The Fat Lady Sings - Prop 50 Passes

... or A Little Night Music ("Send in the Clowns").

The chickens have come home to roost. It wasn't pretty. Pathetic campaigns. Lots of flapping jaws. A few inconsequential lawsuits, and more (inconsequential lawsuits) to come.

While this blog is primarily about Prop 50, the Board of Supervisors in Santa Clara County got on board with their own shenanigans. Check out What Happens When Santa Clara County Takes Sides in an Election With Public Moneys? We think it's a much more interesting story that has much more relevance to all the people who will be hit with billions of dollars in local taxes next year.

The Lawsuits

Since we wrote the previous article where we discussed lawsuits, two other pre-election lawsuits have been filed. One federal lawsuit, filed September 4, 2025, was a stunt by a gubernatorial candidate who is desperately trying to show off his political chops. The other was by one of the 'victims,' Darrell Issa, who along with Texas Representative Ronny Jackson, filed a constitutional challenge in the federal court in the Northern District of Texas on October 29, 2025.

We're also aware of at least two post-election lawsuits that may be filed at some point in the future. Most likely, these lawsuits will not be filed until the Secretary of State certifies the election in December. Filing earlier, even though the election night results are not likely to change, would run into ripeness issues. In other words, no judge wants to deal with a case where the i's haven't been dotted and the t's haven't been crossed.

Basically, it appears that California lawyers don't want to fight Prop 50 in the Sacramento County Superior Court any more. Sacramento is the only superior court that has jurisdiction of statewide measures like Prop 50.

The underlying purpose of all the lawsuits was to overturn the outcome of the election. It would make little sense to file a lawsuit just to make a nice legal point about someone's rights being violated because some procedure was not followed or some technical requirement was not met.

After an election, however, no matter whether any of these lawsuits are pursued beyond a trial court, the challenges, with respect to the election, will all be moot. In other words, the alleged rights violations that provide the grounds for federal lawsuits will all have occurred. The question then becomes what's the remedy for a violation of rights. In no conceivable way would any federal court in any of the 94 federal districts ever decide the a violation of rights would overturn the results of an election unless there is evidence (proof) that the violation of rights resulted in enough votes being denied to change the outcome of the election.

This is the same issue that confronted all the president's men (and women) in the aftermath of the 2020 general election. It's also the same issue that confronted Kari Lake (along with other statewide candidates) in the aftermath of the 2022 general election in Arizona. At least Kari Lake's lawyers had the sense to file an actual election contest under Arizona law. What Trump's lawyers and Lake's lawyers lacked, however, was evidence (proof) that any of the alleged failings in the way the elections were conducted effected enough votes (cast or not cast) to change the result of the election.

It's a state law question. Every state has enacted statutes that provide grounds to contest an election. It's called an election contest. Election procedures, which the 2020 and 2022 lawsuits challenged, are, universally (in every state), considered "directory, and not mandatory," after an election. In other words, even when state laws (there are no federal laws, despite what some lawyers will claim) that requires ("shall") this or that to be done in relation to an election, all those "shalls" are irrelevant after an election. Courts (universally) will not overturn an election because some procedural or technical law wasn't followed. The rationale is that the failure of the procedures or technicalities did not influence any voter's vote, unless evidence (proof) to the contrary is adduced.

The rules for election contests in every state, even California, do allow for counting or not counting specific votes or sometimes all votes for specific precincts, when evidence (proof) is presented that those votes were cast illegally or prevented from being cast AND, and this is the big AND, the counting or not counting of those votes changes the outcome of the election. That's a huge barrier to succeeding in an election contest.

Remember the "hanging chads" or "dimpled chads" in the 2000 presidential election in Florida? Even that issue required the examination of every ballot to, purportedly, determine the "will" of the voter.

There are, however, situations where the procedures are considered "mandatory, and not directory" after an election. Those situations typically arise when the failure inherently effects the vote of every voter.

Note that we are not talking about campaigns. Lying and cheating in campaigns is protected by the First Amendment. Even the government using public moneys to wage its own campaign to favor its preferred outcome, as happened in Santa Clara County with Measure A, cannot overturn the outcome of an election.

So what can affect the "will" of the voter (the decision on how to vote) that involves statutorily required procedures? There aren't many things. We can speculate about things that might occur, but we won't. Some lawyers have tried to overturn elections based on materials found in the voter guides. Courts have shut them down. But what about the ballot itself? What if there were something intrinsic to the ballot on which the voter casts a vote? Something illegal. Something that is sanctioned with criminal penalties. Something like electioneering on the ballot. Something like printing the arguments (reasons to vote in the government's favor) right on the ballot.

As we discussed in the previous article, we contend that there is such a case to be made against Proposition 50. The attorney general's ballot title and summary, despite case law and statutory law against it, contained the arguments in favor of voting yes for Proposition 50. The Secretary of State, instead of rejecting the ballot title and summary, as required by law, ordered it to be printed (arguments and all) on the ballots in every county.

