Newsom To Move Towards Authoritarianism Post-Recall

Written By BlabberBuzz | Saturday, 18 September 2021 05:15 AM
6
Views 6.3K
Newsom To Move Towards Authoritarianism Post-Recall

The day after convincingly overcoming the endeavor to remove him from office, California Gov. Gavin Newsom appeared to express support for an attempt to make it harder for Golden Staters to recall elected officials.

"I think the recall process has been weaponized," Newsom said Wednesday.

“‘No’ is not the only thing that was expressed tonight,” Newsom said. “I want to focus on what we said ‘yes’ to as a state: We said yes to science, we said yes to vaccines, we said yes to ending this pandemic.”

According to the latest unofficial results from election officials, about 64% of Californians voted no – meaning against ousting Newsom from office – in Tuesday's recall election, with just 36% voting to boot the first-term Democratic governor. Newsom’s margin beat expectations, topping the final public opinion polls heading into the election, which suggested the governor would survive by a much smaller -digit margin.

 WATCH: UCLA PROTESTORS LOST THEIR MIND CALLING THE UNIVERSITY A VIOLENT INSTITUTIONbell_image

Democratic state lawmakers, who hold supermajorities in both chambers of the California legislature, are already starting to execute modifications to make it harder to propel recalls in the future. Among the differences: increasing the number of signatures required to land a recall on the ballot, raising the standards of wrongdoings by elected officials to push a recall, and changing the current process. As for now, the candidate who wins the most votes among the replacement candidates – no matter how little their total – becomes governor if the recall is victorious.

 WATCH: TRUMP'S ATTORNEY FACING INDICTMENT IN ARIZONAbell_image

The signatures of 1.5 million California voters – 12% of the total electorate who voted in the state’s 2018 gubernatorial election – were required to land the recall on the ballot. That 12% threshold is far lower than in many of the other 18 states that allow for gubernatorial recalls.

 MEET VICTORIA SHI: THE AI-BOT SPOKESWOMAN TAKING UKRAINE'S FOREIGN MINISTRY BY STORMbell_image

One suggested amendment to the state law would have the lieutenant governor finish the term of a governor who is ousted from office through a recall.

But such works are meeting pushback from organizers of the recall.

"They’re working in opposition to the will of the people when they take action like that to limit our ability to self-govern," Orrin Heatlie, the chief proponent of the recall effort, told the AP.

 MOUNTING PRESSURE: OVER 300 ANTI-ISRAEL ACTIVISTS DEMAND REGULATIONS FOR ISRAEL IN UPCOMING OLYMPICSbell_image

A poll carried in June by the Public Policy Institute of California suggested that 86% of California likely voters supported having a way to recall elected officials. But the survey indicated that two-thirds of likely voters also supported major or minor changes, with a large partisan divide over the extent of the changes.

X