recall elections

A Tale of Two Cities: The Recall Efforts of the San Francisco and Los Angeles District Attorneys

Election Law Society · February 20, 2023 ·

By Caleb McClain

Earlier in the year, I wrote an article for this blog on the recall election laws of my home state of California. I was inspired to write the article by to the persistent efforts to recall my county’s District Attorney, George Gascón, and the recent special election that tried to recall the Governor, Gavin Newsom. Shortly after I finished writing the article, there was a successful recall of the San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin and a failed attempt to recall Gascón. Considering these events, I wish to take a closer look at both elections and see if any of the critiques of the California recall system apply.

As I have previously given a history and overview of recall election, I’ll give only a brief summary. Recall elections emerged out of the progressive movement as way to give power back to the people to remove corrupt officials but in practice have had a mixed effect. California has hosted over 11 recall elections with the most famous being the successful recall of Grey Davis in 2003 and the failed attempt to recall Newsome in 2021. The election occurs when a recall petition is circulated in the required jurisdiction to gain signatures. If the required number is met, it triggers an election to decide if the official will be recalled and, depending on the office, who will replace them. For county-wide elections the number of required signatures is determined by a percentage of the number of registered voters in that county with bigger counties needing a smaller percentage.

First to be examined is the successful campaign against SFDA Boudin. For a successful county-wide recall in San Francisco county, a petitioner must collect over 50,000 valid signatures from among San Francisco’s 496,000 registered voters. Supporters of the recall managed to gather more than 80,000 valid signatures ensuring it would go to a vote. The vote ultimately resulted in 122, 000 voting for the recall compared to 100,00 voting to keep Boudin, successfully recalling the DA by more than 20,000 votes and making SF Mayor London Breed pick the next DA.

Next, we examine the failed campaign to recall DA Gascón. For a successful county-wide recall in Los Angeles County a petitioner must collect over 570,000 valid signatures from the county’s 5.6 million registered voters. Supporters of the recall fell short by over 50,000 votes when they only managed to get 520,000 valid signatures leaving Gascón safe until he is up for reelection in 2024. This was the second failed attempt to recall Gascón.

In my previous article I pointed out several issues with the way California’s recall elections were set-up particularly at the state level. Now these two recall attempts, despite their different outcomes, offer useful examples of these flaws at the local level. The first and greatest among these is the low bar of signatures needed to trigger a recall election with only 10% needed to trigger a recall election in a county with over 100,000 registered voters. Currently California has over 30 counties with registered voter populations over 100,000 out of 52 total counties. Looking at San Francisco in particular, it is not a great challenge to round up 50,000 voters out of just under 500,000 total. As California Secretary of State Shirley Webber puts it “There’s always 10 to 15% who do not like somebody.”

A second, and broader, critique is the overall effectiveness of recall elections. At the state level, I pointed out how recalling governors was due less to perceived corruption than to external forces they had little control over or internal partisan squabbling. This same issue still holds true at the local level, with the San Francisco and Los Angeles recalls both being marked by similar forces despite their different outcomes. Both cities were on the front lines of the progressive prosecutor movement in California, with Gascón serving as Boudin’s predecessor in SF. Further, both recall attempts emerged as a reaction to a national spike in crime amplified by a series of viral smash and grab robberies. However, the crime spike occurred across the nation during the pandemic regardless of the ‘tough’ or ‘soft’ policies of the county District Attorney and holding a local official solely responsible for a national problem severely undercuts that rationale for a recall. These issues and others with the recall process have been noted by activists and politicians alike and movement is underway to bring a suite of reforms before the voters and the state legislature, which a classmate has written at length about.

The Beholden State: Weighing When Democracy Matters in the Golden State

Election Law Society · November 21, 2022 ·

By Ram Reddy

California—to many—is the shining beacon of what it means to be a progressive, Blue State. Just as Texan politicians and voters tend to take pride in their depiction in popular media as a deep Red State, Californian politicians are beholden to putting up a persona of deep Blue, going so far as to run ads about their values in rival red states.

