It’s because that number is based on 25% of people who voted in the last municipal elections. If you want a higher threshold, more people need to show up and vote in city elections.
Nope, that may have just been a clerical thing. The event was held, and the recording got uploaded recently.
Key thing to note here: Livable Raleigh thinks the 25% threshold applies to the number of people who voted in each election for each position. This means they think they only need about 14k signatures for the Mayor and at-large councilmembers’ positions and only 2,000-3,000 signatures for district offices.
Did they get that right, though? This is what the Charter says:
…and if I’m understanding it correctly (remember: I’m not a lawyer), I think the threshold is higher than 2,000 votes (at worst)?
I don’t have the time to watch and analyze the full video, though, so if anyone wants to take a stab at that, that would be awesome.
And that’s probably another thing they’re afraid of. If we have elections on election day in even numbered years, potentially way more people are going to vote. Their whining voices will matter even less, and they’ll definitely never be able to muster a recall…
Thousands? You think they’ll get thousands?
I doubt they would, alone. But what if our favorite NIMBYs are not the only ones who are bringing out the knives?
Think about it from their perspective: if you think the current council is illegitimate and you wanted to get out the votes, you’d partner with other grassroots organizations that may have felt snubbed or ignored in the past year and a half (since it’d give you more manpower and legitimacy).
For argument’s sake, let’s say Livable Raleigh’s interpretation of recall rules is correct, and random individuals, Livable, and OneWake (the group that grabbed MAB and Kane’s attentions when they organized against Downtown South) team up and evenly split the number of signatures needed. Then, each organization could collect as few as 638 votes and trigger a recall. I don’t think that’s unreasonable…
The last column is how many signatures you’d need for each office:
| Office | ’19 Winner | ’19 Total Votes | ’19 Round 1 Votes | 25% of 3rd Column |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mayor | Baldwin | 54,566 | 38.18% | 13,642 |
| Council, At-Large 1 | Stewart | 91,649 | 33.74% | 22,913 |
| Council, At-Large 2 | Melton | 91,649 | 23.08% | 22,913 |
| Council, District A | Buffkin | 11,845 | 52.65% | 2,962 |
| Council, District B | Cox | 7,654 | 54.13% | 1,914 |
| Council, District C | Branch | 10,409 | 62.96% | 2,603 |
| Council, District D | Martin* | 10,241 | 47.22% | 2,561 |
| Council, District E | Knight | 12,901 | 96.34% | 3,226 |
David Cox won his seat with the fewest votes in thee whole council. He is the most NIMBY of 'em all and would probably survive the election. He could still get recalled, anyways, for the sake of completeness, so let’s just use him as an example. If we go with the assumptions I laid out earlier, that’s 1/3 of 1914, or 638 signatures per organization.
*=Stormie Forte would stand for this contest, instead, for obvious reasons.
They’re all in the Sunken Place, Livable Raleigh is the sunken place. Pretending to care about black people for their political gain is beyond stupid and beyond me. They barely have a following on social media don’t expect this to get far at all, I’m not worried at all.
They’re the kind that’ll have the Black Lives Matter sign in their yard but call the cops the instant they see a “suspicious” black person walk through “their” neighborhood?
“Woke” NIMBYs are just so rich and privileged that they think they can have it all in their way without having any skin in the game. Affordable housing without a challenge on their sense of “safety”, walkability and green environments without multimodal connections and density, new job opportunities without transit investments,… It’s so frustrating 
They should’ve had the legislature remove recall elections from the charter in the elections bill. Recall elections are universally a waste of time and money, just look at the effort to recall Gavin Newsome in California.
Yes there apart of the BLM tethers, which is the same white people who’d have you killed get away with impunity, all the Hollywood elites are that way, the CNN anchors, the celebrities, there’s a lot of tethering.
I don’t think recalls are inherently or universally bad, though? Schwarzenegger became California’s governor through a recall election, too, and his legacy could’ve been a lot worse.
Besides, at that point, I think it’s less of a question about recall elections specifically. You’d have to start asking whether a republic is a good way to govern, or if other ways to govern like a hybrid between direct and representative democracy or a world where only “expert” have power are better, and I’m not sure if you’d want to go there?
EDIT: explained how a liquid democracy works.
Republics are great until entrenched…falling into the fact that democracy is lovely until you factor the glacial pace of change as people are at the root of its governance. Apathy is the true enemy.
They’re shades better than autocracies and light years beyond dictatorial rule.
Haha, I mean maybe 2,000? They are getting press coverage so I bet their petition would get amplified a bit and it would bump them between 1 and 2k. That’s my prediction.
