Voting is underway for California’s gubernatorial election.
The ballots, which were sent to voters, have just two parts to them.
The first part asks if current governor Gavin Newsom should be removed from office. The second addresses who should replace him if he is recalled.
Recall elections are nothing new for the Golden State. According to California’s Secretary of State, there have been 179 recall attempts since 1913. Of those, eleven of the petitions have received enough signatures to have an election.
It doesn’t take many signatures to get a recall petition accepted. California requires just 12 percent of the total voter turnout from the previous similar election. For the 2021 recall election, that’s only about 1.4 million people. California’s voting age population numbers nearly 30 million, so 1.4 million is a small percentage of that.
Like most states, California doesn’t have a runoff election, so recall elections can be decided by a single vote.
More than half of California’s recall elections have resulted in a recall. Recently, Californians recalled Governor Gray Davis, replacing him with actor Arnold Schwarzenegger.
In 2018, Republican Ling Ling Chang replaced Democratic State Senator Josh Newman.
Recall attempts for Newsom started just a few months following his inauguration. Republicans continued to try, unsuccessfully, to recall Newsom several times. In February, another recall attempt was filed. It wasn’t gathering a lot of signatures until November 2020.
That’s when Newsom was caught on camera at a private birthday party at the pricey French Laundry restaurant in Yountville, California. Newsom claims he was eating outside, but imagery showed him unmasked in an indoor group setting–going against the coronavirus restrictions he urged others to follow throughout the state.
Newsom quickly apologized for his actions, saying he regretted his decision, but the damage was done.
At a news conference on November 16, 2020, Newsom said, “The spirit of what I’m preaching all the time was contradicted, and I’ve got to own that, and so I want to apologize to you because I need to preach and practice, not just preach and not practice and I’ve done my best to do that. We’re all human. We all fall short sometimes.”
In just over a month, the petition grew from just more than 55,000 people to almost a half million people. From there, it continued to grow, reaching 1.7 million, surpassing the 1.4 million needed to get the recall.
The deadline for recall ballot submission is September 14, 2021, and 46 people have thrown their hat in the ring to replace Newsom if he is recalled.
Leading the pack of candidates is Larry Elder, a controversial talk show host. Aggregate polling by FiveThirtyEight.com has Elder leading by double digits.
According to that same website, aggregate polling indicates voters won’t recall Newsom, although it will be close.
If Newsom isn’t recalled, he will have to face challengers again in 2022 when the Democrat from San Francisco is up for re-election.
California’s Department of Finance calculates the recall election will cost the Golden State about $276 million.