Originally Posted by
big_adventure
Even in the case of an impeachment followed by conviction in the senate, and in the case where the conviction leads to the president getting kicked out of office, all that happens is the VP taking over - there is no way to have another presidential election during one term.
There's an entire list of succession: president, VP, speaker of the house, president pro tempore of the senate, cabinet members, blah blah blah.
This difference is normal, though: countries where stuff like that happens don't have presidents, generally, they have prime ministers, who are elected along with their party majority. Countries where presidents call for bullshit mid-term elections are generally on the banana side of republics.
States are, of course, different, and governors are not presidents. No governor could call for his own reelection outside of the normal timeframe, but, for example, California has a colossally stupid recall law. Basically, to trigger a recall election, you just need something like 10K signatures. Once the recall is triggered, there is a single ballot with two issues on it: 1. should the existing governor stay in office and 2. who should be governor. If the existing gov wins round 1, round 2 doesn't matter. But if the existing governor doesn't win round 1, whoever wins round 2, no matter how small their total and margin, becomes governor for the rest of the term. So imagine existing governor gets 49.5% of the vote, he's out, and if the leader of the unlimited number of other candidates gets, say, 9%, he becomes governor with that vote, despite literally losing 49.5 to 9.
Schwarzenegger won a recall for his first term as governator: Gray Davis was recalled losing 44 to 56%, then Schwarzy got 48.5% of the vote (number 2 was Bustamonte with 31%) out of the 150-odd other candidates. ervice.
The recall that Gavin Newsom just defeated was more clear: he won a vast majority (63% "no" on recall) on issue one, so stays governor. And thankfully at that - Larry Elder would have been a catastrophe.