California has led the charge in introducing and/or passing sweeping new bills about voter registration and vote by mail laws, in an effort to increase turnout in the state that has abysmally low turnout. Cynics saw this as a tactic by state Democrats to increase minority turnout due to the threat some progressive politicians have faced in backlash to crime waves. But whatever the intention, the state is putting its money where its mouth is when it comes to making democracy more accessible and accountable to citizens…except in the area of recalls.

Approaches to popular sovereignty and democracy in California seem to come down to party lines because, though recalls remain broadly popular across party lines, the targets for recalls tend to be Democrats. Recalls empower minority parties in a state where Democrats hold veto proof supermajorities at almost every level. Calls for making reforming recalls and perhaps making them less effective are making the rounds as bills in Sacramento. The Golden State enjoys one of the lowest thresholds for recalls of all western states, and its voters have successfully recalled a governor and various state officials—most recently DA Chesa Boudin. As a result, many Democratic policy makers in Sacramento are calling for a fleet of sweeping new reforms from raising the signature threshold, to constitutional amendments to mandate a cause for recall, or eliminate the recall altogether. While most of these measures are not groundbreaking in the state’s political discourse, there are newer and more controversial measures including preventing local offices where the holder is removed from being filled until the next election and forcing state wide offices subject to recall to remain vacant until the next election or a special election where the recalled officer would still be treated as an incumbent. Opponents see these attempts at leaving the offices empty as efforts to further solidify Democratic Party control over the state, as the supermajority with a vacant governor’s seat merely means what few bills would be vetoed now cannot be vetoed.

Proponents of the recall reform measures point to the blowout victories of DA George Gaston and Gavin Newsom and have tried to paint reform as popular amongst the state’s Democratic majority. While generic questions about recall reform tend to poll around 50%, specific reforms fail to garner majority support even amongst Democrats in most polls aside from one conducted by UC Berkeley.

Republicans have weaponized these efforts as attempts by state Democrats to further cement control over opposition, and they’re using voters’ complaints over rising crime and financial woes to do so. They point to what they claim are the state’s lax policy towards verification of absentee ballots and registration drives and the efforts to nitpick and toss out recall signatures to keep measures from the ballot—though opponents of these recall efforts point to the poorly run recall campaigns as the reason for these failures.

The battle over recalls will continue to loom in the Golden State and efforts to change the process shall grow. Even though statewide recalls of officials like Gov. Newsom might have failed, more and more local offices are being targeted,perhaps galvanized by the successful recalls of Chesa Boudin and a trio of school board officials in San Francisco. Los Angeles DA George Gascon is likely to face a third recall in the coming year. For better or for worse recalls will continue to be in the spotlight in California, as will the juxtaposition of efforts by state legislators and politicians to promote democracy while cutting down on threats to their incumbency.

Total Recall: Great Movie, Dangerous Political Process

Election Law Society · April 2, 2012 ·

By Joe Figueroa

Fresh off of a convincing 52-46 electoral victory, a young, dynamic politician has recently come under fire for the passage of a bill that he considers to be a hallmark of his legacy.

And it is not President Obama.

True, the parallels between Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and the 44th President are noteworthy. But unlike Mr. Obama, a quirky yet significant electoral procedure stands in the way of Governor Walker even completing his first term in office.

Following Wisconsin law, multiple public committees have been formed to gather the requisite number of voter signatures needed to hold a recall election of Governor Walker. One of those committees has already submitted a signature petition that is estimated to have twice the amount of the 540,000 signatures needed to hold an election.

The Wisconsin Government Accountability Board has yet to verify the signatures or officially call an election. But the day is coming. If there are a sufficient number of valid signatures, a recall election will be held in May (if only one or two candidates file) or June (if more than two file). [Read more…] about Total Recall: Great Movie, Dangerous Political Process