In a novel legal challenge, Gov. Gray Davis and five others will petition the California Supreme Court today to add Davis' name to the ballot so he can have a chance of remaining in office even if a majority of voters decide to recall him.

The filing, which also seeks to postpone the Oct. 7 recall election until March, is designed to guard against Davis being replaced by someone receiving fewer votes in the successor part of the election than Davis gets on the ballot's first question of whether the governor should be recalled.

With two prominent election lawyers and Kathleen Sullivan, the highly regarded dean of Stanford Law School, handling this latest legal challenge, Davis and the other plaintiffs will claim California's 1911 recall law violates the federal Constitution's equal protection clause. They also will argue that millions of voters will effectively be disenfranchised, because turnout is bound to be low in a special election held on such short notice and under such chaotic circumstances.

Most political experts believe Davis has a better chance of surviving in March, when a heavy Democratic turnout is expected for the presidential primary.

"The California Supreme Court has a chance to avert the train wreck we saw in Florida 2000 by taking this case in advance of the October 7th election," Sullivan said during a Sunday conference call with reporters.

If the election were to go forward as scheduled, she added, it would also violate federal constitutional provisions aimed at ensuring "that no small or extreme minority factions would be able to thwart the orderly will of the people heard through regular and orderly elections."

Davis, a Democrat elected to his second term as governor in November, is facing a recall election because more than 1.3 million registered voters signed petitions asking for his ouster.

The legal filing, which adds to at least six other court challenges to the recall, was immediately denounced by Davis opponents.

"I wish Gray Davis would fight as hard for the people of California as he's fighting to keep his job," said Republican Bill Simon, who lost to Davis in last fall's election and will likely run in the recall.

"Let the people speak. There's a mechanism in place. Why doesn't he defend his record rather than complain about the recall being unfair?"

Tom Hiltachk, a Sacramento lawyer for the largest pro-recall group, scoffed at the notion that the recall as it's currently set up would deny Davis and those who vote against it equal protection under the federal Constitution.

"I don't see how the governor is denied equal protection," Hiltachk said. "The governor is on the ballot. All he has to do is win."

Despite the stature of the lawyers arguing on Davis' behalf, a number of California constitutional scholars also said Sunday that they didn't think the case had much merit. If the state Supreme Court doesn't rule in their favor, lawyers for Davis said they'll appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

"I think it's a pretty weak claim," said Vikram Amar, a constitutional scholar at Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco. "It's clear under the California Constitution, someone who's recalled cannot be a candidate to fill their own vacancy.

"The analogy I use is term limits. If you could prevent a popular governor from running for a third term because term limits block him, it seems reasonable that if you've been such a contentious governor that you're being recalled in the first place, you can therefore be blocked from running."

Stephen Barnett, professor emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, law school, agreed and said he thinks the U.S. Supreme Court would allow the California recall law to stand.

"I think the Supreme Court would say it's reasonable for California to say if an officer is recalled, they don't want him going in through the back door.

"It might seem unfair that of all the people in the world who are qualified candidates, only Gray Davis isn't. But I think when you take account of the fact that he's been recalled, it's not vindictive or unreasonable. The drafters of the recall provision apparently wanted the voters to have a free slate, free of the recalled person."

But Sullivan, a Democrat who served on the Clinton-Gore presidential transition team in 1992, said there is an inherent unfairness to the recall law that violates the federal Constitution's equal protection clause.

The way the ballot is now structured, Davis would be recalled if a simple majority of voters say he should leave office. Whichever candidate gets the most votes on the succession part of the ballot would become governor once the results were certified. Current law prohibits the recalled officeholder from appearing on the replacement candidates' part of the ballot.

So under the hypothetical example suggested in the conference call by Davis lawyer Michael Kahn, if, say, 1 million people voted and 450,000 -- or 45 percent -- say Davis should not be recalled, he's out.

So far nearly 300 people have pulled papers suggesting they may run, so with a crowded ballot the eventual winner could get far fewer votes than Davis gets in fending off the recall.

Continuing with Kahn's hypothetical scenario, Davis could be replaced, say, by candidate Larry Flynt, the Hustler magazine publisher who last week said he's running, if Flynt got 100,000 votes and that was more than anyone else.

"So supporters of the governor have to amass a 50 percent vote to have their person stay in office," Sullivan said, "whereas supporters of any other of the candidates who run in the succession -- for which the governor is barred under the current rule -- can win with only a tiny plurality. A few percentage points could possibly be enough to win."

Davis and the others are seeking an answer from the court no later than Aug. 31, the date ballot pamphlets must go to the state printer for publication and distribution. Candidates now have until Saturday to file papers and pay the fees needed to run. The suit names Secretary of State Kevin Shelley and Los Angeles County Registrar Conny McCormack as defendants.

The petition, which also claims millions of California voters could be disenfranchised over what Sullivan called "the rush to October 7th," was joined by California Democratic Reps. Tom Lantos of San Mateo and Xavier Becerra of Los Angeles, Asian American City Councilman Ben Wong from West Covina, African American community activist Danny Bakewell from Los Angeles and Latino businessman Jorge Corralejo of Southern California.

The diverse list of plaintiffs is designed, in part, to demonstrate what the lawyers contend will be widespread disenfranchisement of voters, particularly in minority communities, who have a hard time getting to the polls because registrars throughout the state have said they are going to consolidate polling places in an effort to be more efficient.

"Our ultimate position is easy," lawyer Kahn of San Francisco said. "We want the fairest possible election, and we want the most voters that possibly can have a participation in the election to participate."

Although the actual filing won't be made available until today, the lawyers previewed some of what they'll provide the court in an introductory memorandum provided to reporters Sunday.

"As almost every Californian knows by now," the memo said, "this is the first statewide recall election ever held in California. ... It comes as no surprise that untried procedures enacted so long ago may run afoul of modern constitutional guarantees."