Proposition 50 is a chance to “restore equity in our democratic course of,” based on organizers, by countering gerrymandering in different states.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom indicators payments associated to redrawing the state’s congressional maps on August 21, 2025 in Sacramento, California.
(Justin Sullivan / Getty)
This November, California voters will resolve who will get the ability to attract the state’s political maps.
Proposition 50, which seems on the 2025 poll, would amend California’s Structure to offer the legislature short-term authority to redraw the state’s congressional districts. If handed, it could droop the work of the state’s present Impartial Redistricting Fee for the subsequent three election cycles, earlier than returning management to the fee in 2030.
Supporters describe Prop. 50 as a short-term correction meant to safeguard illustration after Republican-led states reminiscent of Texas, Florida, and Ohio handed aggressive redistricting legal guidelines. Former president Barack Obama and Governor Gavin Newsom have publicly backed the initiative, framing it as a obligatory counterweight to Republican redistricting efforts.
At its core, Prop. 50 raises elementary questions on how democracy features in California and past: Who ought to maintain the pen when political energy is being divided?
Present Situation
For teams like Third Act, a nationwide democracy and local weather group that works with older activists, it’s a possibility to “restore equity in our democratic course of,” based on Mike Johnson, the group’s democracy campaigns supervisor. Voters are “the last word deciders in our democracy,” he stated. “The whole lot from housing prices to local weather coverage comes again as to whether voters are being pretty represented.”
Prop. 50 is a defensive measure, based on Johnson, a approach to make sure California’s voice in Congress isn’t weakened by gerrymandered maps in different states, permitting the Legislature to redraw congressional boundaries for the 2026, 2028, and 2030 elections. These new maps would change these created by California’s Impartial Redistricting Fee, which voters established in 2008 and expanded in 2010 to cowl congressional districts.
Susan Shelley, the vice chairman of communications for the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Affiliation, a company opposing Prop. 50, argues that evaluating the proposal to redistricting efforts in Texas, the place Republican lawmakers redrew congressional maps extensively criticized as gerrymandered, is deceptive. “Texas by no means adopted an unbiased redistricting fee. So the voters of Texas need their legislature to attract the strains, and it’s that approach in lots of different states. They use the normal process of getting the legislature draw the strains in a political approach,” Shelley stated. “However the voters of California reformed that course of. They didn’t need that, and so they did it very thoughtfully.”
Whereas a 2008 initiative in CA created an unbiased fee to attract the state workplace boundaries, a vote in 2010 additionally appointed an unbiased fee to attract map boundaries for congressional races as effectively. “Californians stated they don’t need politicians drawing the maps,” stated Shelley. “Prop. 50 says, ‘Let’s give the politicians the ability to attract the maps once more.’ Actually, the voters may resolve that’s what they need, however this can be a snap resolution in a particular election with a minimal quantity of knowledge.”
After all, the transfer could be short-term, stated R.L. Miller, chair of the California Democratic Social gathering’s Environmental Caucus and the founding father of Local weather Hawks Vote, who calls Proposition 50 “crucial factor on the poll” in 2025. “We’re going to revert again to the Impartial Fee in 2030,” he stated. “We’re asking the voters to have a say. What they did in Texas—they ran by means of it with out asking the voters.”
Miller argues that Prop 50 may have nationwide implications. “If we don’t move Proposition 50, it could be very tough for Democrats to flip the Home earlier than the gerrymandering began,” she stated. “California must move Prop. 50 simply to offer us an equal shot at presumably flipping the Home—and if we flip the Home, we are able to cease the Trump agenda, conduct oversight, and restore checks and balances.”
Whereas Shelley’s important arguments towards Prop 50 revolve round its “undermining” of constitutional legitimacy, she additionally referenced the price of this particular election. Proposition 50 is the one measure on this November’s particular poll. “It’s a particular election which is costing the taxpayers in extra of $280 million at a time when the state is in a price range emergency and dipping into reserves to cowl spending,” Shelley stated. “We don’t suppose the Structure needs to be so frivolously amended in a particular election on brief discover.”
Supporters of Prop. 50 say these criticisms miss the larger image. “The price range stuff—actually, it’s only a drop within the bucket,” Miller stated. “Speaking about a few million {dollars} is completely a pink herring. It’s trivial in comparison with the stakes.”
Proponents additionally notice that Prop. 50 explicitly endorses the thought of a nationwide anti-gerrymandering legislation—one thing Miller and different advocates imagine may lastly degree the enjoying discipline between blue and pink states. “Blue states have been disarming whereas pink states have been arming up,” Miller stated. “If Democrats take the Home and Senate, we have to move an anti-gerrymandering invoice nationwide.”
Pupil organizers stated the initiative has grow to be “a lightning rod” and “focus” for younger democratic activists. In San Francisco’s “No Kings!” protest on October 18, for instance, Prop. 50 was typically the principle motive for a lot of younger folks taking part within the march.
Pupil teams have channeled that power into their very own campaigns. For the primary time, members of the Harvard Democrats have partnered with teams throughout the nation, just like the Stanford Democrats, to host cellphone banks encouraging Californians to vote sure on Prop. 50. “What occurs within the US Congress because of Prop. 50 goes to have an effect on me in Rhode Island, even when they aren’t my elected officers,” stated Dominick Lombard, the Harvard chapter’s marketing campaign director. “We’re seeing quite a lot of broad coalitions forming. As a result of we now have so many college students from California and Texas, we’ve heard firsthand accounts about how this may influence them,” stated Lombard. He sees the nationwide organizing across the problem as a collective effort. “What occurs within the US Congress because of Prop. 50 goes to have an effect on me in Rhode Island, even when they aren’t my elected officers.”
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