GOP Muckety-Mucks Run Around Like Chickens with their Heads Cut Off

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 redistricting rules established by Proposition 11.

In 2011 and again in 2021, the CRC drew the maps.

The Legislature's Power

The chickens running around with their heads cut off, many of them lawyers or experts, will tell you that "only" the CRC can draw the maps and that the maps can "only" be drawn once every ten years subsequent to the decennial federal census.

The problem is that chickens can't read anything that's not in chicken scratch.

In the year following the year in which the national census is taken under the direction of Congress at the beginning of each decade, the Citizens Redistricting Commission described in Section 2 shall adjust the boundary lines of the congressional, State Senatorial, Assembly, and Board of Equalization districts (also known as "redistricting") in conformance with the standards and process set forth in Section 2. (Article XXI, section 1.)

The more fundamental problem is that the people behind almost all voter-initiatives don't understand the law and their lawyers don't understand the law. Consequently, voter-initiatives have loopholes in them big enough to make them a total waste of money, time, and energy.

As you can see from section 1, above, the word "only" or other such restrictive language does not appear anywhere in the text that the voters approved. Obviously, the voters could not have approved any words that were not in the text.

Section 1 begins with a conditional clause. That's very bad practice. Why? Because it's conditional. The condition limits the scope of everything that follows. Section 1 is one big, long 64-word sentence. So the condition applies to the entire section.

The conditional clause limits the CRC, which is the subject of the sentence, to power and authority once every ten years after the national census. Section 2 (which we don't need to analyze) further confirms this by specifically limiting the jurisdiction of the CRC from January 1 to August 15 in a year that ends in the number 1.

Can that be any more plain?

It does NOT limit the Legislature's inherent, plenary power in any way. Do you see the word Legislature in section 1? "Legislature" is used once in section 2 as part of a restriction as to who can be a CRC member. It is also used twice in section 3 in connection with the duty to fund the CRC.

That's it boys and girls.

So when Gavin Newsom said in the interview on July 16, 2025 that if the constitution doesn't prohibit it, the Legislature can do it, he was absolutely right. Dozens of California supreme court and appellate court decisions have held, over and over, that the Legislature has plenary power and that the constitution is the only means to restrict that plenary power.

Lawsuits

The lawyers filing the lawsuits are either incompetent or they're just taking advantage of whoever is paying them to file the lawsuits.

To begin with the lawsuits actually try to acquire jurisdiction by using article XXI. To repeat, article XXI applies only to the CRC, not to the Legislature.

We've reviewed the memorandums that were filed in the two lawsuits. None of them address the gorilla in the room -- that article XXI only applies to the CRC and only applies to 7-1/2 months of years ending in a 1.

All the arguments sound nice, but they don't apply to the Legislature.

One of the lawsuits is going after the one-topic rule. One of the "sections" is "advisory." The Supreme Court has already ruled on the Legislature putting advisory questions on the ballot. It's part of its "investigative" function.

Some may wonder why the lawsuits aren't going after the prejudicial ballot label, an abbreviation of the ballot title and summary written by the attorney general's office.

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.

Survey says: Courts give deference to attorney general.

What the lawyers will never do, however, is go after these partisan ballot labels on another basis -- the government using public moneys to take sides in an election. That's been unconstitutional for at least a hundred years. It involves violations of both the United States (First Amendment ["compelled speech"] and Fourteenth Amendment ["equal protection"]) and California constitutions. It also exposes a big list of officials to both criminal and personal civil liability. Stanson v. Mott (1976) 17 Cal.3d 206.

The lawyers are also not going after the gut-and-amend process, a ruse by the Legislature to avoid following constitutionally mandated procedures in enacting laws.

Just about every opponent of legislative measures complains about these last two provisions, but no one ever does anything to prohibit them. It gives the complainers a permanent excuse for their failures.

Penalizing the Legislature

Some idiot from San Diego actually filed a knee-jerk voter-initiative (25-0015). He's obsessed with single-page petitions. His initiative attempts to add an item (7) to sub-section (c) of section 2. The problem with that is that the smallest unit of either the constitution or a legislative enactment that can be used to amend it is a section. Think about it. How would the voters or anyone else know the context of his "Penalize Politicians ... Initiative" without seeing the entirety of section 2. Section 2 is 1136 words long without his 200-word amendment. In other words, if you want to add something to or change (even just one word) in a section, you must print the entire section in the voter-initiative petition. Sorry Carlie.

