Of the 58 county board of registrars that report into the Secretary of State, Orange County, Riverside, San Diego and Los Angeles have had the most number of signatures demanding to unseat Gavin Newsom as governor, according to data from the recall Gov. Newsom movement.
“We're probably going to collect 100,000 signatures from San Francisco alone,” said Mike Netter, co-founder of Recall Gavin 2020. “The state is very angry at Gavin Newsom for the condition of the state of California but not only about COVID. COVID probably accelerated it.”
Some 1,825,000 signed petitions have been gathered and, of those, 1.3 million have been submitted, according to Netter. Only 1,495,709 signed, verified petitions need to be collected to place a vote on the ballot that will give California voters the choice of whether to recall Gov. Newsom or not.
A recall allows for an elected official to be removed from office before their term limit is up by a public vote but first a certain number of signatures must be collected and verified with the Secretary of State much like a ballot initiative, according to media reports.
“It's a lot of signatures for the county board of registrars to verify,” Netter told the Southern California Record. “They don't have an automatic system. So, there will be some verifications done by hand.”
Netter said the goal is to collect two million signatures in the next three weeks.
“We’re pulling in close to 100,000 a week," he said. "We've had about 560,000 people come to our website in December, January, and February, and about 25% download a petition.”
Final certification of signatures begins at the end of the petitioning period on March 17.
“We expect the Democrats to launch a campaign around the state to get people to withdraw their signatures,” Netter said.
But after the required signed petitions are gathered and verified, a recall must take place as a special election within 90 days, according to the Secretary of State website.
“Newsom’s team, which is the infrastructure, will try to delay this as much as possible,” Netter said. “Realistically, it's going to be late summer or early fall when the election takes place.”
As the number of COVID cases has begun to drop, Gov. Newsom has tentatively reopened the economy of certain counties, according to media reports.
But Netter remains critical.
“When he opened up the state, he did it on a Sunday night and didn't even tell his own party about it,” he said. “Most members of the Democratic Party found out about it in the press. Schools still aren't going to be open. They can't seem to work that out.”
The state’s COVID dashboard reports 3,465,726 confirmed coronavirus cases that have resulted in 51,382 deaths, as of Feb. 26.
“You don't magically wave a wand to keep everybody home, which is illegal, and then magically wave a wand to put everything back instantaneously,” Netter said. “It doesn't work that way and Gavin Newsom doesn't seem to understand that.”