Have I Got a Proposition for You!

Sample ballots for our upcoming special election arrived on Brumby Road yesterday. The ballot contains but a single issue: Proposition 50. If you read my blog you know what this is about, but now that we have the ‘official’ ballot language it is time to do some parsing.

Let’s start with the ‘fiscal impact’. It says there will be one time costs of “a few” million dollars so counties can update election materials. This ignores the $280 million dollar cost of the special election itself.

The proposition is all about maps, so you might think that the maps would be in the voter guide. Not so. There is a QR to point your phone camera at which will take you to a website where you can look at them. I discovered that Brumby Road is in the same district as Pittsburg (CA) and Antioch and Manteca, but not Stockton or Lodi or Linden, which are much closer.

Important update! The official sample ballot does not contain the maps, but the Official Voters’ Guide, which arrived later, does. They are just as convoluted as expected, although they still fail to provide a counterexample to the Four Color Theorem, so the proof is safe for now. We’ll see what Texas and Illinois come up with.

Speaking of Lodi, that pleasant city, which is about as Red as you can get in California, has been divided so that there are 3 congressional districts within the city limits. Any congressional district that includes the entire town has a good chance to send a Republican to congress, so the Democrat state legislature and governor decided to play wise Solomon and divide the baby into 3 parts.

The proposition states that it will authorize these temporary changes in response to Texas’ partisan redistricting. I suppose California’s current maps are the height of fairness. Lets take a look. Here we have a county map of the 2024 election:

It is true Harris won easily. It is also true that there are large parts of the Golden State that are decidedly red. Now consider that this same election produced a California congressional delegation that was 43 (82%) Democrats and 9 (18%) Republicans. One might think that the existing maps are partisan enough, and perhaps we shouldn’t be so critical of Texas. The new maps are designed to turn 5, or at worst 4, of those Republican seats over to the Democrats, and they cut those red areas into pieces to do just that.

Finally, Proposition 50 establishes a ‘policy’ supporting nonpartisan redistricting commissions nationwide. This policy has no force of law. It is simply more ‘feel good’ words that are supposed to distract us from the fact that the proposition we are voting for does THE EXACT OPPOSITE and undercuts the nonpartisan maps already in place.

This being California, I’m pretty sure the blue patches will muster enough votes to pass the prop. Remember every registered voter in California is going to get a ballot in the mail. Voter registration lists are current and complete, and every signature will be checked carefully, along with the voter’s eligibility status. Have I got a proposition for you, indeed!