As I Recall...

The recall election of Gov. Gavin Newsom in California is ridiculous.  For several reasons.

The starting point is where things stand in the actual recall.  The most recent poll shows that Californians are against the recall by 56-40%.  That number, by the way, is pretty close to what he won his gubernatorial race in 2018 was. (That was 62%-38%.)  In fairness, that is no guarantee of the result -- the recall election is around 5-6 months away, the exact date to be determined.  And that's a lifetime in politics.  Much can change.  The pandemic can worsen, the economy collapse, some scandal could occur.  But it's still a very good starting point.

Further, California is a significantly blue state.  Yes, it was also a blue state when Gov. Gray Davis was recalled in 2003, but it's more blue now.  Also, Davis had real issues he was facing.  And it should be noted that the major issue on power failure was later discovered to be manipulated by Enron officials to help bust its corrupt stock.

The issue that Davis is facing began with people unhappy about the handling of the pandemic.  But not only was pretty much no one in the United States happy with anything about the pandemic, but today, California has one of the highest vaccination rates, the lowest rate of infection cases, business is set to reopen wide in a couple of months and schools (which have started to open) will reopen wide in September..

(A friend noted that Newsom caused himself harm by going to a dinner party at the height of the pandemic.  And yes, that was really stupid.  But as I said to my friend, you don't recall a governor because he made a stupid decision about going to dinner. My friend -- who to be clear is against the recall, but wary -- agreed.)

​And all this points to the massive problem that recall proponents face in reversing those 56-40% numbers against recall.  Indeed, to show how high the hurdle is for them, an article in the Los Angeles Times last week noted that their biggest chance now was pretty much limited to two things. 

The first is the homeless crisis in the state.  And while the situation is very bad, it's mostly limited to the big cities and mostly there to Los Angeles.  Further, it's not really an issue for the governor, but that the L.A. City Council has passed some (in my mind) truly horrible laws that exacerbated the problem.

And the second hope for recall proponents -- and this is serious -- is that there are major wildfires in California and that Newsom screws up handling them.

No, really.  Can you imagine?  Your push to recall a governor is now pretty much based on hoping for devastating wildfires and a terrible response.  Meet today's Republican Party!  This hope isn't helped by the fact that California has had many wildfires over the years and during Newsom's time in office, and not only is there an operation in place that knows how to deal with such things, but he himself has experience in what to do.  Moreover, as opposed to the most recent crushing wildfires when Trump was in office and did all he could to totally ignore the state, other than suggesting more brooms to sweep the forest floor, there is now a president in the White House who would help any state having a natural disaster -- as we saw President Biden do with Texas during its energy crisis this past winter -- but he is most-likely highly disposed to making sure the Democratic governor of the most populous state in the union gets all the federal assistance needed.  But all that aside, it can only be repeated:  the dreams of Republicans wanting to recall Gavin Newsom rest on hoping for disastrous wildfires that are mishandled.

All of which shows that this recall is less about Newsom doing anything worth being recalled, but is purely political by Republicans who simply don't like that a Democrat is in public office.  And (once again) we see them doing whatever they can to manipulate the public good by trying to remove him even after they lost the general election. What a shock, eh?

Which brings us to the second thing that's ridiculous about this recall election process.

And that's the process itself.

California has an absolutely terrible system for recalls.  It seems to me that if you have general elections that put candidates in office, then you live with those results.  And it should only be do to major, truly significant problems than someone can be recalled.  And doing so should be difficult, rather than being able to decide to remove an elected official because the wind changed.

First, it takes only 1.5 million signatures to qualify for a recall election.  This in a state of 40 million people.  In 2018, Gov. Newsom's losing opponent John Cox got 4.7 million votes.  Only a third of that total of Californians who are disappointed their candidate lost need to sign a petition to get a recall election approved.  That's pathetic.  It's not even having to take a personal action of voting, but someone sticks a petition in front of you and says, "If you are unhappy with the governor, just sign here."  I suspect close to everyone who voted for the most recent losing candidate is unhappy with the governor who won.  I don't know what the number of signatures should be, but a suggestion is the number of people who voted for him last time.  Or at the very least, the number of people who voted for his leading opponent.  Not a paltry third of those.

And then second is the replacement election.  That's what got us Arnold Schwarzenegger, a totally unqualified actor and former body-builder with zero elected political experience, to become the terrible governor of the fifth biggest economy in the world.  But the people seemed to think it might be cool or fun to have "Arnold" as governor.  To be clear, if the people of any state want to elect an incompetent person for anything, that's their right.  But a recall replacement election is not like a general election.

​​It's pretty easy for people to qualify for the replacement ballot.  And to win, you only need to get the most votes of anyone on that long list.  And while that's true for most general elections (perhaps all), it's not true for primary elections and not for run-off elections, as we saw recently in Georgia -- and this is far more like a run-off than a general election.  There's almost no campaign, and whatever brief campaign time there is, it's done without even knowing if the replacement election will even matter since the recall vote can fail and at most there's one debate with any number of people on stage vying for time.

Moreover, you could conceivably have a long list of candidates from one party and only one candidate from the other.  So, all the candidates of that one party could get most of the vote, but split the total, and the single candidate of the other party would sneak it.  Further, when the sitting governor facing a recall election is from your own party, it's likely that the best candidates of that party are not going to run against him or her, since it would suggest that you're not behind the governor staying in office.  So, you perhaps could have a deep imbalance of who's running in the replacement election, unlike in a normal, general election.  And the result is that you end up with an incompetent like Arnold Schwartzenegger winning who has the only recognizable name, and because it might be cool or fun.

At the very least, the the results of a recall replacement election should be closer to a run-off or primary race.  Require that the winner needs 50% of the vote, plus one.  Or make it so that all the candidates whose vote totals together add up to 50% will have a run-off.  Or let the recalled candidate be on the ballot, if he's recalled, given the public the option to say, yes, we recalled him, but he's still better than all these people running to replace him.  Or...something that demands the best result than letting someone fall through the cracks because of a lucky imbalance.

​Fortunately, this time around, it appears as if Gov. Newman will not be recalled.  But we shouldn't even have to consider that possibility.  Not this year, and not in any future election.  And most especially not in the most populous state in America and the fifth biggest economy in the world.  It's not a game of darts.