I'm Brian Lehrer. This is my daily politics podcast from WNYC Studios. It's Tuesday, September 14th.

It's Election Day in California, and by tonight, the biggest state in the union could go from having a Democratic governor to having a

very conservative Republican one, aligned with Donald Trump and Stephen Miller, who is even

setting up to claim the election was rigged if he loses. Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom may

well survive this recall, according to the polls, but it's possible that he won't. So if you're

not from California and wondering, how can this be happening? We'll try to explain now. For those of

you from California, we invite you right now to call in and explain to the rest of America,

what the heck is going on. Californians call in, and with us now, is Marisa Lagos,

California Politics and Government Desk Reporter for San Francisco's public radio station, KQED.

Marisa, I know it's too early to be having a coherent conversation, West Coast time.

No, never. Never too early.

So thanks very much for coming on WNYC with us. I'm sorry we

couldn't provide the coffee. Oh, I got coffee. I mean, my eight-year-old just go get it. So we're

good, we're good. There you go. Good training of that kid. So you may have noticed that New York

recently got rid of its Democratic governor while his term was still on,

that guy named Cuomo, but if he hadn't resigned, the process would have been impeachment,

which everyone is familiar with. A recall election is not a thing in New York or many other states.

So can you just explain first how Californians wind up with an extra gubernatorial election in the middle of a

governor's term? Yeah, I mean, it's really a story that goes back 100 years. We had what was then

a progressive movement really pushing for direct democracy in the 1920s in California and voters here

approved a system that allows both for those direct

initiatives that you often hear about during big elections where we'll have 10, 20 ballot measures

...