page_title: California gubernatorial recall election
section_title: California law
hierarchical_section_title: California gubernatorial recall election / Background / California law
caption_attribution_description: English: California Secretary of State building in 2003.
context_page_description: The 2003 California gubernatorial recall election was a special election permitted under California state law. It resulted in voters replacing incumbent Democratic Governor Gray Davis with Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger. The recall effort spanned the latter half of 2003. Seven of the nine previous governors, including Davis, had faced unsuccessful recall attempts.
  After several legal and procedural efforts failed to stop it, California's first-ever gubernatorial recall election was held on October 7, and the results were certified on November 14, 2003, making Davis the first governor recalled in the history of California, and just the second in U.S. history. California is one of 19 states that allow recalls.
context_section_description: Under California law, any elected official may be the target of a recall campaign. To trigger a recall election, proponents of the recall must gather a certain number of signatures from registered voters within a certain time period. The number of signatures statewide must equal 12% of the number of votes cast in the previous election for that office. For the 2003 recall election, that meant a minimum of 897,156 signatures, based on the November 2002 statewide elections.
  The effort to recall Gray Davis began with Republicans Ted Costa, Mark Abernathy, and Howard Kaloogian, who filed their petition with the California Secretary of State and started gathering signatures. The effort was not taken seriously until Rep. Darrell Issa, who hoped to run as a replacement candidate for governor, donated $2 million to a new committee, Rescue California, which then led the effort. Eventually, proponents gathered about 1.6 million signatures, of which 1,356,408 were certified as valid.
  Under most circumstances in which a recall campaign against a statewide elected official has gathered the required number of signatures, the governor is required to schedule a special election for the recall vote. If the recall campaign qualified less than 180 days prior to the next regularly scheduled election, then the recall becomes part of that regularly scheduled election. In the case of a recall against the governor, the responsibility for scheduling a special election falls on the lieutenant governor, who in 2003 was Cruz Bustamante.
caption: California Secretary of State building on October 7, 2003.
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