The complaints about the recall have led some to charge that the 1911 amendment to the California Constitution that authorizes recalls is either outmoded or inherently flawed.
Those concerns prompted Ridley-Thomas and two other legislators to propose a constitutional amendment that would revise the recall.
The proposed amendment would effectively raise the number of signatures needed to get a recall on the ballot and would make the lieutenant governor the successor to a recalled governor, thereby eliminating the replacement election that has been so ballyhooed.
The proposal "has been dubbed the Anti-Circus Act of 2003," said Ridley-Thomas. "We are saying that a century-old process needs review. And it has been tested in the current set of circumstances and proven problematic."
His measure would change the number of signatures needed to get a recall on the ballot from the current requirement -- 12% of the voters who participated in the last election -- to 12% of registered voters. In the last election, Ridley-Thomas' proposal, had it been in effect, would have doubled the number of signatures needed. The idea is simply to make it more difficult for a recall election to qualify in an era of professional signature-gatherers, he said.
As for the change in succession, Chemerinsky, the USC professor who helped Ridley-Thomas draft the proposal, said it seems more fitting to pass power to the lieutenant governor, just as an impeached and convicted president would relinquish power to his vice president. "The lieutenant governor doesn't do a whole lot in our state," he said. "We have a lieutenant governor precisely for the reason of succession."
One thing the proposed amendment wouldn't do is change the criteria for recalling a governor -- a change some critics have called for. Chemerinsky said the drafters of the proposed amendment considered more specific language, but eventually gave up.
"It's very difficult to formulate those criteria in a way in which they would be a meaningful constraint on the recall process," he said. "You know, look at the United States Constitution. It says treason, bribery or high crimes and misdemeanors" are criteria for impeachment.
"What are high crimes and misdemeanors?" he asked. "It didn't keep the House of Representatives from impeaching Bill Clinton for lying about sex with an intern."
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Times staff writer Joel Rubin contributed to this report.
