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Recall proponents confident "Our committee will be done paying for signatures on Monday," said David Gilliard of Rescue California, the best-funded recall committee. "Our goal is to have all 1.2 million signed petitions shipped out by (July 11)." A Los Angeles Times poll published today showed that a majority of California voters would support the recall of Davis in a special election. Fifty-one percent of voters said they would approve removing Davis from office, a significant rise over the 39 percent of voters who favored a recall in March. The effort to gather the signatures hasn't come cheaply. Rescue California has collected more than $1.5 million, including $1.28 million from Republican Rep. Darrell Issa of San Diego County, and spent almost all of it on professional signature gatherers. Those signatures, combined with an estimated 100,000 collected by two other pro-recall groups, should provide a sizable margin for error beyond the 897, 158 valid signatures needed, said Sal Russo, a spokesman for the Recall Gray Davis Committee -- another of the three committees pursuing the recall effort. "If we kept collecting signatures until Sept. 2 (the recall deadline), we'd have 2 million," he said. Gathering the signatures is only the first part of the recall battle, however. Russo's group was concerned enough about possible problems with the signature count that they were prepared to go to court Thursday to force Secretary of State Kevin Shelley to order California's 58 counties to count and verify the recall signatures as they come in and not wait until the state's monthly deadline. While recall backers decided late Thursday afternoon to hold off on the suit, a legal battle is still possible, Russo said. One of the concerns is a memo that was sent out Monday to county election officials. In it, Stephen Trout, an attorney for Shelley's office, said that by the next reporting deadline, July 23, counties only had to verify the signatures that had been received by June 16. The hundreds of thousands of signatures that have been turned in since then wouldn't have to be verified and reported until Aug. 22, which could push the date of any recall vote back a month or longer. "That's clearly illegal," Russo complained. "Shelley is telling county election officials, 'Sit on your butts and don't verify what has come in over the last 30 days. Sit on a million signatures and let me know in August.' " California election law says counties "shall" report the number of "valid signatures verified during the current reporting period." Shelley's attorneys believe the law gives counties the option of continuously verifying the validity of the signatures but doesn't absolutely require it until the later date. "Proponents of the recall want the count to go faster, and opponents want it slower," Shelley said. "My job is to conduct it accurately." The state's counting and verification method is the same one that has been used countless times before for statewide ballot initiatives, Shelley added. In the GOP stronghold of Orange County, Steve Rodermund, the interim registrar, said his office would follow Shelley's direction and not verify the most recent batch of signatures until August. "It's not our election, it's his election," Rodermund said, referring to Shelley. Orange County already has received more than 130,000 signatures supporting the recall. "The proponents want all (the signatures) verified now," Rodermund said. "We don't have the luxury of doing that."
Dates matter
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