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East Bay plans for fall recall election Backers of petition drives to oust Gov. Gray Davis plan to submit the last of about 1.4 million signatures by week's end. The Democratic governor's Republican foes are gunning to put the recall to a vote in the fall, perhaps on the Nov. 4 ballot. That would turn a relatively small, off-year election into a much larger undertaking -- as if the first gubernatorial recall vote in the state's history would not be momentous enough. "The secretary of state's putting out the call: 'Hey, if this happened to go in November, would that work for you?'" said Steve Weir, head of Contra Costa County's elections office. Doug Stone, a spokesman for Secretary of State Kevin Shelley, said the agency has been calling counties to gather a list of Nov. 4 ballot items, not to gauge whether a recall then would be impractical. "It would be premature for us at this point to be making those types of plans," Stone said. If and when the recall qualifies, "that would be the appropriate time to start that discussion." Still, it is prudent to begin preparing for the possibility of a November recall election, Weir said. "Our sense is this thing is going to go," he said, "and we need to be ready to staff those polls." That means having about 3,200 workers at about 800 polling locations -- approximately 88 percent more people than otherwise needed to handle voting in the half-dozen or so cities and districts with items on the Nov. 4 ballot so far. Weir recently brought in special staff to help recruit those workers. Alameda County also is preparing to bring on more poll workers. It would need about 3,500 people -- about 10 times as many as otherwise needed -- if the recall lands on the Nov. 4 ballot, said Elaine Ginnold, the county's assistant registrar of voters. Elections officials could call on employees from other county departments to fill the ranks of poll workers as well as a database of 5,000 to 6,000 current and former poll workers, Ginnold said. "We'd be ready for it," she said. "We can get it together pretty quickly." One thing counties have to prepare for is the cost of such an election. Shelley spokeswoman Terri Carbaugh has said the state will pick up $3 million, leaving counties to cover the rest, in the "$35 million to $45 million range." The sooner elections officials know if the recall has qualified and, if so, when the matter will be put to a vote, the better. The later they get word the harder it will be to tackle tasks such as reprogramming voting machines and printing enough ballots. If it appears likely that recall backers have gathered at least the 897,158 valid signatures necessary to put the question to a vote, more uncertain is when that election would occur. Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante must call for the election within 60 to 80 days of Shelley's certifying that the recall petition has qualified. If that certification happens on or after Sept. 4, the recall could be consolidated with the March election. Yet odds are that the petition will be certified before Sept. 4, prompting a fall election, political observers say. State law does not compel Bustamante to put the recall on the Nov. 4 ballot, but that is a likely outcome.
Preparing for that possibility is more important than in past years because more and more cities, counties and districts have been shifting elections to even-numbered years. That is when presidential and congressional primaries and general elections
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