In the first half of 2021, Ballotpedia tracked 164 recall efforts against 262 officials. This was the most recall efforts for this point in the year since the first half of 2016, when we tracked 189 recall efforts against 265 officials. In comparison, we tracked between 72 and 155 efforts by the midpoints of 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020.
For the first time since 2015, school board members drew more recall petitions than any other group. A total of 48% of officials who faced recall campaigns in the first half of 2021 were school board members. City council members—the officials who drew the most efforts from 2016 to 2020—accounted for 25% of officials. Between June 2016 and June 2020, school board members accounted for 15% to 27% of officials named in recall efforts.
For the fifth time in the past six years, California had the most officials facing recall efforts of any state with 78. However, Alaska had the most recalls per 100,000 residents with 0.55. By that metric, California had the 10th-most recalls with 0.11 per 100,000 residents.
Last year, Ballotpedia began tracking recalls related to the coronavirus and government responses to it. As of this report’s publication, 77 such recall efforts had been tracked throughout 2020 and 2021.
In this report, Ballotpedia also highlighted five noteworthy recalls: the effort against California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), the two efforts against Arizona Rep. Mark Finchem (R), the effort against Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón, the two efforts against San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin, and the effort against six of the nine school board members in the Loudoun County school district in Virginia.
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