A recall effort has been started against Nantucket Select Chair Jason Bridges over a vote to choose a new fire chief. Petitioners are upset that they didn't appoint the Deputy Fire Chief to the position. Petitioners are focused on whether he circulated a letter to the public about a 15 day period to veto the appointment.
Petitioners first need 200 signatures and then a second petition with 20% of registered voters.
Update: The effort has been put on hold.
The recall effort against in Berrien County' Lakeshore Public School Board President Jason Beckrow and Secretary Rachel Wade has failed.
The recalls were part of a large group of efforts against Berrien County officials, all over board members support for mask policies designed to combat the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.
Petitioners needed 2156 valids for each. They handed in 2388 for Becrow and got 2052 valids and 2400 for Wade, with only 2019 found valids. Numerous people signed the wrong petition form (not the municipality that they are registered to vote in) and some of the addresses were filled out by someone else.
Update: A Judge rejected a lawsuit seeking to put the recall on the ballot.
Petitions have been taken out against Conroe Councilwoman Marsha Porter over her support the firing of the City Administrator and the resignation of the Director of Finance.
The wife of former Mayor Pro Tem Raymond McDonald is one of the leaders of the recall effort. McDonald lost his race to Councilman Howard Wood, who also supported the ouster.
Seems like petitioners would need over 1500 signatures in 45 days to get on the ballot (30% of turnout).
Petitions have been taken out against New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell over complaints about a failure to put New Orleans first. Petitioners need 53,353 signatures (20% of registered voters) in 180 days.
The California state legislature has passed a bill that will remove replacement races for local recall elections and replace it with the "Automatic Replacement" or Replace as by law" model. The legislators are focused on what they claim is hyperpartisanship. Presumably it would not impact charter cities that have their own laws. I'll have more to say on this soon, as I'm trying to place an op-ed on the subject.
No word if California Governor Gavin Newsom will sign the bill.
Some more stories from the failed recall effort against L.A. District Attorney George Gascon, including a UC Berkeley IGS poll suggesting that voters were in favor of the recall 41-20%.
There's also a column in the LA Daily News that focuses on the mysterious "canceled" category of failed signatures, noting that many of them were people who died or moved. The article argues that pruning of the voter rolls would have lessened the amount of signatures needed, which may have led the recall to succeed.
Petitions have been taken out for a recall of Millburn Township Committee members Maggee Miggins and Sanjeev Vinayak. The recall is over their support for a housing center that proponents say will greatly increase downtown traffic.
Petitioners need the signatures of 25% of registered voters to get on the ballot.
Petitions are being taken out against Colorado Springs Councilmembers Wayne Williams (R) and Stephannie Fortune. The recall is about claims of his relationship with developers.
Williams is the former Secretary of State and is running for Mayor.
The leader of the recall effort if the former treasurer for the El Paso County Republican Party, who has long fought with Williams. There seems to be internal battles in the GOP County Party. Williams has also appeared with Democratic Secretary of State Jena Griswold, who beat Williams in 2018, in an ad against election disinformation.
Petitioners need 24507 signatures for Williams and 4053 signatures for Fortune.
Update: The effort against Williams failed.
Two Shawano School Board Member Michael Sleeper (1958) and Chuck Dallas (1923) resigned after signatures were handed in. Petitioners handed in 1958 and 1923 signatures and needed 1829 valids. I'm not clear if the signatures were validated yet. The issues was complaints over a $2 Million deficit that could lead to closings/staff cuts. After some legal discussion, and the removal of the petitions following the resignations, there won't be a replacement vote.
Petitions are being taken out against Colorado State Senator Kevin Priola, who switched from Republican to Democrat earlier this week, though petitioners are citing his support for a gas tax and safe injection sites for drug users.
Petitioners would need 18,291 signatures in 60 days.
The Senate is safely Democratic (21-14) and Priola is term-limited. He barely won office in 2020, 50.84-49.16. Priola switched parties due to his opposition to Republican election denial and conspiracy theories. However, in true twist, the district that Priola was elected in (25) is more Democratic-leaning than the 13th district, which is where he is serving after redistricting. It is unclear where the recall would take place (and therefore who would sign) -- the old district lines or the new ones.
