In Canada you can recall elected officials (although difficult to actually pull off), so it's crazy to me that in the US there's no mechanism to do so?
this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2026
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Because that's what terms are for. You elect people for a term.
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Elections cost taxpayer money. Every single district potentially have an election at anytime would necessitate a significant contingency fund in any budget.
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Changing leadership interrupts things with no guarantees. What if the new guy is even worse? What's the limit on recalls per term?
Not saying recall elections shouldn't exist, but having a shit representative is in fact your incentive to go out and vote for the right person in the first place.
Fetterman is just proof that brain damage makes people conservative.
Which is why the threshold for a recall can be set hig enough to discourage frivolous use
People don't like politicians, billionaires can pay people to stand around in street corners and get schoolboard representatives recalled, even if it fails that that's a ton of money the union now has to spend defending a person that was democratically elected just months ago.
Fair point in practice, but in theory that's a campaign finance regulation problem not a recall election problem
True, if we repeal Citizens United, then the worst recalls go away.
But the bar should still be much higher than it is in CA, Oakland just had its mayor & DA recalled over fear of crime, while violent crime was declining rapidly and before any of their policies could have an impact anyway (recall efforts were started on Day 1), I don't think I'll ever be convinced recalls are a good idea unless a grand jury can be convinced of meaningful corruption.
Yeah, I'm not totally sure I would go as far as requiring criminal charges to kick things off, but their ought to be some restraints on recalls. Besides stability in government being at least somewhat important, it's unfair to the past electorate who voted whichever candidate in for a given term to have a different electorate (because new people are always becoming eligible and other people are passing away or otherwise becoming inelligble) come along and mess with that.
I'm fine without criminal charges but someone should have to convince a jury of my peers that there is corruption and not just political differences at play
All of these are excellent points and one I would like to add is:
Lame ducks can do all types of damage so a powerful moderator of elected officials is the potential for reelection.
AKA the carrot not the stick
Good points. A few thoughts in the interest of discourse.
Because that what terms are for…
But even cars and other things have lemon laws, and bait and switch is illegal. Term shouldn’t be the be all, end all
Elections cost taxpayer money
Valid point there, which is why I was suggesting that there should be a higher barrier to it occurring, not the same level as a vote. Basically it has to be egregious
Changing leadership interrupts things…
Don’t agree with this one. This is the same argument that has kept senators in congress for decades with no term limits. Representative democracy was supposed to be rotational in spirit. Career politicians are an oxymoron. Also the new guy being worse is a bit of a “whataboutism”. A higher barrier to recall would help the constant switching.
… brain damage makes people conservative.
Truth.
Few things with the car analogy. You don't purchase a car for a term. Even tho they come with a warranty. Cars have manufacturing standards, as do the regions they are legal to operate in; the existence of these standards is what substantiates lemon and bait and switch laws.
You're forgetting impeachment. If someone commits crimes they can be impeached - and has been done despite recent top of mind events.
This is the same argument that has kept senators in congress for decades with no term limits.
You're conflating changing people mid term with changing people at their regular term intervals. As an American you rarely experience elections outside their scheduled interval. As a Canadian I can assure you that elections do interrupt things especially when you have to go to the polls repeatedly. We had federal elections 2 years apart in 2019/2021 and it was largely a pointless expense that served only to reset the governments 5 year window to call the next election.
Also the new guy being worse is a bit of a “whataboutism”
No its not. Whataboutism is pointing the finger at someone else to deflect. Logically if we elected someone who is doing such a bad job that we need to recall them, it is possible we could do that again.
A higher barrier to recall would help the constant switching
I think thats the case. I'm Canadian and recall elections are possible for anyone given the constituants follow a multi step process leading to a recall vote.
Brain damage changes peoples brains.
It could make them conservative, progressive, childlike, homicidal, happy, sad, robotic, face blind, mute, aphantasic. All sorts of things.
Brain damage ≠ conservative automatically.
In the United States, it's simple: the Constitution does not lay out any provision for such a recall. For better or worse, and it's most certainly worse right now, the only way the removal of a person in Congress can happen is if the respective body itself expels the person (Senators to remove a Senator, House to remove a Representative), the person resigns, or the person dies. And expulsion has a fairly high bar to overcome.
Santos was expelled in '23 and another person in '02. It gets used, but the vast majority of the time the person who would get expelled resigns before they can be.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expulsion_from_the_United_States_Congress
The excuse for places that don't have it is often:
If voters could recall politicians, they'd recall politicians!
Which is enough when politicians are the only ones who can change it.
A good example is Fetterman.
I think the problem isn't Fetterman so much as it is The Senate. Six year terms, expensive high stakes statewide elections, comically disproportionate representation by population size, and the smaller house giving a single bad actor disproportionate power to fuck with legislation.
You could point to Rand Paul or Joe Manchin or Ted Cruz just as easily. They all have a reputation for fucking with the popular consensus through arcane procedures and toxic personal ideologies.
A recall has the potential to remove a single bad actor in a single state and replace them with... what? Another bad actor? If you flipped out Fetterman for Memet Oz, would you be any happier? Meanwhile, the problem of the Senate is still embedded in the national political structure.
What we really need is an Article Five convention, to restructure a centuries-outdated and anti-democratic federal system in its entirety.
I have sometimes wondered: instead of elections, what if we could register a vote, which we could change any time? This might not have been feasible with paper ballots, but in an age of increasing digitalization, this should work.
I do see the downside though that most coalitions would only last a couple of months as majorities shift.
Another idea: A website where people can directly vote on issues, no representatives needed.