Across California, voters casted their ballots to determine the fate of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s time in office. The majority of California voters said “no” when asked if they wanted to recall Newsom, securing the rest of his term.

RECALL PROCESS

Aside from Newsom, only one other California governor—Gray Davis—has ever taken a recall to election. In fact, California is the only state where a governor has reached the recall ballot twice, The New York Times reported.

California is one of 19 states that allows voters to recall state officials before the natural end of their term. In order to move forward in the recall process of a state official, a petition of at least 12% of voters in the last election for office from five different counties must be signed. The petition to recall Newsom included 1,495,706 signatures, Cal Matters reported.

OUTCOME 

Polls closed at 8 p.m. tonight, according to the Sacramento Bee, and the recall effort failed less than an hour later, according to The Associated Press. Roughly 32% of Californians voted to recall Newsom, 18% less than needed to move forward with the election process.

Shortly after his victory, Newsom held a news conference to address the voters. The outcome of the recall further cemented California as a democratic state, AP News reported.

“‘No’ is not the only thing that was expressed tonight,” Newsom said. “I want to focus on what we said ‘yes’ to as a state: We said yes to science, we said yes to vaccines, we said yes to ending this pandemic.”