Republicans leaned heavily into recalls after their disastrous showings in 2018, though to no effect (none got on the ballot). Colorado did have two recalls which led to the removal of two Democratic Senators in 2013 over gun control laws.
Voters have used the recall against party flippers twice in the past (arguably three times). In 1995, California Assemblyman Paul Horcher was ousted over moving from Republican to Independent and voting for Willie Brown for Speaker. Assemblywoman Doris Allen also moved from the Republicans in the same year and had herself elected Speaker, which led to her ouster. While seen as a betrayal, I don't believe she actually left the party. And in 1981, Washington State Senator Peter Von Reichbauer switched from Democrat to Republican, which flipped control of the chamber. Von Reichbauer survived the recall vote.
Six Baker City Councilor, Joanna Dixon, Johnny Waggoner Sr., Dean Guyer, Kerry McQuisten, Shane Alderson and Jason Spriet, are facing recall threats over a decision to accept the City Manager's proposal to remove ambulance services from the fire department's job and cut fire department employees. A seventh councilor is ineligible until September 22.
Petitioner need 680 signatures.
Recall threats are being discussed against Shelby County Clerk Wanda Halbert over an office closure to catch up on work while Halbert is on vacation (Halbert only started in office 20 days ago). The county charter gives 6 month grace periods at both the beginning and the end of the term. Petitioners need 15% of registered voters, which appears to be 87,750 valid signatures.
There's a new push to recall Minister of Parliament Margaret Ferrier (a former SNP member), who recently pleaded guilty to violating COVID safety protocols during in 2020, after refusing to self isolate, going to church and a bar and then taking a train from Glasgow to London despite having the coronavirus (though she had not yet tested positive). She could face a recall vote if suspended for more than 10 days. Petitioner would need 8100 signatures to get on the ballot.
A lawsuit filed is seeking to remove 140 signatures from the Robertson Fire Protection District Board recall, which would be enough to kill the effort. One of the plaintiffs is the daughter of the fire chief (who is not a board member) who signed under what she said was false pretenses.
Board members Joan Noel, Becky Reinsmith, Mike Conley are facing a recall vote on November 8, after 630 signatures were verified for each. The board is blamed for putting Hazelwood near bankruptcy due to a "costly contract." Supporters of the board members claim that Hazelwood is trying to get out of the contract with the recalls. The issues listed include failure to lower costs, retaliation, failing to turn over public records and selling property for below market value.
Two years after he was kicked out of office in a recall, former Sebastian City Councilman Damien Gilliams, is running for office. There was two year ban after Gilliams was convicted of violating the Sunshine law.
Gilliams was one of three Sebastian City Council members kicked out in a recall that seems to have started over fights with the Mayor and other council members -- the three were elected on on a platform of opposition to an 1100 acre annexation plan last year. Gillams and Parris notably voted against the hiring of a new city attorney. They were also arrested for breaking the Sunshine Law and perjury for lying to investigators. The three members allegedly voted to fire the city staff and appoint Gilliams mayor in what investigators call an illegal meeting. The two allegedly lied under oath.
Eugene City Councilor Claire Syrett has filed a lawsuit to stop the upcoming recall election, claiming that signature gatherers lied about the basis of the recall. The recall effort is over her support for a traffic and public transit plan and the claim is that the vote was about further study. She is seeking $2500 in damages from the plaintiffs.
Petitioners handed in over 2000 signatures. They needed 1365. Haven't seen how many were rejected.
The recall effort against Nashville Councilmember Jonathan Hall failed. The recall was over campaign finance violations and penalties. Petitioners handed in 1498 signatures and needed needed 1800. The signatures were not actually counted as they didn't hit the limit.
The lead petitioner, Charles Scott, is running for the position in the next election.
While we already looked at the failure of the recall attempt against Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascon, there has been a number of articles and a prominent social media post putting forward a complaint about the clerk which suggests something untoward in the signature verification process. There have been some corrections, including a highly recommend Red State story a conservative site that backed the recall, which takes a scathing look at the failure of the recall effort and calls into question the complaints of petitioners. The Red State article alleges some level of actual fraud in signing the attestations and that the petitioners knew that they did not have enough signatures.
