What you can do to stop the recall of Governor Newsom
Most importantly:
There is an election, starting Monday, August 16.
On or around that date, if you are currently registered to vote (check here), you will receive a ballot in your mail.
Vote NO on question 1 to stop the recall and keep Gov. Newsom in office. You can skip question 2—just leave the other side blank. Vote NO on question 1 and you’re done. See our detailed step-by-step instructions!
Cast your ballot as soon as possible. Don’t put it off if you can help it.
Read on for more info and more ways you can help.
You’ve been hearing for months about a potential recall of Governor Newsom. Or maybe you haven’t! Either way, it’s important to understand what that means and what you can do about it.
In short: There’s an election starting next month, and (if you’re eligible to vote) you can vote in it. And you should.
If we sleep on this election, we risk losing our Democratic governor to any of several dozen Republican challengers, even if they get only a tiny percentage of the vote. We must remember the lesson of 2016, 2018, and 2020: when we vote, and only when we vote, we win. So it’s critical to understand what you need to do and when.
Table of contents
What is a recall?
A recall is a special election, not necessarily on the regular election cycle, on whether to remove someone who’s currently in an elected office (such as Governor) from that office.
More specifically, a recall election has two questions:
Should the incumbent be recalled from office (fired)?
If the incumbent is recalled, who should replace them?
Recall elections must be initiated by a petition drive.
Republican activists started gathering signatures earlier this year to attempt to recall Governor Newsom, pretty much just because he’s a Democrat, and Republicans have decided that Democratic electoral victories aren’t legitimate. Newsom became Governor by winning 62% of the vote, a clear majority and more than any previous Democratic Governor of California—but he’s a Democrat, so they want him gone.
Since then, they have gathered enough signatures, Secretary of State Weber has certified that fact, and the Lieutenant Governor has set the dates for the election: Monday, August 16 to Tuesday, September 14.
Officially, the Lieutenant Governor—it would be the Governor if any other state officer was facing a recall—sets only the date of “Election Day.” But because this will be an all-vote-by-mail election, it makes more sense to think of the election as a month-long period, not a single day. The ballots go out on or around Monday, August 16, so that’s when voting starts; voting ends, of course, on “Election Day,” September 14. After that come the count and the certification of results.
What you can do now: Make a plan
As we write this, it’s late July. Ballots go out and voting begins in three weeks, on Monday, August 16.
We recommend getting started as soon as possible. Don’t wait—make your voice heard now!
Check your voter registration
First: Check your voter registration at https://voterstatus.sos.ca.gov/. Make sure that you are still registered and your address is current.
Register to vote
If you’re not registered (e.g., you just became eligible or you’re about to), or your address or other information has changed, then you need to register to vote at https://registertovote.ca.gov/. If you’re 16 or 17 years old right now, you can pre-register, and you’ll automatically become registered the moment you turn 18.
You have until Monday, August 30 to register to vote. If you register before then, you’ll get a ballot in the mail. If you register (or are already registered) now, you’ll get a ballot in the mail on or around August 16 and can send it back any time as long as it’s in by September 14. We recommend that you mail your ballot no later than Tuesday, September 7; if you miss that window, you can drop it off at any voting center no later than Tuesday, September 14.
If you miss the August 30 deadline to register, you can still vote. However, you’ll need to vote in person and ask poll workers about conditional voter registration. If the Department of Elections confirms that you are eligible to vote, your vote will be counted.
Vote—preferably in August!
Most election years, we say “October is voting month.” This year, August is voting month. Don’t wait until September if you can help it!
The City’s Voter Information Pamphlet is already online, and sample ballots will be coming via the voter portal in “late July” (so, hopefully very soon). There are 46 challengers.
We have more detail on voting in this election below.
Become a poll worker
There will be 588 voting centers around the City. Every single one of them needs to be staffed. You can help! The City’s Department of Elections has more information.
Every county will need poll workers, so if you don’t live in the City and County of San Francisco, check your county’s website for more information.
