Alaska's founders considered and rejected allowing voters to recall elected officials without cause, but the courts have negated that. We are paying a price.
Representative democracy doesn't work unless those elected can govern for their full term without constant worry about being removed from office. Elections need to end on election day.
That goes for President Trump too. The U.S. Constitution provides for a president to be removed only on conviction by two-thirds of the Senate on specific charges of "treason, bribery, and other high crimes and misdemeanors."
Until that happens, he is the legitimate president.
Politics works similarly in a small town and in the nation's capital, but with smaller stakes. Homer just went through a microcosm of our scary national political war, with a recall election whose wounds will be felt for years. The subject was Trump.
The recall, which failed last week, came about when city council members advanced a resolution calling for inclusiveness. An early draft of the resolution criticized Trump.
[How an effort to make Homer a 'safety net' divided the town and led to a recall election]
Conservative voters flooded a council meeting and the resolution was voted down. Then they mounted a recall of its sponsors, citing the early draft of the inclusiveness resolution and another resolution that had passed opposing the Dakota Access pipeline.
In January 1956, the delegates to the Alaska Constitution considered whether recall should be open to voters for any reason, or if they should have to offer cause, as the House of Representatives does in advancing impeachment.
Delegate Vic Fischer moved an amendment to say no grounds should be needed, but was voted down.
I called him Monday. He doesn't remember why he offered that amendment. He agreed with me, after seeing what happened in Homer, that elected officials need their term in office to follow their conscience, not to constantly be worried about being kicked out.
The convention also debated whether any crime should be grounds for recall, or only "crimes of moral turpitude." In the end, the adopted constitution leaves it to the Legislature to decide legitimate grounds for recall.
The Legislature set it this way in state law: "Grounds for recall are misconduct in office, incompetence, or failure to perform prescribed duties."
Official misconduct usually means using public office in violation of law. Some unethical behavior could also be called misconduct.
But the Alaska Supreme Court has opened up those words to ever broader interpretation to avoid taking away voters' rights. Now they've lost all meaning.
On May 23, Anchorage Superior Court Judge Erin Marston ruled on a challenge to the Homer recall, taking broad interpretation to an extreme. As far as I can understand the unclear ruling, "misconduct" includes advocating for a controversial point of view.
[Judge rejects effort to block recall election of 3 Homer City Council members]
The judge allowed the recall to go ahead because the Homer council's oath of office includes the word "impartial" and because the draft resolution had the city's name on it.
Recall supporters contended that by using the city's name on a mark-up draft, the council members misrepresented that the resolution was the city's official position. Which is silly.
A public official reading Marston's opinion has no way to discern what is permissible. As a former Anchorage Assembly member, I'd say every elected official is involved in this kind of "misconduct" almost every day.
A Haines Borough Assembly recall election on Aug. 15 will be held on grounds almost as flimsy. The cause is the long-running left-versus-right political battle in that evenly divided town, not the insignificant "misconduct" alleged in the petition.
Recalls will continue to be general election re-dos until the Legislature clarifies the law the courts have hollowed out. Fischer suggested the Legislature could simply define the word "misconduct."
In local government, recall is a sharp sword against people who serve mostly as volunteers for the good of their neighbors. Recalls are a threat. They keep good people from getting involved.
Recalls tear communities apart as regular elections do not. A vote doesn't choose between two people, but rejects one.
Recalls also are hard to win. In a regular election, the opponent's flaws are up against your own. In a recall, you run against anyone who might be better, both real and imagined.
[After incumbents survive Homer council recall effort, a desire to 'move on']
But there's a deeper issue.
I recently visited a series of Civil War battlefields with my children. The lush green landscapes with their meandering stone walls are sobering monuments to the value of our country's law.
Men died by the thousands fighting across those stone walls. By the hundreds of thousands.
As President Lincoln said in his second inaugural address, their blood atoned for that drawn by the bondsman's lash for 250 years of unrequited toil.
But they also fought and died for the union and, as Lincoln also said, for the proposition that we can rule ourselves peacefully by law and tradition, with respect for elections.
We can disagree and even hate our adversaries, but when they win an election, they get to rule.
I do not respect Donald Trump. As I've written before, I think he is a con man, a degenerate and a child in a man's body. I don't believe he understands Lincoln's message or the true meaning of our democracy.
But I understand our democracy. So I respect the presidency, even with Trump in it.
Until he is proven to have committed high crimes and misdemeanors, he must be accorded the respect of the office. Nothing less than the sacrifice of the lives at Gettysburg depends upon it.
Because the other thing I learned on my Civil War tour — a lesson repeated daily in the world's many ongoing civil wars — is that chaos is closer than we imagine.
America's founders created our republic, the largest on Earth since the Roman Senate, knowing it was a long shot.
Its survival is as tenuous now as at any time since Lincoln lived in the White House.
As patriots, we need to recommit to this idea: simply, respect for law and elections. That means waiting for our turn to change the government, in small-town Alaska or in Washington.
The views expressed here are the writer's and are not necessarily endorsed by Alaska Dispatch News, which welcomes a broad range of viewpoints. To submit a piece for consideration, email commentary@alaskadispatch.com. Send submissions shorter than 200 words to letters@alaskadispatch.com or click here to submit via any web browser.