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Recall processes are a provision in town charters across the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to help ensure voters have a way to hold their elected officials accountable. Recall exists to solve real problems: when an elected official engages in serious misconduct – conflict of interest, ethical violations, abuse of power, or is otherwise incapable of fulfilling their duties – voters shouldn’t have to wait up to 3 years for the next election. The existence of a recall provision serves as an effective deterrent even if it isn’t actually used. It is a vital tool of democratic accountability.
Most of Sudbury’s neighbors have this provision- Stow, Maynard, Acton, Hudson, and Framingham all have adopted a recall provision and some have done so from the very beginning of their charters.
The core component that determines the efficacy of the recall provision is the threshold %- that is, what % of active voters must sign on to the effort in order for the recall to be triggered. If the provision is set too high- Tewksbury is set to 50% – then the recall provision is effectively decorative. Set the number too low and recall becomes a tool available to the losing side of every election or 3-2 contentious vote.
The question at hand isn’t whether Sudbury should have a recall provision- we absolutely must – it is whether the threshold % ensures the recall is triggered by a broad community concern rather than organized opposition from a narrow group of citizens. Remember, recall provisions have the potential to be used against officials you DON’T support and officials you DO support. We all need to be aligned in getting this threshold % right.
Each of our neighboring towns with recall provisions have adopted a threshold above the 10% proposed in Article 3. Even Framingham and Stow that use 15% have additional requirements in place to ensure the recall reflects broad community concern. Framingham requires each voting district be represented in the signature pool while Stow requires 2/3rds of voters to affirm support for recalling the official in the actual recall election.
I want to contextualize the 10% figure for Sudbury to explain why this is too low:
- 10% of registered voters equates to approximately 1435 registered voters, this is roughly what the losing candidate receives in a typical town election. That means that an organized campaign that just lost an election likely already has enough supporters to trigger a recall against the person that beat them or another official who adopts similar positions.
- Average town election turnout in the last 5 years is 2900 voters, which means less than half the voters in a typical election would need to approve the recall for it to take effect. This does not represent a community consensus and violates tenant 3 in the Petitioner’s Report “Balance voter power with procedural safeguards to prevent misuse or overly frequent recall efforts”.
I firmly believe 20% is the right threshold to ensure the recall is used for genuine, broad-based alarm rather than a well organized minority. This puts us in line with our neighbors, some of whom have had this process in place for more than 30 years.
20% is very achievable- if an official has genuinely lost the confidence of the community, gathering 2689 signatures in 28 days is challenging, but not impossible. That is the right level of difficulty for a mechanism to override a prior democratic election. The losing candidate in every national and statewide election in the last 10 years has easily crossed this threshold. Lastly, a higher threshold actually protects the legitimacy of the recall itself- a recall that passes after meeting a 20% threshold carries far more democratic authority whereas a recall triggered at 10% will always carry a shadow that it is backed by a minority group.
A recall provision at 20% still:
- Deters misconduct
- Provides a structured and lawful process to act on concerns about an official’s performance or conduct (quoted directly from the Article)
- Gives voters a lawful path when waiting for the next election is untenable
- Signals that Sudbury takes democratic accountability seriously
It is well past the time that Sudbury adopts this mechanism. I urge all of my fellow citizens to Vote YES on my amendment to Article 3 to raise the threshold to 20% AND then to vote YES on Article 3.