A.) they're separate elections;
How? They're literally
inseparable in California law, in that one literally can't ever be held without the other, and the result of the replacement question is entirely contingent on the results of the recall question. How can the replacement election be a separate election without its own separate and independent consequences?
I'm not a fan of the lawsuit's argument that "a person who votes for recall has twice as many votes as a person who votes against recall" though. If anything, using that logic, it's the other way around; someone who votes against recall gets to vote for Newsom
and someone else. I think the California recall process certainly violates the spirit of one person-one vote, but that's not a great framing.
(On a more realist note, I think the courts should treat an equal protection argument, maybe a better-constructed one than this one, very seriously because it's an escape valve from an possibly extremely dangerous situation, where the range of legitimate responses to what would plainly and obviously be a usurpation of democratic control of the state would encompass actions not normally seen as appropriate in a modern democracy. Legitimacy crises are very bad and it's fine to bend some texts here and there to steer clear of them. This is also why I thought faithless elector laws should be upheld regardless of the strengths of the arguments. I have a lot of problems with the federal judiciary but I think the courtrooms are still a fairer venue than the streets.)
