Here is one of the PROBLEMS with trying to recall a legislator:
Constitutional History.
The United States Constitution does not provide for nor authorize the recall of
United States officials such as United States Senators, Representatives to Congress,
or the President or Vice President of the United States, and thus no United States
Senator or Member of the House of Representatives has ever been recalled in the
history of the United States. As early as 1807, a Senate Committee examining the
question of the Senate’s duty and broad authority to expel a Member, noted that such
duty devolves to the Senate not only because of the express constitutional grant of
authority, but also as a practical matter because the Constitution does not allow for
a “recall” of elected Members of Congress by the people or the State. The
Committee noted specifically that the Constitution had set out numerous provisions,
qualifications and requirements for Members of Congress to prevent conflicts of
interest and to assure a certain degree of fealty to constituents, but did not give a
Member’s constituency the authority to recall such a Member:
The spirit of the Constitution is, perhaps, in no respect more remarkable
than in the solicitude which it has manifested to secure the purity of the
Legislature by that of the elements of its composition …. Yet, in the midst of all
this anxious providence of legislative virtue, it has not authorized the constituent
body to recall in any case its representative.22
