The effort to recall District 4 Supervisor Joel Engardio claims it’s hitting a major milestone today, as organizers say they have more than the 10,000 signatures needed to put the recall on the ballot, and they’re submitting them this afternoon.

Today, Thursday, May 22, is the deadline for the Recall Joel Engardio campaign to submit 10,000 valid District 4 petition signatures to the SF Department of Elections in order to trigger an actual recall election. And while the effort to recall Engardio seems entirely motivated by anger over his involvement in making the Great Highway car-free, there is certainly an irony in the fact that Engardio won his seat in large part by promoting his active support for the recalls of DA Chesa Boudin and SF school board.  

So will the scrappy, much-lower-funded recall campaign be able to pull together enough signatures by today’s deadline? They seem 100% convinced they already have, according to a 4:30 pm Weekday afternoon press release that was sent to SFist and probably every other media outlet across town.

“Hundreds of District 4 Residents and Volunteers Submit Recall Petitions Against Supervisor Joel Engardio in a Powerful Demand for Accountability and Local Representation,” the recall campaign declared, touting a 1 pm press event at which they will submit their signatures to the Department of Elections.

To point out the obvious, you do not call a press conference to announce you are submitting 10,000 petition signatures unless you actually have those 10,000 petition signatures.

And it seems they have many more. Recall organizers confirmed to the Chronicle that they definitely have more than enough signatures to qualify, with the Chronicle saying they’ve collected 14,000 signatures. These signatures would have to be validated by the Department of Elections as legitimate registered District 4 residents, but this is an impressive haul of signatures.

“This campaign has been the definition of grassroots and District 4 has really come together to make their voices heard,” recall campaign head Jamie Hughes told the Chronicle. Hughes also noted that 90% of the signatures were collected by volunteers, and only 10% from paid signature-gatherers.

So should the recall qualify — and that will be determined by the Department of Elections validation process — we are looking at an oddball, off-year recall election that will only be happening in District 4, probably sometime around this coming October.

“Yes, a recall election would happen in 2025, and only in District 4,” SF Department of Elections custodian of records Matthew Selby told SFist. “There have been [San Francisco] elections that have taken place in one Assembly or Congressional District, but not in one Supervisorial District.”

Though the verification process will be a numbers game. While the Chronicle cites 14,000 signatures, Mission Local says the recall organizers will actually submit only 11,000 signatures for verification. In other words, they’ve already weeded out any signatures they think could be invalidated.

Mission Local points to the official recall election rules which say the the elections department will perform validation on a random sample of “at least 500 signatures, or 5 percent of the signatures, whichever is greater.”

If they’re submitting 11,000 signatures, that means the Department of Elections will be random-sample validating 550 signatures. If those check, the recall automatically qualifies, perhaps as soon as next week.

If only 90%-100% are validated, then the elections department would have to verify every single signature, which could take a full two months. This is exactly what happened with the signatures for the recall of Alameda County DA Pamela Price, and that recall still passed handily.

If the random-sample validation rate is less than 90%, the recall would not qualify at all.

When we last checked on recall fundraising last week, the recall effort had raised $100,000. Since then, they’ve submitted more fundraising totals showing they’ve now raised $140,000. This total is bolstered by a $7,000 contribution from the Chinese American Democratic Club, and a $10,000 donation from William O'Keefe, president of a Brisbane-based glass and framing manufacturer called SAFTI First.

But still the recall campaign is getting absolutely walloped in fundraising by the Stand With Joel campaign that’s fighting the recall. Engardio supporters have raised $407,237, for a nearly 4-1 money advantage. That money largely comes from tech founders and CEOs: $125,000 from Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman, plus big-bucks contributions from Ripple Labs co-founder Chris Larsen ($100,000), Twilio co-founder John Wolthius ($50,000), venture capital bigwig Ron Conway ($25,000) and Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan ($10,000).

Of course, none of this matters if the Department of Elections determines that fewer than 90% of the signatures are valid. But if those signatures being submitted at 1 pm Thursday afternoon do pass the verification threshold, we are looking at the first-ever election to recall a sitting San Francisco supervisor. And politically, it’s going to be a pretty wild summer and autumn in the west side’s District 4.

Related: Scott Wiener Claims That Aaron Peskin Is Somehow Orchestrating the Recall Joel Engardio Campaign [SFist]

Image: Recall Engardio via Facebook