San Antonio Recall Process and Ellebracht's E-mail to Guajardo

With all the recent talks surround Elena Guajardo and the Ellebracht recall threats. Here is the statute for a recall effort in San Antonio's single district council set up.

Article 4, Section 26 of the city charter, requires for a recall proposal to be placed on the ballot, 10% of the qualified voters who cast ballots in the last election in the district sign petitions. That would amount to 1625 registered District Seven voters who would have to sign the petition in order to get the matter on the ballot.

WOAI.com impacts this to the current Ellebracht situtation and says that Ellebracht's efforts will require a lot of work and success is not likely.

The petition has to be circulated by a resident of District Seven. Allen Ellebracht, the man who is pushing the recall drive, is a resident of District Ten, on the northeast side.

No city council member has been successfully recalled since the single member district scheme of electing council members was imposed in the late 1970's. The fact that council members stand for re-election every two years has rendered the recall system less important, and currently, council members can only be re-elected once.

The San Antonio Lightning also has an e-mail Ellebracht sent to Guajardo after Dickerson's suicide. The motivation behind the e-mail is that elected officials should praise those that write letters to them and they should have thicker skin.

Today, the city council meets at 6 p.m. and this story is not likely to end anytime soon. Their are previous posts here and here.