Prop. 5 Gutting a 100-Year-Old Corruption Reform

The recall was never meant to hand power to politicians — it was meant to take power away from them and the railroads that controlled them. California voters wrote the recall into the Constitution in 1911 as part of Hiram Johnson’s Progressive reforms, aimed at breaking the Southern Pacific Railroad’s grip and the machines that treated public office as private property. It passed with 76.8 percent of the vote. The tool has always been used sparingly. Of roughly 180 attempts to recall state officials since 1911, only eleven reached the ballot, and only six succeeded — including Gray Davis in 2003 and Josh Newman in 2018.

Proposition 5 was written by that same Josh Newman, the Democrat voters recalled over a gas-tax vote. That history makes Prop 5 look less like reform and more like payback against a system that held him accountable— Lieutenant Governor Eleni Kounalakis, and the state Democratic Party back it. The case for it seems to be lacking a real reason to act.

Supporters say a crowded replacement field can let someone win with a mere plurality, that the two-question ballot confuses voters, and that recalls invite partisan shortcuts. But a plurality winner is just how multi-candidate races work — the fix isn’t stripping the choice from voters and handing it to succession rules or a later process controlled by the same political class Progressives sought to restrain. Ballot confusion is a design problem, not a reason to erase one of the two core decisions.

Facts matter - with only six successes out of 180 attempts, frivolous recalls aren’t the epidemic supporters claim; running a recall is already its own deterrent.

The 2003 Davis recall shows the system working: voters fired a governor and chose his replacement on the same ballot. Prop 5 would have turned that into a vacancy filled by the lieutenant governor — then Democrat Cruz Bustamante — or a separate election under different rules. The recall exists because voters didn’t trust politicians to police themselves; Prop 5 shifts power back toward those same institutions.

Most other states fill vacancies by succession. California chose differently on purpose — to give voters, not the existing order, the last word. When the painter is bad, you should get to fire him and hire the one you want, not his brother. Vote no on Prop 5. Keep replacements in voters' hands.