On June 22, California bill SB 96 was sent to Governor Jerry Brown. It makes recall petitioning more difficult, by letting signers remove their names after the petition has been completed. It takes effect immediately, and would impact a recall drive that is currently proceeding against a California Democratic State Senator.
Ballot Access News
Edited By Richard Winger
This is a terrible bill. Recall petitions are already more difficult than initiative or referendum petitions. I hope that this gets shot down.
The real purpose is to delay recalls, and likely violates the state constitution for that reason.
The constitution provides for the recall to be scheduled as soon as enough signatures are collected (within 60 to 80 days, just long enough to organize an election), but has a provision to delay the recall election if there is another election in much of the area covered by the recall within 180 days.
But the constitution says that the election is scheduled from the date the signature count is “certified”. So after it “appears” that there are enough signatures, there is a period to accept withdrawals, and then if it is “determined” that there are enough signatures, there is a period to determine what the cost of the recall would be, so that the legislature may fund the recall the election. Only then can the count be “certified”.
While the constitution does permit the legislature to provide statutory implementation of recalls, it is dubious whether that authority extends to extraneous purposes such as unnecessarily delaying the election.
A simpler solution is to reduce senate terms to two years, and provide for shortened terms in case of close elections. For example, if the race is within 1%, hold a new election in 6 months, and within 5% hold a new election in 1 year.