Newsom recall has less than half of needed signatures verified so far, state report says

With less than a month left until the deadline, county officials have verified just over 668,000 valid signatures supporting the effort to recall Gov. Gavin Newsom, according to a report released by the Secretary of State on Friday.

The report represents signatures counted by elections officials as of February 5. To qualify for the ballot, the recall needs nearly 1.5 million signatures verified by county election officials. Organizers say they’ve collected more than 1.5 million signatures, but have a goal of collecting 2 million signatures to make up for invalid petitions.

Between January 7 and February 5, proponents submitted more than 370,000 signatures petitioning to recall the Democratic governor. In total, recall proponents had submitted more than 1 million signatures by February 5.

Counties have assessed 798,310 of them. Of those, 668,202, or about 84%, are valid.

Organizers have until March 17 to submit signatures. Once all are turned in, election officials have until April 29 to verify them. If the effort does qualify for the ballot, a recall election could be held as soon as November.

On Friday evening, the recall effort reported a total of 1,718,000 signatures, though only about 1.1 million have been tabulated by election officials. Based on the validation rate, about 84%, the campaign estimates it has more than 1.4 million valid signatures. To reach the minimum count, it needs 57,726 more valid signatures by March 17, organizers said.

Orrin Heatlie, a retired sheriff’s sergeant who has been leading the effort since February, said recall supporters will continue collecting until they reach their goal of 2 million signatures.

”You don’t pump the brakes or take your foot off the gas at the end of the race,” he said. “This is when you power through the tape.”

Also on Friday, Newsom signed a bill to continue mailing ballots to all registered voters in California.

That policy, first enacted last year to make it easier for voters to avoid spreading COVID-19 at in-person polling places, will apply to all special elections in 2021. It would also apply to a potential Newsom recall election, if it were held this year.

This story was originally published February 19, 2021 at 5:07 PM with the headline "Newsom recall has less than half of needed signatures verified so far, state report says."