Effort to recall Los Angeles District Attorney effort Gascon fails after 200K signatures rejected

The effort to recall Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón was rejected on Monday after officials declared organizers had not submitted enough valid signatures.

Organizers of the recall effort submitted over 715,000 signatures to the L.A. county clerks office in early July.

At least 566,857 signatures of voters registered to vote in L.A. County – 10% of the 5,668,570 registered voters counted in Nov. 2020 – are required before the recall can move to a vote before the county’s Board of Supervisors.

Over 195,000 of submitted signatures were found to be invalid during the month-long verification process, leaving about 520,000 valid signatures – well below the required number – according to Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Dean C. Logan.

Gascon said on Twitter that he's "grateful to move forward from this attempted political power grab.”

“Rest assured LA County, the work hasn’t stopped. My primary focus has been [and] will always be keeping us safe [and] creating a more equitable justice system for all. I remain strongly committed to that work [and] to you,” he added.

Reasons a signature can be deemed invalid include those from people who are not registered to vote, whose address on the petition did not match their voter registration, or if it appears more than once, reports Fox 11 Los Angeles.

The progressive district attorney has been criticized for being soft-on-crime, resulting in a crime surge as arrests dropped.

At least 35 California cities have voted “no confidence” against Gascon. One of the latest was El Monte, who unanimously passed a resolution state “D.A. Gascon’s policies have now been shown to be detrimental to public safety” after two city police officers were killed in a shootout with a felon free due to his refusal to prosecute three-strike cases.

Proponents of the recall now have the right to examine invalid signatures, which must begin in the next 21 days.