How a Parody of Citizen Government Turned California Into a Hyper-Gerrymandered State
Ballot initiatives are supposed to empower the people to stand up to moneyed special interests. Fifteen states permit the people to pass laws and amend their state constitutions by popular vote. A fixture in California politics since 1914, the citizen ballot initiative enabled notable victories for the Californians, perhaps most notably Proposition 13 in 1978, which capped property taxes at 1 percent of a home’s value and limited increases to 2 percent per year regardless of the most recent assessments. And because a ballot initiative can only be overturned by popular vote in a general election, to date, Prop. 13 has survived mostly intact.
But the power of a ballot initiative can favor special interests as easily as it can harm them. The people can pass a law, but whenever they can find a way to do so, politicians can ignore it. In 2024, Californians approved Proposition 36 by a margin of 68 to 32 percent. This hugely popular ballot proposition had the temerity to make crime illegal again. But California’s ruling coalition, led by Governor Newsom, simply didn’t allocate funds to enforce Prop. 36. They killed it, evidently because the chaos that kills small businesses enriches the biggest businesses, and because getting the streets under control might mean less ability for the ruling class to monetize misery.
Which brings us to Proposition 50, which exposes the greatest weakness in California’s initiative process. Citizens can painstakingly qualify an initiative for the state ballot by collecting signatures, but all it takes is a majority vote in the state legislature for politicians to put a retaliatory initiative onto the state ballot to nullify it.
Proposition 50 is an example of this because its purpose was to suspend the provisions of Proposition 20, approved by over 61 percent of voters in 2010. Prop. 20 created a nonpartisan redistricting commission that took responsibility for drawing U.S. Congressional districts away from the state legislature and into the hands of citizen volunteers. Even after Prop. 50 took effect, California remained absurdly gerrymandered, as partisans managed to strongly influence the decisions of the committee, but the minority party still holds 9 out of 52 congressional seats. So in 2024, the majority party decided they would have to do something about that.
The ease with which Proposition 50 was called in a special election exemplifies how, in reality, California has “citizens’ initiatives,” but it also has “politicians’ initiatives.” The first way, employed by the proponents of, for example, Prop. 13 in 1978, Prop. 20 in 2010, and Prop. 36 in 2024 requires collecting signatures from hundreds of thousands of registered voters on a petition directing the California Secretary of State to qualify an initiative for placement on the next general election ballot.
This is an arduous process, almost impossible for grassroots movements to achieve, even though it’s easy enough to file an initiative. Once proponents have written the language, they bring it to the attorney general’s office, pay a $2,000 fee, and submit it for review. The attorney general will prepare a “title and summary” for the initiative, which must appear on the signature petition. The AG’s office then refers the initiative to the Legislative Analyst’s Office, which prepares a report on what they estimate to be the financial impact of the initiative. The total review process normally takes 65 calendar days from the date of filing to the date when the initiative is cleared for circulation. That’s when the fun starts.
On the day an initiative is cleared for circulation, supporters have a six-month period to collect signatures. A statute will require a quantity of signatures from registered voters equal to 5 percent of the turnout of the most recent gubernatorial election. In 2022, when California voters reelected Governor Newsom, 10.9 million votes were cast. This means 546,651 signatures are currently required. For a constitutional amendment, initiative proponents need to gather 8 percent, which equals 1,137,034 required signatures. Moreover, because signature gatherers inevitably collect invalid signatures, the rule of thumb is to collect beyond the minimum by 30 percent. That means 710,000 signatures have to be collected to be certain to qualify a statute onto the ballot, and 1.14 million signatures are needed to get a constitutional amendment onto the ballot.
Doing this in just six months is extremely difficult. For example, qualifying a constitutional amendment for the state ballot would require collecting 6,317 signatures per day. If one assumes a 12-hour day, seven days per week, that’s 526 signatures to be collected every hour, 180 days in a row.
The sheer logistics of a campaign on such a scale mean that professional consultants have to be involved, including professional signature gatherers. Even Proposition 13 back in 1978, when “only” 449,846 valid voter signatures had to be verified, relied on professional consultants and professional signature gatherers to supplement their mostly volunteer-driven campaign.
A more recent example of one of the only successful signature-gathering campaigns that was mostly volunteer-driven was the 2021 grassroots campaign to force Governor Gavin Newsom to face a recall election. That recall effort made history, with unpaid volunteer signature gatherers contributing well over 1 million of the over 1.6 million validated signatures. But the exception proves the rule.
