With the recall election only a few months away, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett has decided to shake up the ballot by tossing his name into the ring. What was going to be a battle between former Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk and Gov. Scott Walker will now likely turn out to be a rerun of the 2010 gubernatorial election.

Conservatives and liberals alike had decried the recall elections as frivolous and a waste of the taxpayer money. These single-issue elections are keeping our elected officials away from their duties and forcing them to focus on reelection well before when it would normally be necessary. This is a great threat to democracy as it is putting a halt on our government.

The gubernatorial election is particularly disturbing because it is essentially a redo of the 2010 election, when Wisconsin conservatives came to the polls in droves and elected Walker as their governor. Barrett lost by more than 120,000 votes. Now, two years later, liberals are still pining over their loss and looking for a second chance.

The one silver lining to Barrett’s entrance is that he is a far better Democratic candidate than Falk, despite what the malevolent unions say. As the mayor of one of the largest cities in Wisconsin, he far has more relevant experience. Falk’s only qualification is as Dane County Executive, where she supervised one of the wealthiest and uncontroversial counties in Wisconsin. Although she has an excellent reputation with the unions, she was also in charge when a known deficiency at the Dane County 911 Center led to an unsolved murder of a University of Wisconsin student.

Liberals claim “this (recall election) is what democracy looks like,” but all I see is a group of little kids throwing a temper tantrum because they did not get their way. Barrett’s entrance into the race just confirms this.

Alex Brousseau ([email protected]) is a second year law student.