Okay.
Mayor John Whitmire
Could Houston voters soon decide the fate of Houston Mayor John Whitmire?
Experts say it’s an extremely long shot, but a group of Houstonians will start collecting signatures next week to remove the mayor from office.
Mayor Whitmire has been in office for more than a year and a half.
Recall for Houston was formed soon after he took office, and you might see its members out and about collecting signatures around town starting on Oct. 6.
“I wouldn’t be doing this if I wasn’t worried about the future of the city,” Alejandro Alegria with Recall for Houston said. “Whitmire has already done an immeasurable amount of damage.”
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Perhaps the biggest hurdle for the group’s effort is that, based on the city’s current population, members would need to collect more than 63,000 signatures within 30 days just to get the recall on the ballot.
That’s more than 2,000 signatures a day.
All of those signatures must be from registered voters in the city of Houston.
“They’ll have to probably collect about 100,000 signatures to be certain that they have enough valid signatures during the 30-day window,” Jones explained. “What will happen is that you’ll have people that will sign but they won’t be registered voters or they won’t be registered in the city of Houston.”
See here, here, here, and here for some background. I will note that the group’s name is Recall Houston, not “Recall for Houston”, but that’s the least of their problems. I will also note that they did not file a finance report for July, so at least as of then they had no funds with which to carry out this effort. That seems like a pretty big obstacle, but perhaps they have been busy working on that, in a manner sufficiently under the radar that no one noticed it.
They did say they would start this effort in the fall, so kudos for that. I suppose the reason for beginning now is so that canvassers can station themselves at early voting locations, which at least eases the concern about ensuring that only registered voters are signing; the Houston-versus-not-Houston issue can be dealt with by asking people if they’re voting in the At Large #4 race, I suppose. Easier said than done, if you’ve ever hung out at a busy EV location, and this will require a lot of volunteer (or paid person) time and effort, but it is a strategy. We’ll see how it plays out for them. Oh, and if they succeed, I presume this means that the recall election itself would be next May. Campos has more.