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Recall election is looking more likely by the day Each morning last week brought nine or 10, as many as 12 plastic trays from a U.S. Postal Service bulk mailing center across the river in West Sacramento. Each of those trays contained hundreds of envelopes from Californians distressed enough with Gov. Gray Davis to sign and return a petition sent by the campaign demanding his recall from office. The signatures are piling up. A fluorescent orange thermometer chart on the wall colored in with black ink shows that nearly 600,000 signatures have been gathered so far. David Gilliard, who is coordinating this part of the campaign, said organizers delivered 160,000 names last Wednesday to county registrars around the state. And he said the on-the-ground army of paid petition circulators, which complements the direct mail effort, had 240,000 signatures at its Newport Beach headquarters waiting to be checked by workers against a database of registered voters from all 58 counties. It is impossible to independently confirm some of these claims. But based on what I saw in the Elks Temple boiler room last week, and based on what I know about how people feel about Davis, I believe them. Get ready for a wild autumn, folks. The recall is going to qualify, barring some unexpected technical glitch or court ruling from out of the blue. The only question is whether it qualifies in time for a special election this fall or if instead the governor's fate will be decided at a March election combined with the presidential primary. The campaign needs 897,158 valid signatures by Sept. 2. Organizers figure they might finish their work by mid-July, perhaps even July 4. There appears to be an excellent chance that they will do so. Proponents have said their goal is to collect 1.3 million signatures to ensure enough valid names to qualify. But they might not need that many. The registrars in each county will be verifying and counting the signatures as they go along, giving organizers a chance to see exactly how many they have and how many more they need. Recall organizers already know that a very high percentage of the signatures they are submitting are legitimate. The mail pieces containing petitions were sent only to households with two or more registered Republicans. So it's almost certain that most of those coming back are from registered voters. And the firm running the paid signature gathering operation is verifying its names before paying the collectors. So most of those, too, should be good. But turning in the signatures is only half the battle. County registrars could take their time counting them, dragging the process out beyond July 23, a midsummer checkpoint for the secretary of state. If that happens, the election will almost certainly be delayed until March. Even if the counties report sufficient signatures by July 23, the election date cannot be set until Secretary of State Kevin Shelley, a Democrat, issues an official determination certifying the petitions. A spokeswoman for Shelley says he would have ten days to do so. At that point, another Democrat, Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, then sets the date for the election. If all this happens in July or early August, the election will probably be in October or November. But if the process drags out until early September, within 180 days of the March 4 primary, then the recall could be consolidated with that already scheduled election.
Conventional wisdom
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