Get Out, And Stay Out

This past year has been a tumultuous one in Colorado state politics. There have already been two State Senators recalled and replaced in special elections (Senators Morse and Giron were both recalled and replaced in a special election this past September 10th), with a ton of money being spent on both sides of the fence (about 3 million to prevent the recall, and a little over half a million to make it happen).

The big issue at hand is gun control. Colorado, specifically the Denver area, has experienced a number of mass killings at the hands of armed gunmen over the past 14 years, and after the Aurora Theater shootings in July of 2012 many politicians decided to introduce legislation to enact gun control laws.

Bad move. Colorado still very much embraces the spirit of the rugged individualist cowboy, and Coloradans aren't likely to cotton to Ivory Tower Academics tellin' 'em what they can or cannot do.

The reason for the recalls, however, and even the politicians being recalled, are not the topic of this little diatribe. Recalls are, or rather, the right of the people to enact a recall, is.

I am fascinated by the fact that recalls are at all possible, primarily because politicians being the self-serving scum they generally are (just my constitutionally-protected opinion, btw), it would seem they would have banded together and written up statutes that would make recalls illegal, or at the very least, incredibly difficult to implement.

But that's not the case, at least not here in Colorado. While seven of the fifty states require at least specific grounds for a recall, most do not. Colorado is one of those that do not. 

Don't like the way your duly elected representative is performing their job in Colorado? Collect enough signatures and whamo! Recall city.

In other words, we the people can actually fire the people we hired to represent us if we feel they are not doing a good job representing us. 

I like that, I really do. I only wish it did not require a huge expenditure of the people's cash to carry it out.