Texas Republicans are redrawing their congressional maps, so Gov. Gavin Newsom and his allies say they must do the same. But unlike Texas, California has a voter-approved Citizens Redistricting Commission constitutionally charged with drawing political boundaries, so the state Legislature is powerless to redraw the maps without amending the state Constitution. It has to go to the voters.
Enter California’s hyper-partisan Attorney General Rob Bonta, who has just issued a deceptive ballot label for Proposition 50, the measure seeking to abolish the congressional district maps prepared by the Independent Redistricting Commission. Did anyone expect anything else?
Here’s what Bonta’s ballot label provides:
“AUTHORIZES TEMPORARY CHANGES TO CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT MAPS IN RESPONSE TO TEXAS’ PARTISAN REDISTRICTING. LEGISLATIVE CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT. Requires temporary use of new congressional district maps through 2030. Directs independent Citizens Redistricting Commission to resume enacting congressional district maps in 2031. Establishes policy supporting nonpartisan redistricting commissions nationwide. Fiscal Impact: One-time costs to counties of up to a few million dollars statewide to update election materials to reflect new congressional district maps.”
Voltaire’s famous line that the Holy Roman Empire “was in no way holy, nor Roman, nor an empire” seems appropriate here because these maps are neither temporary, nor in response to Texas nor going to cost only a few million dollars. Let’s go through them in order.
First, regarding the notion that this measure makes “temporary” changes to existing congressional district maps is wrong because voters will logically conclude that the state would eventually return to the commission’s previously drawn maps. Instead, this measure abolishes them. They will never return. Even if the state returns power to the independent redistricting commission in 2030 (don’t bet on it), the commission would be tasked with drawing entirely new maps to align with the next census. There is nothing temporary about this.
Second, the label states that the ballot measure is in response to Texas. The governor has said repeatedly that this is about what Texas is doing and if Texas stopped, California would too. The problem is, they removed that language from the bill. Previously, the bill stated that the maps only changed “if Texas, Florida, or another state adopts a new congressional district map that takes effect after August 1, 2025, and before January 1, 2031, and such redistricting is not required by a federal court order.” That’s gone. While it may have been their intent to respond to Texas, intent doesn’t override the plain language of the law. Whatever happens in Texas now has no effect on whether the maps change if voters approve Proposition 50. Voters should know that.
Third, supposedly this measure will cost “a few million dollars.” This is probably the most weaselly line of them all. That figure only considers the costs of changing the maps, not the special election needed to pass them. The Assembly Committee on Appropriations, the committee tasked with considering the costs of legislation, said that the fiscal impact was unknown but “likely in the low hundreds of millions of dollars.” In a letter to the Legislature, the California State Association of Counties noted that the 2021 gubernatorial recall special election cost $200 million. The true fiscal cost should be stated on the ballot.
California law requires that the attorney general prepare an accurate, fair and impartial “ballot label” for any measure presented to the voters. Specifically, the Elections Code requires that the ballot label (and other ballot materials) “must reasonably inform the voters of the character and purpose of the proposed measure.”
Once again, Attorney General Bonta has failed to perform his fiduciary duty of providing fair and impartial information to the voters. He, and other backers of Proposition 50, should not be rewarded for this deception.
Jon Coupal is president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association.
