CALIFORNIA COUNTDOWN

COVER STORY: Legal challenges exhausted, the big debate over, with days to go before Oct. 7, voters in California have the last word in one of the oddest elections ever | Bob Jones

When a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered a temporary halt to the California gubernatorial recall election, the state's political establishment went into a tailspin. Candidates blathered. Donors balked. Lawyers briefed. But Ernie, Skip, and Clem barely noticed.

The three men, warehouse workers at the San Diego County Registrar of Voters facility, labored right through the weeklong period of uncertainty, stacking 12-foot towers of collapsible cardboard voting booths and cartons of precinct election supplies into tidy ranks that nearly filled a hangar-sized warehouse.

Good thing, too. On Tuesday, Sept. 23, a full panel of 11 judges overturned their three colleagues, putting the state's historic recall election back on track for next week, Oct. 7. Despite the ensuing scramble in Sacramento, work in the warehouse went on as usual. The next day—right on schedule—Ernie, Skip, and Clem began loading the brown-and-white supply cartons onto trucks bound for 1,307 voting precincts throughout the county.