Exceprts:

It’s well known that elections have consequences. They also have price tags.

With signs pointing to a special election this fall at which voters could remove Gov. Gavin Newsom from office, local officials from across California believe the cost of conducting the election could run as high as $400 million.

The estimate is four to five times higher than rough guesses bandied about in recent months and is equal to a cost of about $18 per registered voter — more than double what local elections officials say was spent on California elections in 2018.

It’s a price they say counties, which are struggling to cover pandemic-related costs for health and human services programs, will need the state to cover.

Excerpts:

If all politics is truly local, it should be huge news when someone like Kammi Footedecides enough is enough.

As the registrar of voters for Inyo County, Foote spent 14 years on democracy’s front lines in a job that is equal parts educator and administrator. California gives wide latitude to its 58 counties in how to run elections, and a corps of veteran registrars call the shots across the state.

But something has changed. Registrars with decades of experience are calling it quits, stymied by the ever-growing list of election mandates that come without the funding to make them a reality — made worse by the personal and professional threats made by voters amped up on partisan rage and destructive conspiracy theories.

Excerpts:

It has been a touchstone of California politics over the past three decades that the fastest-growing group of the state’s voters was shunning partisan labels in favor of being identified as unaffiliated voters, engaged in politics but not parties.

The 30-year run for that bit of conventional wisdom has, at least for now, come to an end

Friday’s report from Secretary of State Shirley Weber, a biennial look at voter registration in between scheduled statewide elections, tallied 22.1 million registered voters, a historic 88% of all eligible Californians. And as it’s been for much of the past century, Democrats accounted for the largest share — 46.2% of the registered electorate and near double the percentage of Republicans.

Excepts:

After Republicans seeking to recall California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom said they had reached the number of signatures necessary to trigger a special election, one conservative influencer falsely claimed that the organizers have faced hurdles that voters in November’s election did not.

"So California is requiring signature verification for Gavin Newsom’s recall, but didn’t require it for the mail in ballots. How strange," said actor Kevin Sorbo, who starred as "Hercules" in a TV series about the mythological hero, in a tweet sent to hundreds of thousands of followers.

In fact, California did require signature verification for mail-in ballots for the 2020 election, as PolitiFact reported in the months leading up to Election Day. Several election officials, experts, journalists and fact-checkers debunked Sorbo’s Feb. 15 tweet soon after it was posted.