years without recourse if a bad governor was elected.”
Although Wisconsin had already written the recall into its constitution 25 years earlier, Evjue presumably saw the large number of signatures required to launch a successful recall as too high of an obstacle for opponents of a sitting governor to realistically overcome. Only one recall election had occurred in the state by 1951 and the target politician, Sen. Otto Mueller, survived the attempt.
In 1967, three years before Evjue's death, Wisconsin voters did finally approve a constitutional amendment that lengthened the gubernatorial term to its current four years. A change in the recall law did not accompany it.

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