The California Legislature's two leading members on election issues are determined to change the rules for removing a governor from office.
State Senator Steve Glazer and Assemblymember Marc Berman described the recall process as a "flawed" system. A potential change they would like to see is the amount of signatures needed to spark a recall election. California requires about one-and-a-half-million signatures to qualify for a recall election of the governor. The recall has been part of California's political system since 1911.
There is little benefit for Democrats in pushing changes that could anger voters, said Joshua Spivak, an expert on recalls and senior fellow at the Hugh L. Carey Institute for Government Reform in New York.“From a political point of view, it’s kind of crazy, and I can’t imagine why they would spend political capital on this,” Spivak said. “Are you going to go to the voters and say, ‘Well, we didn’t deal with the homeless problem but yeah, we fixed the recall?’ It just doesn’t seem like a smart move.”