As there’s a distinct possibility that Democrat Gavin Newsom could be replaced as California’s governor by a Republican who claims support from far fewer voters than Newsom does, sentient political beings are looking into modifying or just plain abolishing the state’s recall elections. (As to that distinct possibility: Newsom will surely have more than four million state voters who cast their ballots against recalling him, even if a greater number do vote to recall; while there’s no way in hell that any Republican, running in a field of 45 candidates, will get the support of more than three million voters.)

But changing the recall, much less scrapping it, is no simple task. As the recall has been part of California’s constitution since 1911, it will take a constitutional amendment to alter it. That either means that two-thirds of each house of the legislature must vote to put that amendment on the ballot, or that voters can put it on the ballot themselves if a sufficient number sign petitions to that effect. There are probably enough Democratic legislators to put it on the ballot right now, and enough rank-and-file Democrats who’d be happy to sign such petitions, but one way or the other, changing the recall process would have to pass muster with a majority of voters.

Despite the anti-majoritarian potential of a recall, as the current episode makes grimly clear, I doubt California voters would be inclined to abandon the process entirely. To be sure, the superiority of the direct-election reforms of the 1911 Progressives has frayed to nonexistence. Initiatives, which the Progressives devised as a way that voters could sidestep a legislature then wholly owned by the Southern Pacific Railroad, are now more prey to corporate dominance than the legislature, as the more than $200 million spent by Uber, Lyft, and their ilk on last November’s ballot measure to enable them to keep underpaying their drivers makes clear. (That ballot measure, happily, was just struck down by a state court.) For its part, the recall has become the last refuge of a minority party (the Republicans) unable to win statewide elections (they’ve lost 37 of the last 37) save through the recall process.

But despite these malformations of what once were good ideas, I don’t think Californians are ready to cede these powers back to the legislature. In light of this year’s recall circus, however, I do think they’d go for an amendment that would make it much more difficult for a Rush Limbaugh soundalike such as Larry Elder to become governor of the state whose baseline beliefs he long has ridiculed. One way would be to make the recall a two-step process. If the public official in question is recalled, his or her deputy (if it’s a governor, then the lieutenant governor) would temporarily assume the office, and then 60 or 90 days later (it takes time for California to tally its votes), a round-two election would be held between the recalled official and the candidate who placed first among those running to replace him or her. The winner of that contest then ascends to that office—either newly, or again.

An imperfect solution, and there are doubtless other ones as if not more meritorious, but any would be a helluva lot better than handing California over to Larry Elder or his Trumpian ilk.