Numbers Add Up to Fall Recall Election

County election officers have confirmed more than 1.1 million valid signatures on the petition for an election on whether to recall Gov. Gray Davis -- well above the threshold to qualify for the ballot, a Los Angeles Times survey found on Tuesday.

The tally makes a recall vote in late September or early October all but inevitable. But in an interview Tuesday, Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante raised doubts about the widespread assumption that Californians would simultaneously vote on recalling Davis and on choosing a potential successor.

By 5 p.m. today, California’s 58 counties must report their latest tallies to Secretary of State Kevin Shelley. Unless he rejects a large share of the signatures or a court intervenes, Shelley will have to certify the recall proposal for a statewide vote.

Bustamante said he would then take no more than 24 hours to set the date for California’s first statewide recall election.

Together, those actions could clear the way for candidates to begin jockeying for position as they embark on a short and unusual campaign for control of the nation’s biggest state government.

For years, local recall elections in California have offered voters a two-part ballot. The first part asks whether the elected official should be recalled. The second lists possible replacements.

Potential candidates to succeed Davis -- including U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista), Los Angeles businessman Bill Simon Jr. and actor Arnold Schwarzenegger -- have been expecting Bustamante to call a traditional two-part election.

But Bustamante refused to say whether he would call for the election of a Davis successor on the same ballot as the recall question.

When a governor faces a recall vote, the state Constitution requires the lieutenant governor to set the date for it -- and to call for the election of a successor “if appropriate.”

Bustamante, though, said it was not his role to decide whether a Davis recall ballot would include a vote on potential successors.

“My job is to set the date,” he said.

Asked who would decide whether a simultaneous vote on a Davis successor occurs, Bustamante invoked the obscure Commission on the Governorship.

“I think it would take the commission and the California Supreme Court to make that decision,” he said.

State law empowers the commission to “petition the Supreme Court to determine any questions that arise relating to vacancies in and succession to the office of Governor.”

The commission chairman would be Senate President Pro Tem John Burton. The other members would be Assembly Speaker Herb Wesson, the University of California president, the Cal State system’s chancellor and the governor’s director of finance.

Burton, a San Francisco Democrat, said he was checking on his role as chairman, but he cast doubt on whether the panel was relevant to the recall. Burton said it was clear to him that the election of a successor would be on the ballot with the recall.

The law that sets up the commission is one of many under intense scrutiny by California officials and election lawyers.

“The prospect of the recall qualifying means that statutes that have been on the books for decades are going to be used for the very first time,” said Nathan Barankin, a spokesman for state Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer.

Shelley’s spokeswoman, Terri Carbaugh, said the lieutenant governor has sought legal advice from the secretary of state’s office.

Fred Woocher, a Santa Monica lawyer who specializes in election law, questioned whether the Commission on the Governorship would play a role in the Davis recall attempt. The commission, he said, appeared designed to address confusing questions of vacancy, such as might occur if a governor were disabled but refused to relinquish authority. In this case, he said, no such confusion exists.

The constitutional discretion to call for an election of a successor “if appropriate” would most likely apply to appointed judges recalled by popular vote, but not to governors, Woocher said, adding that it was “far-fetched” to argue otherwise.

The Times survey of county registrars found that even with some counties still not finished, they have validated at least 1,105,802 voter signatures on the petition for a Davis recall election.

It takes 897,158 to qualify the recall for the ballot, and Shelley, a San Francisco Democrat, must automatically certify that it is eligible for a vote if recall supporters submit 110% of the minimum -- or 986,858.

Several potential candidates have been preparing to decide within days whether to enter the race. One of them, former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, stopped just short of ruling out a candidacy on Tuesday.

“The odds are I won’t run,” he said in an interview.

Advisors to other candidates have braced for the possibility that Bustamante would give them as little as one day to decide whether to enter the race.

But Bustamante said he believed that one day “would probably be too short a time.”

Under the Constitution, Bustamante would have to call the election 60 to 80 days after Shelley certified that it qualified for the ballot. Candidates would have to enter the race at least 59 days before the election.

That unusually quick timeline has officials concerned about their ability to pull off the election without problems.

John Mott-Smith, chief of the secretary of state’s elections division, said the concerns include having adequate time to print 15 million ballots and sample ballots, testing new voting equipment, recruiting and training poll workers, and finding secure polling places.

The usual time to prepare for a statewide election is 131 days.

A recall election this fall also would be complicated by the fact that some of California’s most populous counties -- comprising 56% of the state’s voters -- are in the midst of switching to new voting systems after retiring the old punch card ballots. In some cases, the new voting equipment has yet to arrive and election officials and poll workers have yet to be trained on them.

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

1.1 million signatures verified

County registrars surveyed by The Times on Tuesday reported that they had received 1,634,601 signatures supporting an election on whether to recall Gov. Gray Davis. Of those compared so far with voter registration records, 1,105,802 are valid, enough to qualify the recall petition for an election.

*--* County Raw count Verified Alameda 17,170 3,757 *Alpine 54 48 *Amador 2,435 NA Butte 13,781 9,832 Calaveras 2,518 2,211 Colusa 293 232 Contra Costa 27,387 13,920 Del Norte 384 335 *El Dorado 18,347 16,258 *Fresno 53,089 47,188 *Glenn 1,343 1,185 *Humboldt 8,441 7,098 Imperial 2,426 NA Inyo 940 NA Kern 57,525 18,375 *Kings 5,787 5,029 *Lake 1,593 1,465 *Lassen 2,185 1,761 Los Angeles 331,513 238,690 Madera 9,365 7,781 Marin 4,669 NA Mariposa 1,778 NA *Mendocino 1,081 986 *Merced 6,783 5,528 *Modoc 395 301 *Mono 382 356 Monterey 9,054 4,886 *Napa 3,259 2,978 *Nevada 10,906 9,442 Orange 233,949 88,455 Placer 37,249 12,024 *Plumas 1,050 942 *Riverside 91,473 74,504 Sacramento 76,000 64,600 *San Benito 724 635 San Bernardino 115,689 67,215 *San Diego 212,423 180,560 San Francisco 5,034 4,173 *San Joaquin 25,999 21,401 *San Luis Obispo 18,886 15,955 *San Mateo 15,383 13,164 *Santa Barbara 10,263 8,528 *Santa Clara 48,147 41,304 *Santa Cruz 7,350 5,847 Shasta 18,070 5,257 *Sierra 194 162 *Siskiyou 2,809 2,447 *Solano 12,662 10,872 *Sonoma 14,123 12,324 *Stanislaus 1,392 1,183 *Sutter 7,235 6,048 *Tehama 5,028 4,115 *Trinity 458 338 *Tulare 19,351 16,023 *Tuolumne 3,645 2,969 *Ventura 45,139 38,002 *Yolo 6,717 5,608 Yuba 3,276 1,505 State total 1,634,601 1,105,802

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* Verification complete

NA: Not available;

Source: Times research - Researched by Times graphics reporter Allison Hoffman

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Times staff writers Virginia Ellis and Jeffrey L. Rabin contributed to this report.