Proposition 50 (2025) Mania

Yes, it passed. What do you expect when the opposition is clueless, rudderless, and incompentent? While this blog is primarily about Prop 50, the Board of Supervisors in Santa Clara County got on board with their own shenanigans. We've been following, and making suggestions to the various opponents, since before the beginning of this saga. Very little can likely be done about Prop 50 at this point. That's not true of the Measure A sales tax. It just depends how frigtened the more than a million people in Santa Clara County are. We'll discuss this below. # # # Copyright 2025, Richard Michael. All rights reserved.

Article Series Chickens With Heads Cut Off Power to Enact District Maps This Article Future Post-Election Article Newsom's Precedent When he was mayor of San Francisco, Newsom didn't wait around for the law to catch up with his "principles." He took action. He sanctioned gay marriage. Ultimately, the California Supreme Court told us that Newsom was a bad boy for not letting the courts decide the constitutionality of marriage other than between one man and one woman. Nevertheless, the court held that such a marriage was constitutional. Right after his victory in court, he made a speech where he made this now famous statement. "This door's wide open now. It's going to happen, whether you like it or not" We contend that's he's doing this again in the context of redistricting. As explained in the second article in this series, the Legislature has the power to enact new district maps any time it wishes. Yes, the Citizens Redi...

Article Series Chickens With Heads Cut Off This Article Gold Standard It's really tiresome to hear blabber about there being a "gold standard" for redistricting. Just more lies. Citizen redistricting bodies, like the Citizens Redistricting Commission ("CRC") in California, are neither impartial nor standard. This is just propaganda. Think. The purpose of the commission is to draw impartial maps. The commission members are appointed by a convoluted process that involves multiple levels of complexity in an effort to demonstrate a lack of bias. We dare you to read and understand Government Code section 8252 . The entirety of Citizens Redistricting Commission chapter was added by Proposition 11 (2008), left untouched by Proposition 20 (2010), and then, get this, amended by the Legislature SB 1096 in 2012. The entire point of the process is to substitute an elected legislature with an unelected body of 8 people who have actively sought to be appoi...

The Saga of Proposition 50 Supposedly the CAGOP is now on offense. Can anyone recall any time in the last 50 years where it has been on offense? Brief History In 1980 (Proposition 6), voters approved a legislative constitutional amendment that removed the restriction on non-citizens from being included in the population for redistricting. It established new rules and moved the language from Article IV (Legislature) to a completely new one, Article XXI. In 2008 ( Proposition 11 ), a voter-initiative constitutional amendment removed (or so they believed) the Legislature's power to draw district maps for senate, assembly, and board of equalization seats. It set up a Citizens Redistricting Commission ("CRC") to draw the maps and added an entire chapter to the Government Code to establish the CRC. In 2010 ( Proposition 20 ), removed (or so they believed) the Legislature's power to draw congressional district maps as well. It also changed some of the redistri...