Stanford, Calif. — OUTRAGE is fueling a rare electoral effort to recall a California judge who sentenced a former Stanford athlete to a mere six months in jail for three counts of sexual assault. Regardless of the results of the recall campaign, the real test will be whether this controversy changes the way we think about rape. The aftermaths of two past judicial recalls involving rape cases are mixed. Perhaps this time, anger will lead to change.

Those earlier recalls, of a California judge in 1913 and a Wisconsin judge in 1977, combined the same elements that are now catalyzing the response to the sentence handed down by Judge Aaron Persky of the Santa Clara County Superior Court — a perceived lenience toward rape at a time of political mobilization by feminists.

The former Stanford student, Brock Allen Turner, 20, a champion swimmer, was convicted of sexually assaulting a woman behind a Dumpster on campus in 2015. The prosecutor sought a six-year prison term, but Judge Persky concluded that a term of less than 10 percent of that time, as well as three years of probation, was appropriate. He noted that both the defendant and the victim were intoxicated — witnesses confirmed she was unconscious — and cited the “severe impact” a prison sentence would have on Mr. Turner.

Had the website BuzzFeed not published the victim’s powerful courtroom statement, in which she described the trauma she and her family have suffered, this might have been just another case of a sexual assailant being let off easy. But a recall petition on Change.org gathered a half-million signatures in three days, and now a Stanford law professor is spearheading an effort to put a recall vote on the ballot.