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GOV_joshua-spivak

Joshua Spivak

Contributor

Joshua Spivak, the author of Recall Elections: From Alexander Hamilton to Gavin Newsom, is a Senior Research Fellow at Berkeley Law’s California Constitution Center and a Senior Fellow at the Hugh L. Carey Institute for Government Reform at Wagner College. He has studied the history and use of recall elections for two decades. He has been interviewed and quoted as an expert source by numerous media outlets, has written hundreds of op-eds and book reviews on political and historical topics and writes the Recall Elections Blog. He received his law degree from the Columbia University Law School.

Special elections offer some clues about the mood of the electorate. Recalls might be an even better predictor.
The common wisdom is that their typically low turnout means they don't reflect the views of the wider electorate. But as a look at recall votes shows, that's not necessarily so.