When Secretary of State Kevin Shelley certified late Wednesday the recall petitions filed against Gov. Gray Davis, he clarified the most important question surrounding the attempt to drive Davis from office: There will be an election.

But Shelley's announcement that more than 1.3 million valid signatures had been collected by recall supporters left unanswered many more questions about an election that promises to be historic and perhaps chaotic.

Given confusing constitutional provisions, poorly drafted statutes, warring partisan lawyers and the lack of precedent for a statewide recall, Californians can be forgiven if they are befuddled over exactly what is about to transpire.
Consider Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante. On Tuesday he was making noises about mounting a bloodless coup, in which he would set a date for the election but prevent voters from choosing a replacement for Davis should they decide to recall the governor. The removal of Davis would then create a vacancy to be filled, conveniently, by Bustamante.

But by Wednesday afternoon, the second-in-command seemed to be thinking better of it. He told me that his role in the process was merely ministerial, and that he would only do whatever the secretary of state, the attorney general and the Legislature's lawyer advised. And Shelley, for one, said it was clear to him that the election must give voters the opportunity to choose a potential successor.

We might yet hear from the Commission on the Governorship, however. That's an obscure body charged with settling questions about vacancies in the governor's office. Members include the Senate leader, the Assembly speaker, the governor's director of finance (all Democrats) and the heads of the two state university systems. Bustamante was still holding out the possibility Wednesday that this panel could weigh in and rule that only he could succeed Davis if the voters dump the governor.

Bustamante notes that only that commission has the standing to petition the Supreme Court to decide questions about a vacancy. Never mind that no such vacancy now exists. Any questions on the table at the moment are about the recall process, not succession to an open seat. But the Supreme Court might yet be needed to resolve the issue before the campaign can move forward.

If voters are allowed to choose a potential successor, they will do so on the same ballot on which they decide the governor's fate. The second part of the election will be a winner-take-all free-for-all, with no partisan primary and no runoff for the top finishers. Whoever gets the most votes, wins.

But questions remain about how candidates can file to put their name on the ballot. Shelley says candidates who belong to one of the political parties need only submit 65 signatures of registered voters and pay a $3,500 fee. He still doesn't know how candidates who belong to no party will file. And at least one prominent election law expert believes that Shelley is wrong, and that all candidates might be forced to file tens of thousands of signatures to win a place on the ballot. If true, that would be all but impossible for any of them to accomplish, since the deadline will be 59 days before the election, or at most about three weeks from today.

When will the election be? It must be held within 60 to 80 days of Shelley's Wednesday certification. It must be on a Tuesday. And since it cannot follow a Monday holiday, that narrows it down to Sept. 23, Sept. 30 or Oct. 7. The latter date seems the most likely.

But even 80 days is a blink of the eye for election officials in the counties, who must administer the contest. In that time they must locate 25,000 polling sites and 100,000 volunteers to work the polls. They must print 15 million ballots and sample ballots, and about 25 percent of those ballots must be ready in a little more than a month for voters who wish to vote absentee.

On top of all that, many California counties have just junked the punch-card voting systems that were responsible for many of the problems in Florida during the 2000 presidential election. But they were not planning to replace those machines until March 2004, when the next election was scheduled to take place. They will have to install and test the new technology and train thousands of workers in how to use it while also trying to prepare voters to confront the new machines. That will be no easy task.

Finally, as it happens the election will take place right in the middle of the 30-day period allotted for the governor to sign or veto hundreds of bills that arrive on his desk at the end of the legislative session. That means Davis will be weighing those issues as the voters prepare to go to the polls. And if he loses, he will remain in office while the election results are certified, which could take as long as 28 days. In the meantime, he would be free to decide the fate of all those proposed laws.

If Davis is shown the door, California will get a new governor who will confront a state with a wounded economy, an energy policy in disrepair, a workers' compensation industry nearing meltdown and a budget with a huge deficit the Legislature seems unable, or unwilling, to close. He or she will take office around Halloween. How fitting.