But no worries. It was just a political stunt to raise money. He only wasted $2,000 of his donor money on the stunt.

Campaigns Against Proposition 50

Ok, so you got a campaign. "That don't impress me much."

Allegedly, former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is raising $100,000,000 to campaign against it. The GOP consultant class are the only ones who will benefit from that. A hundred million in an off-year is a huge bump to their pocketbooks.

There are already at least three committees collecting money for campaigns to oppose Proposition 50. You would think they would form a coalition, rather than each one going it alone. You'd think wrongly. When it comes to money, none of the chickens want to share. Each committee has its favorites. The favorites are the ones who get paid.

None of the campaigns want to share credit either. If the measure fails, they can all claim victory without any evidence that anything that they did caused that outcome. If the measure passes, they can all blame each other, the voters, the cheaters, Jesus Mary and Joseph, or anyone else under the sun for their failure. They will never acknowledge that they had a lousy strategy or ran a lousy campaign.

One of the campaigns purports to be a grassroots campaign. That's an oxymoron. It's also moronic to believe that a grassroots campaign can effect anything on a statewide basis. Who are those 'grassroots'? They're just dupes who contributed their money or their time to some Svengali who is running things behind the scenes, who's just looking for another payday.

What Happens If Proposition 50 Passes?

No one is talking about this, except in connection with lawsuits.

Other than a losing lawsuit, you could do what your grandfathers did back in 1981 when the Legislature created partisan maps, while at the same time adding all non-citizens to the population numbers.

You could file a referendum.

Any law passed by the Legislature, excepting a very few categories, is subject to referendum.

The Lesson From This Fiasco

Don't ever support a voter-initiative where the people behind it are idiots or have idiots for lawyers.

Proposition 11 (2008) and Proposition (2010) could have shut the door on this latest scheme of a desperate, wannabe president.

Those voter-initiatives could have enacted language that would have prevented this. Language like:

"The Legislature is prohibited from enacting maps changing the boundaries of congressional, senate, assembly, and board of equalization districts."

Those voter-initiatives could have also excluded non-citizens from district population calculations with language like:

"Only people who, on April 1 of a year ending in zero, (1) are citizens of the United States, (2) reside in California, (3) have attained the age of 18 years, and (4) are otherwise qualified to vote may be counted in a district's population for purposes of reapportionment or redistricting."

Just for good measure, those voter initiatives could have also overturned the very discombobulated (weakly-reasoned) decision in Legislature v. Deukmejian (1983) 34 Cal.3d. 658.

"The initiative power includes the power to draw district or area maps for any governmental body or agency where the power of the body or agency is divided into districts or areas. The referendum power includes the power to reject district or area maps for any governmental body or agency where the power of the body or agency is divided into districts or areas."

The national census is always conducted on April 1 because we are all fools.

The Ace Up His Sleeve

Guess what?

If Proposition 50 fails, the Legislature can still pass its redistricting maps.

Why? Because article XXI does not expressly prohibit it?

Good luck fighting that fight in court.

If Newsom was right from the beginning, then why go through all this rigamarole. Maybe because it puts opponents on the defensive. Maybe because it will cost opponents a ton of money to fight it. Maybe because it will drain donor pocketbooks for opponent candidate campaigns for the 2026 elections.

Who knows? But all potential reasons favor the first mover, the one who gets to frame the issue.

While we're sure Newsom would hope to win at the electronic vote counting machines, the ace up his sleeve is devastating. It would also be completely demoralizing. How many productive people would leave the state? In fact, there's an idiot chicken who's even out there saying to do just that if the maps are adopted.

The Final Solution

But what would put an end to this gambit is a referendum that gets on the ballot. There is a very short time to get signatures, but it can be done, unless you've blown your wad on the election. Your grandfathers did it in 1981. They even qualified a voter-initiative to draw their own maps in 1982.

A referendum suspends the law. It would also require another election. The time frame for that would put that election well past the filing deadline for the June 2, 2026 primary election. That would put an end to this game for 2026 elections, even if the Legislature tries to push back the primary election date, which it could do.

If you're not thinking referendum, you may as well fold your hand now.

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Copyright 2025, Richard Michael. All rights reserved.