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Group Files 717,000 Signatures on Recall-Gascón Petitions
Registrar-Recorder’s Office Has 30 Working Days in Which to Count Signatures; 567,000 Valid Ones Needed
From staff and wire service reports
The Committee to Support the Recall of District Attorney George Gascón yesterday filed with the county Office of Registrar Recorder petitions containing 717,000 signatures, exceeding the required 567,000 signatures—those of 10 percent of the voters—and more than the 650,000 to 700,000 it estimated it would need in light of the inevitable rejection of some of those submitted.
Tim Lineberger, a spokesman for the recall campaign, said the county has 30 working days in which to count the signatures. Gathering them, he commented, was the hardest part of the campaign.
“I wouldn’t say it’s in the bag or we’ll be complacent, but as far as public opinion is concerned, George Gascón is toast,” he remarked.
Although a previous amateur-driven effort failed, the current one was run by professionals, with fund-raising bringing in about $8 million. Signature-gathering booths were set up at locations across the county and a petition was mailed to each voter in the county.
The effort was spurred by the rising crime rate and bolstered by the June 7 success of the drive to recall Gascón’s San Francisco liberal counterpart, Chesa Boudin.
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—AP Boxes full of petitions to recall Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon sit in a truck outside the Los Angeles County Registrar of Voters on July 6, in Norwalk |
Special Directives
Gascón, who released a batch of “special directives” on Dec. 7, 2020, the day he was sworn in, immediately ran into opposition. His orders to deputies included prohibitions on seeking enhancements or alleging special circumstances and attempting retract those alleged under the administration of his predecessor, Jackie Lacey—changes general seen as “soft on crime” approaches,
The Association of Deputy District Attorneys and won a Los Angeles Superior Court administration order preliminarily enjoining some of the policies, with the Court of Appeal largely affirming.
Joshua Spivak, a senior research fellow at Berkeley Law’s California Constitution Center and author of a book on recall elections, said that historically, about 20 percent of signatures for recall campaigns are thrown out because someone who signed the petition wasn’t registered to vote or provided an incorrect address. That would mean the committee needed about 680,000 signatures to be safe. If the recall it does qualify for the Nov. 8 ballot, history is on the side of the recall supporters, Spivak said, noting that about 60 percent of recalls that made the ballot nationwide have succeeded.
Gascón criticized the signature-gathering process, in which people are paid as much as $15 for each signature they collect. He said some of those people use sleazy tactics to get voters to sign the petition even when they know little about the people they’re trying to push out of office.
Gascón Comments
The district attorney said he was approached by a person at Costco collecting signatures for his ouster who asked if he wanted to get the rapists out of his neighborhood. The man, who said he was from Florida, didn’t realize who Gascón was.
“It’s a very mercenary approach,” Gascón said. “Most people think that they’re all volunteers who care about their community and there’s a number of those, don’t get me wrong. But the bulk of signatures are being collected by ways that are extremely misleading.”
Gascón said he was confident he would survive any recall attempt. “Much like we saw what happened with the governor’s race,” he said. “They got the signatures to put him on the ballot and then they lost miserably and I fully suspect that that will be the same thing here.”
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