Gavin Newsom crushed the recall campaign. Now Democrats want to change the rules

A day after Gov. Gavin Newsom soundly defeated a recall, Democrats floated plans to begin changing the 110-year-old process that allows for a state official to be removed.

Those who want to see the recall process reformed have two main critiques: It’s far easier to trigger a recall election in California than any other state, and the way California recall ballots are structured raises the possibility that a candidate with a small portion of the total votes can win office.

“California has dodged a bullet twice,” said former Gov. Gray Davis, the only California governor to be recalled from office.

Republican Arnold Schwarzengger claimed more votes than Davis in the 2003 recall, but that wouldn’t necessarily be the case in future recalls. Voters see two questions: Should the governor be recalled, and who should replace the governor?

“At some point they won’t dodge the bullet, and a governor will be replaced by someone who had less votes on the same ballot,” Davis said.

The progressives led by former Republican Gov. Hiram Johnson who championed the original California recall amendment 110 years ago intended it to be a “precautionary measure by which a recalcitrant official can be removed” between elections. They wanted to limit the political power of the railroad companies that dominated the state’s economy at the time.

But now, over a century and two gubernatorial recalls later, some California lawmakers, political consultants and elections experts say they want to see the process overhauled to reflect modern politics.

Many want to raise the number of required signatures from 12% of the last election turnout to 20% or more, a change that would require recall advocates to obtained hundreds of thousands more signatures.

Other ideas include mandating that the lieutenant governor succeed a recalled governor, or allowing the targeted official to run alongside replacement candidates.

California spent $276 million to conduct the Newsom recall election. If the vote totals reported Tuesday night hold steady, he will have won the recall by a greater margin than his election in 2018.

“It’s ludicrous,” Garry South, a longtime Democratic consultant and former adviser to Davis, said of the cost. “That’s why the recall process will be reformed.”

Regardless of which ideas Democrats rally around, the final say will be up to voters, as any changes will require a constitutional amendment, which are required to go before a statewide vote.

What do they want to change?

Nineteen states have a process for recalling the governor, but California’s is one of the easiest, Democrats say.

In order to put a recall on the ballot in California, voters must submit petition signatures equal to 12% of the votes cast in the last gubernatorial election. In the case of Gov. Gavin Newsom, that number was 1.5 million signatures — less than 4% of the total state’s population.

California petitioners typically have 160 days to submit enough signatures, but because of pandemic restrictions, Newsom recall advocates were given an extra 120 days.

Other states require far more signatures, and a much shorter time to collect them. Some also require voters to present a certain reason for recall, such as incompetence, an act of malfeasance, or in some cases, a felony conviction.

In California, however, you can recall a governor for any reason.

In Kansas, for example, voters who want to remove a sitting governor can only do so if the governor has been convicted of a felony, shown misconduct in office, incompetence or failure to perform their gubernatorial duties. Voters must submit signatures equal to 40% of the votes cast in the last election to trigger a recall election, and have only 90 days to do it.

If California required 40% of the last turnout, petitioners would have been required to gather nearly 5 million votes.

California’s signature threshold is “ridiculously low” and should be raised to 20% said South, the Democratic consultant. South said he believes California should only allow a gubernatorial recall under certain conditions, similar to other states, and that a certain percentage of signatures should come from voters registered in the same party as the target of the recall.

Republicans haven’t won a statewide election since 2006, and registered Democrats outnumber them almost two to one. The recall process, South argues, has become a political crowbar for a party that has a slim chance of winning in a normal election year.

“You can’t allow a recall provision like this to become a tool by the minority party, who can’t win office by any other way, to try to harass Democrats and sneak Republicans in the back door... when they can’t get in the front door,” he said.

Incentives for polarizing candidates

Californians vote on both the recall and a replacement candidate on the same ballot. A replacement candidate will only win if more than 50% vote “yes” on the first question. There’s no limit to how many replacement candidates can enter the race, but the incumbent is not allowed to run on question two.

