It’s lucky for Gov. Gavin Newsom that the Nevada Gaming Commission doesn’t have any jurisdiction this far west. If it did, it probably would have pulled the license of the California Legislature by now.

In Las Vegas or Reno, the Nevada Gaming Commission and Nevada Gaming Control Board have a mission to assure that in any game where your money is at stake, the “actions, decisions and policies” that control that game “are consistently applied and do not result in advantages or disadvantages to any party to the detriment of another.”

That’s the difference between roulette and recall elections. You can depend on the integrity of roulette.

In California, where one party is in total control and the other party is at home swearing at its Zoom screens, the Legislature is perfectly comfortable changing the rules for recall elections in the middle of the game in order to protect the office holders who have made voters angry enough to spend all their weekends collecting signatures on recall petitions, in staggering numbers.

We first saw this one-party wagon-circling in action back in 2017, when the narrowly elected Sen. Josh Newman, D-Fullerton, was targeted by a recall effort. With blinding speed, a so-called budget bill that revised the rules for recalls was cooked up, passed in the Legislature and signed by Gov. Jerry Brown.

The bill that was Senate Bill 96 and Assembly Bill 112 invented new hurdles for the recall. It gave voters who signed the petitions 30 days to withdraw their signatures, and it required county officials to report the number of withdrawn signatures every 10 days. If at the end of that period of time there were still enough signatures to qualify the measure, it would have to undergo another new process, a Department of Finance review.

After the Department of Finance completed its analysis of the cost of the recall election, the Joint Legislative Budget Committee would have another 30 days to harumph about the cost estimate.

Here it should be noted that the California constitution was amended in 1911 to give voters the power of the recall, and it doesn’t matter at all how it much it costs or whether the Legislature likes it.

If the extra months of harumphing bring the certification of the recall election within 180 days of the next regularly scheduled election, the state constitution allows the governor to consolidate the two, which increases likely turnout. Political experts believe this is an advantage to the Democratic Party. The Nevada Gaming Commission would probably open an investigation. And when they saw what’s going on now, they’d probably bring in the FBI.

Sen. Josh Newman, who was recalled and then later elected again, has introduced Senate Bill 663, which would allow the targets of a recall election to obtain the complete list of every voter who signed the recall petition. This would allow the office-holder to contact each of the voters individually to ask them if they would like to withdraw their signatures. Petition signers might get a letter, a phone call, a text or a knock at the door. People who live and work in a one-party state might find that to be intimidating, maybe even threatening, especially if their income depends on friendly relations with the government.

During this COVID-19 state of emergency, everybody’s income seems to depend on friendly relations with the government.

Supporters of Newman’s bill say there’s no reason to worry, because Senate Bill 663 doesn’t take effect until Jan. 1, so it would not apply to the current effort to recall the governor.

But here’s what the Nevada Gaming Commission would be watching: the Legislature could amend the bill and make it “urgent.” Then a two-thirds vote in the Senate and the Assembly would put it into effect immediately.

And there’s more game-rigging in the works. A recall election has two questions: on the question of whether to remove the office-holder, a simple majority vote prevails; but a plurality of the vote prevails on the second question, on which candidate shall replace the office-holder. Under current law, the office-holder’s name may not appear as a choice on the second question.

But Senate Constitutional Amendment 3, introduced by Sen. Ben Allen, would change that by allowing the recall target to be a replacement choice. That means an elected official who’s thrown out by a majority of voters could get right back into office by getting more votes than anyone else on the list of candidates.

In 2003, Gov. Gray Davis was recalled by a vote of 55.4% to 44.6%. Arnold Schwarzenegger was the top vote-getter on a list of 135 candidates to replace him, winning with 48.58% of the vote. If Gray Davis had been an option on question 2, he might have eked out an instant re-election.

Senate Constitutional Amendment 3 also provides that if the target of a recall effort resigns from office no later than 10 days after the certification of sufficient signatures for a recall election, the office will be declared vacant and the recall election will be canceled. The lieutenant governor would become governor.

Senate Constitutional Amendment 3 would need a two-thirds vote in each house of the Legislature in order to get on the ballot, and it would need a simple majority of the electorate to become part of the constitution.

Now here’s a question for you. Could the Legislature pass SCA 3, pass a bill declaring a “special election” for it and consolidate that special election with the recall election, putting Gavin Newsom’s name on the list of candidates in question 2 to be valid only if SCA 3 is approved by a majority of voters?

We know what the answer would be if it was up to the Nevada Gaming Commission.

Susan Shelley is an editorial writer and columnist for the Southern California News Group. Susan@SusanShelley.com. Twitter: @Susan_Shelley

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