All these constitutional challenges in federal courts will go exactly nowhere. None of them will result in the election being overturned, primarily because the lawsuits are based on speculation and not evidence or they are based on issues that do not effect cast votes.

Naive or incompetent or dishonest lawyers, however, can bilk naive clients or naive donors out of their money by making all kinds of constitutional rights violation allegations. The outcome is certain, just like in Issa's pathetic lawsuit. None of those are grounds to overturn the results of an election.

It's a mystery. Don't any of these lawyers know the law? Or is it all about their own interests, whether those interests be money or fame.

Pre-election Lawsuits

Hilton's fairly weak lawsuit was set for a hearing on November 5, 2025. That gave him something to complain about for several weeks. It's likely to be dismissed at the hearing in the Southern District of California.

A federal judge promptly dismissed Issa's lawsuit on October 31, 2025. If you actually want to see how ridiculous the claims were, you can read the filing or the judge's order dismissing the case.

One might ask why was the lawsuit filed in this particular district. It was a case of forum shopping. Judges in the district have ruled favorably to Republican causes in several recent cases. All Issa had to do was find a Texas plaintiff stupid enough to help him out with a relationship to the court district. The dismissal was quite comprehensive. It's unlikely that it will be appealed.

Post-election Lawsuits

Obviously, these haven't been filed yet, so we are only going on what we have heard from the lawyers who are out there ginning up interest in their potential efforts. There are two that we know about. One is allegedly already prepared (with a paying client, we presume) by a wannabe former statewide candidate who works under the banner of the Dhillon Law Group in San Francisco. The other is in the works by The Lex Rex Institute in Long Beach. Both firms claim that they will file federal lawsuits in one of the federal districts in California.

All we know about the potential Dhillon lawsuit is that it will be making constitutional challenges based on the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendment. Yes, you read that right, the Fifteenth -- that's the one that gave the former slaves the privilege to vote in 1865 (before Reconstruction).

The potential Lex Rex lawsuit will make a challenge based on the Fourteenth Amendment. From what we've heard from the lawyer who is out there talking about it, it's going to be based on ballot secrecy. In other words, its about the 1888 fiasco that brought about the implementation of the Australian ballot in the several states.

Lex Rex lawyers think that the holes in the postage-paid (business reply mail "BRM") return ballot envelopes and the thinness (translucence) of the envelopes violate our right (voting is a privilege) to a secret ballot. The premise is that nefarious people (maybe postal workers, maybe election workers, maybe ballot harvesters) can determine how someone voted by examining the unopened BRM envelopes. Of course, they will act accordingly.

Campaign Autopsy

Remember the Republican National Committee ("RNC") autopsy of the 2012 (Obama-Romney) presidential election? It was named the "Growth & Opportunity Project." Get it? G-O-P. How clever.

Here we'll briefly discuss the failings of the various, clearly uncoordinated, campaigns of opponents and the unified campaign of the proponent.

There were many campaigns by opponents. We'll discuss a little about each of the three campaigns that raised some serious money and then about the mish-mash of individual county campaigns. Needless to say, there are different messages, and there-in lies the failure.

The one campaign that is missing from the list is the Donald Trump campaign. That's because it never arose. Trump's big mouth created this mess. He did nothing to fix it. If it weren't for his public call for Republican state legislatures to redistrict, Newsom would not have had such a viable message. Without Trump's call, Prop 50 and the special election would likely not even have been considered.

The bottom line is that "All the King's (Queen's) horses and all the King's (Queen's) men" couldn't put the Republican party in California back together again. The turnout was pathetic.

Charles Munger Jr. (opponent)

Kevin McCarthy (opponent)

McCarthy finally got the last laugh for being ousted as speaker.

Out of the gate, he claimed that he was going to raise $100 million to defeat Prop 50.

He was just joking.

He even got the establishment's favorite former CAGOP chair, Jessica 'Talk is cheap' Patterson to chair his "No On 50 – Stop Newsom’s Power Grab" committee.

He let all those colleagues who voted to oust him as speaker die on the vine.

"Revenge is a dish best served cold." What a guy!

Carl DeMaio/Reform California (opponent)

DeMaio is well-known for his smug statements about political tactics. Like "Father," he always knows best. At the Fall Convention, he was heard saying to an audience that banner-waiving was not a good idea because it would also let nasty Democrats know that there was an election. He said it was better to keep it secret from the bad guys.

He has endlessly praised himself for mailing, allegedly, 1.5 million hand-addressed mailers during the last week of September, first week of October. Each mailer had a "No on 50" insert. The hand-addressing was supposed to have increased the open rate. Some mysteries are never meant to be solved.

