Recall talk again?

TOur society is divided enough by politics; we don't need recall to make

things even worse.

he recall of a progressive district attorney in San Francisco has resurrected talk among Republican leaders in New York of enacting a Californiastyle recall law here, too. It's as bad an idea as ever.

Sure, recall sounds like a populist and democratic mechanism. Don't like the job an elected official is doing ? Just can't wait for the next election? Don't have grounds for impeachment? Recall the rascal!

But New Yorkers already have ways to dump elected officials they don't like. They can vote them out of office when that next election comes around. They can build public pressure for them to resign. They can persuade their legislative representatives to impeach and remove them if offenses warrant. Adding recall to the list adds little value — and much opportunity for mischief.

In California, which added recall to its state constitution in 1911, San Francisco voters last week recalled District Attorney Chesa Boudin, who was viewed by many as too lax on crime.

The recall has been noticed nationwide at a time when gun violence and other crimes are high on the public's list of concerns. In New York, where Republicans have been railing for years about Democrats' criminal justice reforms, Senate and Assembly GOP leaders and other legislators promptly proposed a constitutional amendment to allow for the recall of district attorneys in this state, too. And state Republican Party Chairman Nick Langworthy talks more broadly of previous GOP efforts to allow recall of elected officials in general.

We've certainly had our share of politicians we thought didn't belong in office. But it was long understood in New York and American politics that elections marked the end of the contest. We had winners and losers. The winners took office and got down to the serious work of governing. The losers accepted the outcome.

Donald Trump, with his big lie that the 2020 election was stolen, upended that understanding, and our nation is even more divided as a result. And now his supporters in New York want to bring endless elections here.

Elections seem nearly endless already. Politicians no sooner get elected than they start raising money for re-election, and their opponents start sharpening the knives. The grave step of impeachment is tossed about so casually by some — remember threats to impeach Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden while they were still running for president — that it's in danger of being reduced to an unserious trope. How much more unending and inescapable would our political turmoil be if New York had a law allowing sore losers to demand a do-over for every election?

If you think the general public would get tired of it, think again. Politics has, for many, become as entertaining and consuming as any sport. And there's a multimillion-dollar political industry that would no doubt be more than happy to keep people at each other's throats — and keep donations rolling in.

There's a term even some politicians use for election time: the silly season. Just imagine if it didn't have to come around only once every two or four years.

Or better: Let's not.