California Starts Poring Over Recall Rules As GOP Is Bludgeoned

A day after California voters resoundingly rejected a Republican-backed effort to oust Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom from his job, lawmakers began considering ways to reform the state's system for recalling elected officials, Sharon Bernstein reported for Reuters.

Photo Insert: None other than US President Joe Biden, himself, graced one of Governor Gavin Newsom's final "Vote No" to the California recall rallies.

Newsom on Tuesday handily beat back the challenge with 64% of the vote, sending a decisive message that voters in the deeply Democratic state supported his policies for tackling COVID-19, immigration and crime.

The election was expensive to run, and Californians will go to the polls anyway next year to elect a new governor. It also presented the possibility that a replacement candidate with fewer than a majority of votes could become governor.

"It is time to re-evaluate and update California's recall process," said State Senator Steve Glazer, chairman of the Senate Committee on Elections and Constitutional Amendments.

"The voters want to see a more democratic process put in place that keeps elected officials accountable, but prevents political gamesmanship of the rules." Glazer and Assembly member Marc Berman, both Democrats, said they would hold bipartisan hearings in coming months to consider possible changes to the system, which would require amending the state constitution. Republican strategist Mike Madrid said the talk of reform was a partisan ploy by Democrats.

"Throwing out a powerful tool to protect democracy for purely partisan aims is misguided and dangerous," Madrid said.

California spent an estimated $270 million on the special election, which was forced onto the ballot after a conservative group called the Patriot Coalition collected 1.5 million signatures to request a referendum on whether Newsom should be recalled.

Newsom raised nearly $70 million to fight off the recall attempt, and a handful of Republicans seeking to challenge him raised another $40 million. Under California's century-old recall process, opponents of a sitting elected official need to gather signatures from just 12% of the number of people who voted in the last election for that office in order to force a special recall election.

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