The kind of recall ballot used in California means a replacement candidate could still win office, even if he or sheereceives fewer votes than the target of the recall.

Chris Elmendorf, a professor at the University of California, Davis who studies elections, argues the current recall system creates an environment where polarizing candidates like Larry Elder can succeed despite having a small base of support, and there’s no incentive for the Republican party to support candidates who are more moderate and appeal to a wider range of voters.

“The end goal should be to create a political framework in which the California Republican Party has incentives to put forward candidates and policy positions that have a chance at winning support from 50% of the electorate,” he said.

Now, even with Newsom having escaped the claws of the recall, Democrats in the Legislature are looking to change California’s constitution to prevent such a situation from happening again.

“It bears discussion and debate,” said Senate President Toni Atkins, D-San Diego, during a Friday press call marking the end of the 2021 session.“We’ve heard that people want change.”

The governor, speaking in Oakland on Wednesday, said he’ll leave recall reform to “more objective minds,” though he did voice concerns that the recall process has been weaponized, pointing to local officials who are in danger of removal.

“It’s a strange place to be,” Newsom said of considering recall reforms right after surviving one himself. “As someone who might be on the receiving end once again.”

A 2022 ballot measure?

Because the recall is part of the state constitution, changing it will require a ballot measure and a subsequent statewide vote, and polling suggests voters may be supportive.

Former Gov. Jerry Brown told CNN last week that he doubts voters will want to give up that power.

“It’s kind of a wild process,” Brown said. “But to get rid of it would take a vote of the people again, and I think it might be rather hard to get the people to give up the power. Because I think they like to hold the last card.”

Researchers at the Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies found three out of four voters say the recall provision is a good thing, but a majority also support certain reforms. The reform with the most support calls for changing the rules so that if no replacement candidate wins a majority of the vote, and the officeholder is voted out of office, a runoff election should be held between the top two vote getters.

A majority of voters also say that officeholders should only be able to face a recall for a certain cause, and support increasing the number of petition signatures to 25% of the turnout in the last election instead of 12%. Almost half of voters also said it should be harder for replacement candidates to run.

Other proposals suggested by California political consultants include:

• Require a certain percentage of signatures to come from the targeted official’s own party.

• Require a “for cause” clause outlining the circumstances for recalling an official.

• Allow the subject of the recall to be listed as a candidate alongside the other candidates. If the incumbent wins the most votes, then they aren’t recalled.

• Raise the cost of entry for a candidate to discourage non-serious candidates.

• If no candidate wins a majority of votes on question two, require a runoff between the top two candidates.

The idea is to make it more difficult for a recall to make it to the ballot in the first place. If it does, they want to ensure that the person who wins the governorship is the person who wins the most votes.

Legislative leaders said they plan to spend the months before the start of the next session gathering input on recall changes from Californians on both sides of the aisle

Assemblyman Marc Berman, a Palo Alto Democrat and chair of the Assembly Election Committee, and State Sen. Steve Glazer, D-Contra Costa and chair of Senate Standing Committee on Elections and Constitutional Amendments, held a joint press conference on Wednesday morning following the election to discuss plans to “fix a broken system.”

“I think the majority of Californians are very frustrated that we just spent $276 million on this recall election that, from the looks of it, has certified what voters said three years ago,” Berman said, referring to Newsom’s victory over Republican John Cox in 2018.

Glazer said he wants to include Republicans in the discussion, and said there are many options on the table, though neither lawmaker suggested that the recall process be eliminated entirely.

“I believe Californians want accountability from their leaders, which the recall process provides, but they don’t want this partisan manipulation, where a small minority can force an election, and have a candidate prevail with less than a majority vote,” Glazer said.

This story was originally published September 15, 2021 at 5:25 AM with the headline "Gavin Newsom crushed the recall campaign. Now Democrats want to change the rules."