Voter outreach
If you want to do more, the best way is to help recruit more people to also vote no.
The simplest way is called “vote tripling.” This is talking to your friends who are also voters and making sure they also cast your ballots. If you talk to three friends and each of them talks to three friends, that can be a surprisingly help to turnout.
Then there are options for reaching out to voters you don’t know, including registered Democrats elsewhere in the state:
Text banking
Phone banking
Writing postcards to voters
Canvassing in person
We have options for these listed on our vote page.
What's on the ballot?
(We go into much more detail on this in our new blog post!)
Your ballot card has two questions, one on each side:
Should Gov. Newsom be recalled (fired)?
If Gov. Newsom is recalled, who should replace him?
On the first question: A yes vote is a vote to remove Governor Newsom and replace him with somebody else. A no vote is a vote to keep Governor Newsom.
If more than half of voters vote yes on question #1, Newsom is recalled, and whoever wins more votes than any other challenger becomes the next Governor.
This is tricky! It has a bunch of weird ramifications:
Gov. Newsom isn’t actually listed as a candidate. The candidates are all challengers. If you want Gavin Newsom to remain Governor of California, vote NO on question 1.
More than half the voters must vote no on question 1 to defeat the recall and keep Newsom in the governor’s office.
If fewer than 50% of voters vote no on question 1, the challenger with the most votes in question 2 becomes governor – even if that person only has a tiny percentage of the votes. And because there are so many challengers, it’s possible for one person to be the most popular challenger even with less than 5% of the vote.
We recommend that you vote NO on question 1.
As for the other question: Indivisible SF hasn’t endorsed any of the challengers because we oppose the recall. You can leave question 2 blank if you don’t want to vote for any of the challengers.
Frequently asked questions
Can I vote for Newsom as the replacement?
No. Newsom cannot replace himself—if the recall passes, he’s out, period.
A common question is “can I write Newsom in?”. You can, but it won’t count (but it won’t spoil your no vote on question 1, either). It’s effectively the same as leaving question 2 blank.
The Newsom campaign and California Democratic Party are recommending that you abstain from question 2 altogether by leaving it blank—although you don’t have to.
Wait, shouldn’t I vote for a replacement?
We get this question a lot, too. The short answer is: You can vote for one of the replacement candidates, but you don’t have to.
We encourage you to look into the candidates and see if any of them have earned your vote. The League of Pissed-Off Voters has a recall election voter guide that looks at some of them.
The important thing is to vote no on the recall!
Shouldn’t Indivisible SF be advocating for a replacement?
No. We know that answer will surprise folks, so we’ll explain:
None of the candidates in this election has the experience, qualifications, and support to be a credible replacement candidate. That means that Democrats and organizations like ours are unified against the recall and in support of Newsom.
A “backup plan” candidate getting endorsements from the Party and grassroots orgs may seem like the safer option, but it’s actually riskier. The risk is of splitting the vote: A decent candidate would tempt some people to vote yes on the recall in order to make them Governor, which then makes it more likely that the recall will pass—and then the candidate with the most votes, probably a Republican, will become the new Governor!
The safest option, the surest to succeed, is to be a unified bloc against the recall, and turn out to vote to keep Gov. Newsom.
We suspect some of this comes from people feeling like their own single no vote isn’t enough. If that’s you, the best way to supplement your no vote is to help turn out more voters to also vote no. This can be as simple as talking to your friends about the recall election; telling three friends to vote is called “vote tripling”. Beyond that, we have voter outreach options listed below and on https://indivisiblesf.org/vote — talking to other voters, whether in person, on the phone, via text, or via postcard is how we can build the turnout necessary to stop the recall.
To be clear, if all you can do right now is cast your ballot, then that’s enough—you’ve done your part. But if you can do more to help get more voters voting, we’ll all greatly appreciate it.
If we defeat the recall, then the question of a replacement candidate doesn’t matter. The surest way to defeat the recall is to focus all of our effort—both voting, and voter outreach to maximize turnout—on the first question. Vote no on the recall, and get more voters to vote no as well.