Halt California Governor Recall Election, UC Berkeley Profs Say

BERKELEY, CA — California’s upcoming gubernatorial recall election is an undemocratic power grab that would disenfranchise millions of voters and should be halted on constitutional grounds.

That’s according to UC Berkeley law professors Erwin Chemerinsky and Aaron S. Edlin, who last week co-authored a New York Times op-ed piece urging the courts “to protect the democratic process and the principle of one-person one-vote.”

Under the state’s system, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s political opponents triggered a recall by garnering the signatures of 12 percent of voters who cast ballots in the previous election.

The Sept. 14 recall election is split into two parts: the first to determine whether Newsom should be recalled, and the second to determine his replacement from a field of over 40 candidates should a majority of voters support the recall.

The candidate who receives a plurality of the replacement election would be declared the state’s next governor.

This inherently undemocratic system violates the core principle that each voter should have an equal shot at influencing an election’s outcome, Chemerinsky and Edlin say, and they’re urging the courts to stop the recall in its tracks on this basis sooner rather than later.

They say overturning “an unconstitutional election after the fact would be considerably messier than fixing the process beforehand.”

Conservative Larry Elder owns a double-digit lead among replacement candidates with the support of 23 percent of likely voters according to a CBS News/YouGov poll released Sunday. Kevin Paffarth, a 29-year-old YouTuber, is second with 13 percent.

Elder’s views on climate change, coronavirus restrictions and the minimum wage, among other issues, are largely out of step with California’s bright blue electorate that gave Newsom a landslide victory in 2018 over Republican John Cox.

Elder has propagated misinformation about the coronavirus vaccine, The Los Angeles Times reports.

But nearly all reputable polls are pointing to a tight race, which figures to give Elder an excellent chance to become the state’s next governor.

The “No” vote holds a four-point lead (52-48 percent) in CBS News/YouGov poll that’s within the poll’s statistical margin of error (four points). Registered voters oppose the recall by a 54-46 percent margin according to the same poll.

Should 49 percent of voters could cast their ballots in favor of Newsom by voting “No” on the recall, he’d likely lose to candidate who collects less than half as many votes in the replacement election.

Chemerinsky and Edlin argue for a possible remedy: Add Newsom’s name to the ballot on the list of who would replace him.

Whether their argument has merit is open for debate, but the views come from legal scholars regarded as heavyweights in their field.

Two Venice Beach residents on Friday filed a federal lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the recall election, based on arguments that closely mirror those of Chemerinsky and Edlin.

Plaintiffs Rex Julian Beaber and A.W. Clark argue that the recall violates “the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment, because it flies in the face of the federal legal principle of ‘one person, one vote,’ and gives to voters who vote to recall the governor two votes — one to remove him and one to select a successor, but limits to only one vote the franchise of those who vote to retain him and that he not be recalled, so that a person who votes for recall has twice as many votes as a person who votes against the recall.

“This is unconstitutional both on its face and as applied.”