We heard several people comment negatively about the cheaply made "No on 50" signs that he was giving out at his Carl DeMaio's the Man bus tour during October and the weekend before the election. We hope he got rid of them all. It would have been a shame to have wasted donor money by over-ordering from his consultant friends.

He was out there beating the bushes for naive donors right up until the eve of the election. You know, the texting account was out of money.

Now he's taking his Prop 50 election autopsy on the road for the remainder of his bus tour. You've gotta hand it to him. "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste," as Rahm Emanuel (Obama's Chief of Staff) famously said.

California Republican Party ("CAGOP") (opponent)

As the former chair, who McCarthy hired to run his campaign, is famous for saying -- "Talk is cheap."

At its Fall Convention, the CAGOP filled its agenda with boogeyman (that's Newsom) talk. There were panels with experts that filled the delegates' minds with visions of sugar plums (Prop 50 talk).

At some point, it hired a field director or coordinator or whatever.

For nearly two months, not a peep out of CAGOP. It was going to let all the county central committees do their thing with door knocking, banner waiving, phone banking, texting, and whatever else they could convince volunteers to do.

Then all of a sudden, about a week ago, some people started seeing mailers in their mail box. The official format for the mailers was the same size as the Newsom campaign mailers. Almost all were thrown in the trash, not even recycled, immediately. The messages were typical inane political fare.

So, after three weeks of voting, the CAGOP actually something in the week before the election.

The person hired, along with the consultants who were tasked with creating, printing, and mailing the mail pieces, made out well. Working-stiff Republicans, California House members with an R after their name, not so much.

CAGOP's statement to the voters in California was, as always, we spend your money where it counts, with our friends. We don't answer to the hoi polloi.

County Party Central Committees (opponents)

Gavin Newsom (proponent)

What was Newsom's message? End Trump's tyranny by flipping the House of Representatives to prevent him pursuing his agenda. The hidden message was that if the House flips, the Democratic majority will have two years to pursue impeachment after impeachment and make Trump the most impeached public official in history, according to the Guinness Book of World Records.

Lawsuit Update: 2025-11-05 3:20 pm

Bottom line: The Dhillon Law Group federal lawsuit will not overturn the will of the voters.

It didn't take long for the CAGOP to make clowns of themselves, uh, take action. The lawsuit (Tangipa v. Newsom, Case 2:25-cv-10616) verges on the ridiculous. (We still stand by our original analysis that the case is not ripe for judicial consideration.)

Newsom's office was just as quick to respond on X. "We haven't reviewed the lawsuit, but if it's from the California Republican Party and Harmeet Dhillon's law firm, it's going to fail. Good luck, losers." The response was attached to a clip of the press conference where Columbo (the lead lawyer, not the famous TV detective) had some technical difficulties. Newsom's right.

We recognized many of the names of the so-called plaintiffs. Most are closely connected with the CAGOP as delegates, county central committee members, or perennial candidates.

It's a run-of-the-mill 42 U.S.C. 1983 civil rights case with a twist. None of the plaintiffs appear to actually be injured.

Lawyers are supposed to be wordsmiths. Dhillon's firm came up with a kind of injury that we'd never heard of or even considered before -- "stigmatic injury." We were well-familiar with stigmata, the wounds commonly known to be suffered by someone who was crucified by the Romans. Jesus Christ's wounds are called stigmata. Some Catholic saints have also been known to have vicariously suffered the stigmata. That's the root of the adjective stigmatic. So, we're to believe that these 19 people are walking around with stigmata resulting from the maps? It's not like the Jews who were forced to wear a yellow Star of David to stigmatize them during the Nazi era in Europe. It's like the maps are a micro-aggression that forces the plaintiffs to feel bad or something. Boohoo. Maybe they all just need a safe space and a cup of soothing tea. It's ridiculous.

So according to Columbo, all 19 of the individual plaintiffs have suffered "stigmatic and representational injury" caused by the Prop 50 maps. Why? Because the maps were "drawn with race as the predominant factor." They suffered these injuries because they live in a congressional district in California and because they plan to vote in 2026.

One might well ask, what the heck is "representational injury" too? But the real issue with injuries in civil rights cases usually centers around what counts as injury. Usually, a plaintiff must demonstrate that they have suffered a concrete and particularized injury, meaning the harm affects them in a personal and individual way, distinct from the generalized grievances shared by a large number of people. This injury must be more than a mere abstract or generalized harm to the public interest; it must be specific to the plaintiff.

We suspect that any judge in the Central District of California will do what the average person would do and decide that the alleged injuries are too speculative to be considered injuries at all.

How much did Dhillon Law Group charge the CAGOP for this? Did CAGOP get a "republican" discount? Ms. Harmeet has made a lot of money for herself over the last five years working on election-related lawsuits that were bound to fail.

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Copyright 2025, Richard Michael. All rights reserved.