I guess I should revisit the numbers to show what seems to have happened.
27.3% of the signatures were tossed out -- 195,783 of the 715,833 signatures handed in (I'm not sure why 28% has been regularly cited as the number). So they missed by 46,807. They got 520,050 valids. They needed 566,857.
As noted before, the signature rejection rate was within the range of past California recalls, though on the higher end (Here's the link with the discussion). There was a 34% signature failure rate for LA Councilmember Mike Bonin and a 20% rejection rate for the recalls of the San Francisco District Attorney and the three San Francisco School Board members. Because of the available data, these are useful to look at for comparison purposes.
The rejections for the Gascon recall were as follows:
Not Registered -- 88,464 (12% of total handed in)
Duplications -- 43,593 (6%)
Different Address -- 32,187 (4%)
Mismatch signature -- 9,490 (1.3%)
Canceled -- 7,344 (1%)
Out of County Address -- 5,374 (.07%)
Other -- 9,331 (1.3%)
In the San Francisco recalls, the handed in 83,484 signatures, and sampled 4174 (I explain how this works here). In the D.A. Chesa Boudin recall, the breakdown was:
Approved -- 79% (3229 signatures)
Not Registered 13.2% (553)
No Signature 0% (2)
PO Box/Mailing Address -- .1% (4)
Printed Signatures .1% (3)
Registered Late -- .9% (39)
Signatures does not match 1.5% (62)
Wrong Address -- 4.8% (201)
Cannot identify .2% (7)
No Residence Address Given 0% (2)
Duplicates -- Signed more than once 0% (2)
Hopefully, we can see the big difference here. The not registered is very similar -- actually higher in San Francisco. The sheer number of duplicates here -- 43,593 is 6% of total signatures. There were only 2 duplicates in the SF DA sample. The school board samples were even better -- they had only one for all three combined recalls. This may point to issues the gatherers, as there was a lawsuit by the signature gathering company against the recall committee. The Red State article goes very deeply into this.
More objectionable, the pro-recall forces sent a note complaining about the standard for the recall and a "shockingly large" rejection rate, though they used a very odd comparison (ballots mailed out during past elections). These ballots were of course sent to registered voters. So there would be no problem with the non-register voters, out of district voters or duplicates. The failure rate of those signatures was similar with the election and recall.
This did not stop a false meme from spreading, a story amplified by Donald Trump Jr. among many others. But as we can see (and as the Red State story notes), the actual mismatched signatures were a small part of the Gascon recall failure.
The petitioners have criticized heavily for spending $8 million and not getting to the ballot (an upcoming Red State story promises a look at where the spending went). Some recent propositions (discussed towards the end) spent $6 million to get on the ballot, though they had the advantage of gathering signatures throughout the state. But even there, there was a significant failure rate.
The petitioners could have claimed a moral victory in gaining so many signatures -- this was vastly more signatures than ever handed in for a non-gubernatorial/LG recall in American history. The sheer number of signatures needed (more than against Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker in 2012 and nearly 10X that needed in San Francisco), was enough reason for it to fail. But instead, they decided to launch a baseless attack on the Clerk's office.
Follow-on article to the recall effort against Jersey City Councilwoman Amy DeGise after video was released of her hitting a cyclist in a hit-and-run accident.
The article notes that the high threshold for recalls, as petitioners would need 42,523 signatures to get the recall on the ballot. Because she is in her first year, the recall couldn't get on the ballot until January.
The recall effort against New Buffalo Mayor John Humphrey and Councilman Brian Flanagan has failed, with officials knocking out enough signatures to kill the recall. 294 signatures were handed in for Humphrey and 271 for Flanagan. At least 80 signatures were tossed out on each one and they needed 219 to get on the ballot. Petitioners said they would challenge the decision.
The issue was a vote in favor of a ordinance banning short-term rentals. Humphrey is also facing a petition over having someone kicked out of a council meeting.
