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By Admin, July 22, 2009 7:31 pm

It had to happen.  But soon after a recall effort failed, it seems the city of Akron’s mayor decided he would find a way to stop the effort from happening again. According to Cleveland.com

City Council will decide on Monday whether a charter amendment raising the petition threshold for recall elections should be placed before voters in November.

The amendment would require 20 percent of the city’s registered voters to sign petitions to trigger a recall vote. The city charter now demands that recall petitions have signatures equal to 20 percent of the turnout in the last election for the targeted office.

20% of the city’s REGISTERED voters..

To change from the 20% of the last vote turnout is a big deal.  Ignoring up front the dead voters who are registered yet, and not purged, it should be noted that in the nations percentage turnout in the last PRESIDENTIAL election was a mere 56.8% of its “eligible” voters.  Ohio by some estimates put its best state turnout numbers at 59%..   Which alters significantly the number of voter signatures for the recall effort.

But that doesn’t really mean ANYTHING, when the Mayoral race can be off season..  Apparently the difference THIS TIME it made would have amounted to much more:

To meet that higher standard, the group that led last month’s unsuccessful recall attempt against Mayor Don Plusquellic would have needed 24,439 signatures — rather than the 3,179 required by the charter.

Nearly eight times as much work to simply get it on the ballot.

This amounts to a serious amount of CYA, in a time when voters are going to paying particularly close attention to the actions of elected officials.  Perhaps with a threshold that is so skewed as to prevent the efforts overall, it will be much easier to ignore the representation the voters demand.