Raleigh needs real hardcore Yimby, Pro urban groups, non profits like Yimby Action, Yimby California, are we will end up Like San Francisco and Seattle when it come to Nimbyism, we need organizations to push for State laws that benefit urbanism and Yimbyism, and to push back hard against Groups backed by big money like livable Raleigh, you beat them with facts and the facts are they have no real plan to accommodate housing and business and now they want to waste money on a recall election count, Stef Mendell lost the last election bad, she got punished! I can see if it was close but it was a blowout and Russ lost as well, My problem is people have short memories they love to jump on the next thing and if the Raleigh city council let’s them control the Narrative then we may see a new Nimby order return to Raleigh please excuse me if it seems like I’m ranting but I lived in California so I see things through a Yimby nimby perspective and if you give a nimby a inch they will take a mile, moderators if this is to much then please remove no offense would be taken.
Interesting to see the ranked choice system for mayor voting in NYC. I’m still trying to understand the nuances of it, but I’d be curious if that would work here instead of runoffs (since they’re going away).
Imagine a scenario where we have a fairly pro development, pro inclusivity moderate like MAB that many of us like, and her two challengers are someone far left and far right. If we just had the two challengers, Raleigh would probably go far left. But normally we would go for the center. Without runoffs, what if the far right got 34% to the 33% for the other two. Suddenly we have a mayor that 2/3 of the city doesn’t want. And that’s where the ranked choice (or recall) system comes in. It’s definitely nuanced and maybe prone to manipulation, but I also think it’s an interesting exercise.
His legacy could’ve been worse certainly, but Gray remaining in office still probably would’ve been the better outcome IMO.
I don’t think questioning the utility of recall elections, which don’t exist in NC apart from in Raleigh and a few other much smaller municipalities needs to draw into question the entire republican form of government.
I think that term lengths serve a purpose and the recall provision of Raleigh’s charter has never been exercised. I worry that if recall campaigns become a fixture of local politics it will negatively affect the ability of the city government to operate efficiently or to make important but potentially unpopular policy changes like enacting parking maximums.
The idea of a recall election is that constituents don’t like an elected official, but can’t express that displeasure while following the timespan of a term of office. It means people can only give consent to govern (and imply policy preferences) using a single ballot every few years. People may have more complex and nuanced opinions than that, but a republican system doesn’t support inputs that are so granular; it forces you to express your thoughts to the powers-that-be in a discrete, binary way.
I think recall elections are a very crude way to provide finer control for constituents. Ranked-choice voting (or similar changes in other countries like proportional voting) are other, stronger ways to get to a place where voters can express their true thoughts! But also, what if we could do even better??
Put another way: I just happen to think that republicanism is the least awful system of government that’s popular today; I think it’s worked out a lot better than dictatorships and aristocracies of the past.
At the same time, if there’s a chance to see if there’s better ways to do things, why not give 'em a try? They didn’t call it the “American experiment” for nothing, after all.
But enough about alternative theories; going back to the system we have now, term limits and all…
I guess it makes sense to be worried about an unprecedented kind of election in our area, especially when it could be triggered by such a small group of voters. But what are the odds it’ll become a staple? And since a growing city would increase the number of municipal election voters (maybe nonlinearly via better turnout?), wouldn’t that increase the recall threshold and discourage it from becoming the norm, anyways?
Same! I think ranked-choice could make politics more interesting in our area. The NY Times’ article about this has a preview of opinions we could hear, as well as how “it’s real easy if people just learned how to read”, even if you “forget [your] reading glasses”:
I’m not as worried about manipulation (though last-minute alliances like Andrew Yang’s were twisted that way), plus there would be more time to count and calculate (and validate?) votes. I think we will still suffer the same root issue as low voter turnout in odd-year elections, though: do people fundamentally care enough about Raleigh city politics?
I really like the idea of ranked choice voting. I think it ensures someone is elected who a majority of the population is at least okay with. Also reduces polarization.
Yes - Agreed it would reduce polarization. Should be done for national races as well - At least for the primaries. I think it would surface more moderate candidates on both sides, vs the extreme candidates we have been getting from both the right and the left.
Getting back to Raleigh, I really don’t see much point with having recall elections for seats with 2 year terms. By the time you do a petition, have a new race, runnoff, etc, the term would be half over.
I’m surprised there hasn’t been a mention of the $$ that comes along with a recall election. Look, the majority of the voters elected the current council/mayor. So they’ll be in office for an additional few months (I’m counting from March 22 to Nov). Even if I changed my mind on these candidates since the last election, I’m certainly NOT ok with wasting my tax dollars on seeing if enough people have changed their mind. I also believe the terms should be longer than 2 years, which really means 1.5 years given you spend 6 months on reelection activities, while working a job outside of your city responsibilities.