CORRUPTION & PETITION REDRESS OF GRIEVANCES
Dep-of-Justice #accountability #ourvoicematters White-House
We believe that American citizens have lost faith and trust in their government, at all levels. Thus, they’ve lost interest. Due to vastly divergent news reporting, and serious doubts about ethics of politicians, leading to confusion, and a lack of desire/ energy to believe, or engage with, politics at a national or even local level.
Our research indicates Americans feel they are being forced into one of two warring tribes, with hugely different takes on the “truth”, neither of whom are wholly believed - and people end up siding with the one they consider “the least worst”. The notion that government “serves the people” is a distant, long-lost apparition. At a national level, government is seen as manipulated, and manipulating, with regular citizens feeling like irrelevant pawns in a bigger game of chess. At a local level, the influences of special interest groups, and local businesses funding politicians for project favors, citizens feel almost as unrepresented, and with few routes to actually being heard, taken notice of, by officials elected to protect them - who are often more focused on their political standing and their future careers within their respective parties.
Our organization, Recall Florida, believes that the power of “recall for cause” is a literal petition for the citizens to redress their grievances against corrupt officials. For the past 5 years, we have been lobbying our legislators to amend FS 100.361 to allow citizens in all counties the power to recall corrupt, or incompetent, elected officials. In Florida, 20 counties have the “power of recall”. 47 counties do not. Forty-seven counties do not have the power of redress, to vote out officials found to be unfit for office. Recall Florida educates on the types of corruption, avenues being used to corrupt, steps to report corruption, and the proper processes involved in this reporting.
*“The power under the [federal] Constitution will always be in the People. It is entrusted for certain defined purposes, and for a certain limited period, to representatives of their own choosing; and whenever it is executed contrary to their Interest, or not agreeable to their wishes, their Servants can, and undoubtedly will be, recalled.” George Washington, * 1787
OUR SOLUTION:
1.) Create a temporary “Office of Redress” This office would review all current state recall laws and from that craft a hybrid unified model for petition to recall, that state legislatures could then use in creating their own constitutional amendments. This would check uncontrolled power and empower citizens to remove corrupt elected officials at all levels of government.
a.) The Office of Redress will also encourage all states to amend the language of all criminal laws that pertain to the settled on recallable offenses. The language be clear and concise in meaning, written in common language. In addition, all law wording that pertains to fines or penalties for violations of said criminal law will mirror that of the recallable offenses.