Normally, the cost for professional signature gatherers is what the market will bear, and a nationwide industry exists to serve initiative campaigns. These prices fluctuate depending on how many initiatives are being circulated and how popular the initiative is, since that affects how easy it is for signature gatherers to convince people to sign the petitions. While campaigns don’t have to publicly disclose how much they’re paying per signature, a Ballotpedia analysis estimated that the average cost in California in 2016 was $6.20 per signature. That is consistent with more recent anecdotal reports, and if anything, paying professionals $6.20 per signature collected on a petition in 2024 would have been a bargain.
This means that just to collect signatures for a constitutional amendment in California, to, say, actually strengthen the nonpartisan character of the state’s redistricting commission instead of destroying it, proponents would have to spend at least $7 million. And to raise that kind of money, they would have to conduct extensive voter polling and hire attorneys to write the ballot measure; then they would need printers to print the petitions and shippers to get petitions sent to every one of California’s far-flung 58 counties, along with consultants and fundraisers to coordinate the process from concept to ballot qualification.
Proponents also face the cost of conducting preliminary verification of every signed petition to avoid excessive rejections during the formal verification process, as well as the cost to sort the petitions into bundles to be submitted to each county registrar of voters. With tens of thousands of signatures arriving at a central processing center on any given day, this is also a process that requires professional support. Expect preliminary verification to cost about 35 cents per signature, which pushes costs up by another $400,000 or so. These are just the basic costs. Most realistic estimates of what it now takes to get a ballot initiative qualified for the state ballot in California start at $10 million.
Even in California, with a billionaire around every corner, raising $10 million is very tough. Because once that $10 million is spent, and your initiative is going to be on California’s November ballot, you have to campaign for it. And if you are doing anything that challenges the state’s ruling elites, you can expect them to drop $100 million or more on a nasty campaign to defeat you. Even if you match them dollar for dollar, you could lose. How many reform-minded donors in California are going to contribute that kind of money to a potentially unsuccessful initiative campaign when they can put the same amount of money into dozens of battleground congressional districts anywhere in the US with far higher probabilities of victory?
Which brings us to California’s two-tier system of initiatives. Prop. 50 was a politician’s initiative. Governor Newsom and the partisan state legislature didn’t have to spend $10 million to gather signatures within six months to put Prop. 50 on the ballot. First, they passed a resolution to amend the constitution to permit their own politician-generated, nakedly partisan congressional redistricting map. Then they adopted a statute to call a special election and directed the California Secretary of State to give it a proposition number and place it on the November 5, 2025, statewide special election ballot. It was that fast and that easy.
No fundraising. No signature gathering. No polling or legal research. Just a supermajority of partisan politicians in the one-party state, overturning a ballot proposition that tried to minimize gerrymandering. Just to rub it in, true citizens’ initiatives are only permitted to appear on the state ballot in the November general elections every two years. But a politician’s initiative, such as Prop. 50, can be placed on the ballot in a special election at any time.
Proposition 50 is likely to survive court challenges and become law. And although Governor Newsom and his allies can say the people voted for it, the ruling elites have two weapons in the one-party state: nonstop demonization of Trump, which they follow up by connecting anything they want voters to support to “sticking it to Trump,” along with far more cash. Supporters of Prop. 50 raked in nearly $130 million, against opponents—even given how much was at stake—only coming up with $46 million. No wonder Newsom’s initiative won. And in no small irony, given his incessant rhetoric, democracy lost.
California’s electorate approved Proposition 50 in a special election called for by the legislature, not the people. The people’s verdict, curated by a campaign fundraising advantage of nearly $100 million, empowers the partisan state legislature to redraw congressional districts to their maximum partisan advantage. A state that was already obscenely gerrymandered is about to be gerrymandered even more. If all goes according to plan, the California Congressional Republican Caucus will dwindle from a mere 9 out of 52 seats to a dismal four.
If control of the U.S. Congress passes over to the Democratic Party in November 2026, and especially if their majority is five seats or less, we may expect California Governor Gavin Newsom to take credit for the victory. We will then see whether the same coalition that has turned California into a failed one-party state can do the same thing to America.
Edward Ring is the Director of Water and Energy Policy at the California Policy Center, which he co-founded in 2013. Ring is the author of Fixing California: Abundance, Pragmatism, Optimism (2021) and The Abundance Choice: Our Fight for More Water in California (2022).