An Opinion of One

I can’t remember if I read it in a book or heard it in a movie but the statement has never left my mind. “When democracy dies, the people will have voted it out.” On May 4, or sooner if you mail in your ballot, the people of Euclid will vote on Charter Issues 26 & 27.

Issue 26 asks the people to increase the number of signatures needed to recall an elected official to 25% of the voters from the last general election. Currently the Charter calls for 15%. One of the reasons the Charter Review Commission has given for this change is that other Cities are at 25%. Is that a reason for us to change? There are cities at 20 & 15%, why not those numbers? 

I’m a big fan of Judge Judy and she has a saying, “If it doesn’t make sense, it’s not true.” This change does not make any sense. The people of Euclid have used the recall just once in their history and as one of the people involved in that recall, I can tell you that it was difficult to get just 15% of the voters needed.

This proposed Charter change is a slap in the face to every past, present or future voter of Euclid. It seeks to take away their RIGHT to petition for the Recall of an Elected Official who is deemed not to be serving the needs of the people. This change is nothing more than a penalty for having attempted to recall a member of this current administration, who in fact handpicked the Charter Commission members and their many replacements. 

Issue 27 also has these same penalty implications. The funny thing here is that the Commission actually did find a flaw in the Charter. A recall had no end timeframe. But, here again, the Commission chose to restrict the right of recall to just 45 days. A true and fair number would have been 90 days and the Charter should be amended in a future ballot issue.  

Now, why did I start this out with the statement about the voters voting out Democracy? My greatest fear is that the people of Euclid have no idea what these two Charter changes will mean in the future and that voting without knowledge will always lead to disaster. Why would any sane person vote away any of their rights? I will await the outcome of these issues and I pray that the people of this city will see the immense harm that passage of these changes will do when there is a need to remove elected officials that fail them in the future.