So, yesterday's post over at the blog credited to Mayor Slay said that "More dead people are reported to have signed recall petitions in the 22nd Ward."
Dead people endorsing the other side? Time to finally take notice of all those dead voters who are still registered!
I guess we can conclude from this post in the Slay blog that his administration wants to keep 22nd Ward Alderman Jeff Boyd in office. Not surprising--seeing as how both Boyd and Slay are definitely in favor of using eminent domain to build dubious commercial projects, it's a match made in heaven.
Tuesday, December 27, 2005
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5 comments:
And Kenny Jones, I mean Ozier, would make a better alderman?! Boyd serves his constituents well. Those behind this recall are just sore losers of past contests. The living citizens of the 22nd already chose Boyd over Jones/Ozier.
Jones (a Slay man like Boyd) and Ozier would be worse than Boyd for Ward 22.
I have any even better idea than a recall and then a replacement. How about every time someone is recalled, their ward ceases to exist. We can lower the number of aldermen through constituent selected attrition.
Or, even better: another strong political party. Recalls would not happen as frequently if voters had better choices in the general election. I support recalls, but only as a last resort. Sadly, in the current Democratic party-controlled system, the recall seems like the first resort if one doesn't like an entrenched, ward-organization-backed incumbent. The hope is to pull out the "bad" Democrat and install a "good" one.
More enticing would be a genuine competition of ideas between candidates ran by the Democrats, Progressives, Socialists, Anarcho-Syndicalists, and such. Of course, a nonpartisan electoral system for municipal office would also be a good reform.
You're right, Jones and Ozier would be just as bad. I suppose I'm just frustrated that it's one bad guy or the other--what a choice! As Michael wrote, we need more choice between political parties in the first place in St. Louis, and then we won't need recalls.
Part of my interest in this subject was simply that the mayorslay.com blogger had taken note of it--it's always interesting to see which way they try to spin things, recalls in particular.
Matt, that's an interesting idea, but I worry that the recalls would just flip the constituencies and land into the power of someone just as bad. I also remember living in Ward 17, which has long been in the hands (directly or indirectly) of the Roddy family. I often wished that our ward was divided up smaller than it was. Because the densest part of the ward by far was the Central West End, they had the most voters and could pick candidates that didn't have Forest Park Southeast or McRee Town's interests at heart. (The CWE and the other parts of Ward 17 are very different places!) Adding us to another ward would have meant that we would have been even more ignored by our leader, since we'd be an even smaller piece of the pie. For a troubled neighborhood, we needed all the attention we could get! Your idea is definitely interesting, though, and not something I'd thought of before.
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