By Mihajla Milovanovic
LOS ANGELES, CA – County election officials this week verified that a five percent sampling of the 715,833 collected signatures in the Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón recall effort are good, and now all the signatures will be checked.
The Registrar’s Office has until Aug. 17 to determine whether the petition has enough signatures for a special election against Gascón.
If the total number of valid signatures dips below the required number of 566,857, petitioners will have 21 days from the certification of insufficiency to examine what signatures were disqualified and why.
Gascón and district attorneys in general have played important roles to the public, struggling with disease, lockdowns, political turmoil, and extended violence throughout communities, according to the LA Times.
But, last year, San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin was blamed for things like increasing crime and violence, when in reality, crime rates dropped. Boudin was recalled this year.
Boudin, a progressive DA, was a proponent of justice reform with his parents both convicted for killing a police officer in the 1980s.
However, Gascón is a former police officer.
Gascón has a big target on him because it “smacks professional betrayal,” said the LA Times, to be a progressive DA, adding “L.A. County voters have repeatedly expressed their desire for a crime-and-punishment system that is more just, more equitable, more efficient and more constructive.”
Gascón was originally elected to protect and fight the injustices seen in criminal justice misconduct, more specifically, providing “professional insight.”
Crime in Los Angeles County has increased and is requiring a response from government officials. More recently, the community has put the blame for this on prosecutors.
According to The Los Angeles Times, “the notion that a DA can make crime rise or fall over a period of months is absurd.” If the recall for Gascón qualifies for the ballot, the replacement candidates will be on the same “yes or no” ballot.
The recall of Gascón will determine “whether Los Angeles County voters must spend the next three months arguing yet again over reforms they have endorsed again and again, or whether their district attorney will be allowed to continue putting them in place,” said the Times.
