The 2021 California recall may be one of the most expensive state elections in history.
As of Tuesday, California had spent $276 million of taxpayer money on the recall of Gov. Gavin Newsom and officials predict that this cost could continue to rise, KGO-TV reported.
"The budget committee and the state assembly acknowledges that it can go higher," Secretary of State Dr. Shirley Weber said to the television station. "We could see $300 million or more spent on this election."
Weber advised that to mitigate these kinds of costs in the future, parts of the recall process need to change. "This system is over 100 years old. We haven’t revisited it in 100 years," she said.
According to a poll conducted by UC Berekely, reform tactics could include increasing the number of voter signatures required to qualify for a recall from 12 percent to 25 percent, raising the qualifications Californians need to meet in order to be a replacement candidate and requiring candidates to have a minimum amount of signatures from different parts of the state.
"Currently the filing fee is just $4,000," Mark DiCamillo, the director of the UC Berkeley poll, said to the television station. "All a candidate has to do is get 7,000 signatures to get on the ballot," which is often achieved by sending a signature gatherer to the candidate’s hometown and collecting the votes there.
These reforms would make a recall more difficult, but not impossible, presumably saving California taxpayers a significant amount of money in the long run.
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