What’s at stake in California’s governor recall election

If you need a reminder about what’s at stake in Gov. Gavin Newsom’s recall election, peer next door to Arizona.

The U.S. Supreme Court in late June upheld two Arizona laws intended to limit voter participation.

One permits the state to throw out ballots cast by voters outside their own precinct, even for federal or state candidates, despite the fact the state has closed 320 polling places in Arizona, mainly in counties more than one-third Latino, leading to long lines and wait times to vote.

The other law prohibits people from delivering ballots for voters who may be homebound or face transportation or work hour limits and not able to get to the polls themselves.

Arizona is not alone; 15 other states have passed laws intended to make it harder to vote. Georgia and Arkansas legislators passed laws making it easier to overturn election results they don’t like.

In Kansas, the League of Women Voters and other groups have suspended voter registration drives following passage of a state law that criminalizes people who help a voter turn in their ballot and restricts distribution of applications for mail ballots.

Elsewhere, a Texas bill would remove teaching on the history of women’s suffrage, Latino and Indigenous rights movements, that the Ku Klux Klan is “morally wrong,” and writings by Frederick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony, Cesar Chavez and Martin Luther King Jr. Texas is among at least six states restricting education on U.S. history they want to shun.

Fifteen states have passed restrictions on reproductive rights for women. Seventeen states have enacted anti-LBGTQ bills including blocking access to medical care for trans youth. Nine states have banned state enforcement of federal firearms statutes.

Florida and Oklahoma passed laws granting civil immunity to drivers who kill or injure people by ramming into protesters. Any gathering of three or more people in Florida can now be classified as a “riot” with peaceful participants subject to felony prosecution.

Arkansas, Florida and Kansas would criminalize protests against oil pipelines that accelerate the climate crisis and have been troubled by toxic environmental spills. Indiana would bar protesters from holding state employment or elected office.

What these and similar states have in common is GOP-controlled governance, led by far right ideologues like those who are behind the campaign to recall Newsom. California is in their sights.

While proponents of the recall would have us believe this election is about opposition to pandemic safety measures, the sponsors of the recall have a different, hidden agenda.

California nurses, who have endured firsthand painful experience with the calamity of the pandemic, also wish the pandemic was over. But with the current more transmissible delta surge and cases rising, this is not the time to throw out public health and safety protections.

We have witnessed the attacks on voting and other democratic rights, on workplace and environmental and health care protections, on racial, gender and other social justice measures, and on additional assaults on working people in states that far-right politicians have pushed through elsewhere.

A look at who funded the recall drive tells the story. They include major donors to ex-President Donald Trump, the Senate Leadership Fund, and the Republican National Committee, who want to elect more candidates who share their agenda, as is now being played out in states they dominate across the country.

With ballots going out by midAugust, don’t let complacency lull us into ignoring the threat Californians face. Let’s not turn California into Arizona, Florida, Texas and other states where democracy itself is in danger.

Our future is in our hands. Join nurses in voting “no” on the recall.