How do they count toward the 50% + 1 requirement? I'm not disagreeing with you -- but others here have offered the opposite contention (that undervotes on Q1 do not count toward a determination of Q1).
I haven't seen a definitive source, either way. Hopefully the tally will be so skewed in favor of YES that the point becomes irrelevant.
Section 11384 of the election code, which is still intact, states, "If a majority of the votes in a recall proposal are 'Yes,' the officer sought to be recalled shall be removed from office upon qualification of his successor." Before Moskowitz's decision, the only valid ballots in a recall race would be those that made a choice in the first "Yes or No" question. Therefore, the issue of a majority in such an election is straightforward. If "Yes" beats "No" in a two-part choice, by the laws of mathematics, the "Yes" votes would constitute a majority. However, by allowing ballots to remain valid even if a choice was not made on the original "Yes or No" question, Justice Moskowitz has perhaps introduced a third category—"Abstain."A possible outcome on October 7 could be a plurality victory of "Yes" over "No" whereby "Yes" votes do not constitute a majority of all votes, when the ballots of those that "Abstained" are included. Consider the following scenario. Recent polling data suggest that in a straight "Yes or No" question, 51 percent of the electorate would choose to recall the governor. For the sake of argument, let us suppose that on election night, "Yes" beats "No" by a tally of 51 to 49 percent. As to the number of abstentions, estimates of recent recall elections in local races peg that figure somewhere between 4 to 8 percent. Let's pick the middle of the range and assume that the number of abstentions on election night will be 6 percent. Next, let us put the abstentions in the total pool of votes and calculate the relative percentages. The new figures would be as follows: Yes (48 percent); No (46 percent); and Abstain (6 percent).
All of this to the contrary, the plain language of section 11384 clearly indicates that a "majority" refers to a majority of the Yes/No votes cast on the "recall proposal." Judge Moskowitz attempted to address this question in his ruling, although his answer left the door open for an aggressive Davis to challenge the legality and legitimacy of an outcome similar to that described above. One can easily imagine a friendly state court judge holding that, in light of Judge Moskowitz's ruling, a majority of all voters in the recall election did not choose to recall the governor.