Thanks Hiram...

Just...just don't be a goon, alright? I dropped my ballot in the mail today and-huh? What ballot? I'm glad I pretended you asked. My ballot for the recall election, and no, I didn't procrastinate, I just moved back to California and only now got it in the mail.

Above: me, filling in a circle as emphatically as one can. 

If it ever seems like I'm being harsh when
I call it the party of garbage people, bear this
in mind: fake ballot boxes. I rest my case.

If you don't live here or just haven't been paying attention, when it comes to elections, California is...I don't know, what's the phrase? Fucked? There's this system by which if someone can get enough people to sign a petition, it triggers a recall. The problem is that the number is pretty low (12% of the votes cast in the previous election for the office you want to recall), so like, any asshole can do it. And by any asshole, I mean the state's Republican Party. Remember them? They were the ones setting up fake ballot boxes during the 2020 election.

Anyway, making things even worse is the fact that you vote on whether you want to recall the Governor, and if you do you can then vote for one of a number of replacements. And that number is a staggering, eye-watering forty-six. Forty six. 

A menu with too many choices almost guarantees disappointment.

I mean, an American Gladiator-like
 competition would actually be more
democratic then this nonsense.

A veritable goat rodeo of third tier celebrities, fringe loonies, and randos. And whoever gets the most votes is the new governor. But hey, that's democracy, right? But hang on. If Governor Newsom looses, then the winner is whoever gets the most votes of the forty-six other possible contenders, so our next governor could easily be someone who gets like ten percent of the population actually voted for or ever heard of before. That's how Arnold Schwarzenegger got to be governor that time. I guess he was kind of ok? I don't know, I didn't live here back then.

But no such luck this time. Of the challengers the front runner appears to be Larry Elder, an anti-mask, anti-vax libertarian who wants to fight homelessness by suspending the Environmental Quality Act...for some reason. 

He knows this state is on fire, right?

To be clear, they want to recall Newsom
because the pandemic isn't over because
they won't wear masks like Newsom asked.

You might be asking yourself: "holy shit how is this even how this works?" Well, obviously Republicans who, butthurt about having to take simple precautions to save lives, have taken it upon themselves to harness the general misery to try and seize power. But we can also blame historical Republicans for the system that makes it possible. Although this was back in the olden days where instead of disenfranchising anyone not a white male, they were actually about suffrage and fighting corporate interests. 

The idea was to make it easier to get rid of shitty elected officials without having to go through an impeachment process which, I mean, we could have shaved years of the Trump era if this had been an option.. But the bar to trigger it is just so low and the way the replacement is selected is just so objectively batshit, I don't understand why someone hasn't fixed this yet. If Newsom survives this, maybe he could, you know, do something about it?

Pictured: Early 20th century California governor Hiram Johnson,
whose fault all of this is, seen here threatening us? I guess?