Post Prop. 50, California GOP Needs Reality Check

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — As California voters were poised to approve Proposition 50, which creates a temporary gerrymander to help Democrats grab five additional congressional seats in the 2026 midterms, Republican Assembly member Carl DeMaio of San Diego touted his voter ID plan as an antidote. “But fear not — we have an insurance policy, the CA Voter ID Initiative! If enacted, it will make elections competitive again for Republicans,” he said in a video message.

Sure enough, Tuesday’s California vote tallies were overwhelming, with the state’s voters approving the measure 64 percent to 36 percent (as of the latest tally). The vote margin exceeded Democrats’ most optimistic polling, with voters even in some relatively conservative areas (Orange County, the Inland Empire) strongly favoring it. The main opposition came from rural counties in the far north and San Joaquin Valley — conservative areas that will likely be represented now by liberal Democrats.

Yet anyone who believes that Prop. 50 won because of a lack of voter integrity — or who thinks a voter ID initiative will cure the California Republican Party’s problems — is delusional. I have nothing against requiring people to show identification at their polling places, but only as a confidence-boosting measure. Virtually no one goes to a polling place and pretends to be someone else. Believe that’s a big problem if you choose, but election fraud data doesn’t support the conclusion.

And few Californians even show up at the polls any more. More than 80 percent of California voters cast their ballots by mail in the 2024 election. I personally prefer mail-in voting, especially in a state where most elections are dominated by long and complicated ballot initiatives. We can sit down at the table, read the information, fill out our choices and drop them in the mail or at a designated drop box. In California, every voter is automatically sent a ballot. They can choose to go to a polling station if they prefer.

The main problem with California’s voting system isn’t voter fraud, which is minimal by any measure, but the state’s absurd deadlines that lead to delayed counting. As CalMatters reported, “Mail ballots take longer for officials to process than votes at a polling place because of the required steps for officials to verify signatures and confirm that voters have not already cast a ballot somewhere else. The state also allows ballots postmarked by Election Day to be counted even if they arrive up to a week later.”

It’s asinine to count ballots received a week after the election, which leads to hysteria from conspiratorialists who don’t understand that, say, all the late counts are shifting in one direction or another because they come from some heavily partisan district where of course most of the votes will be in one party’s favor.

That undermines election confidence as much as a lack of ID. The 2026 voter ID measure does the following: “Voters would provide a government issued ID for in-person voting or provide last four digits of a government ID for voting by mail.” That’s sensible enough, but it’s not going to revive the fate of California Republicans. Currently, the GOP holds nine of 52 House seats, and that number obviously is going to fall. Democrats have legislative supermajorities and control every statewide constitutional office. Republicans have made some registration gains, but still only represent 25 percent of voters, with Democrats representing 45 percent and Decline to State falling slightly to 22 percent. Donald Trump has low favorability. One can deal in reality or fantasy.

Sure, opponents of Proposition 50 had the stronger arguments. Any number of analyses showed that it will reduce voter representation. California voters approved two initiatives that created an independent redistricting commission and applied its determinations to state legislative races and then later to congressional districts. Ironically, exit polls showed that even those voters who voted “yes” on Prop. 50 strongly favored nonpartisan redistricting.

I’ve written a lot about our state’s poor level of representation, as we actually have too few politicians representing too many residents, but that’s a discussion for another day. Nevertheless, California voters weren’t necessarily ignorant about what they approved. They make head-scratching choices when it comes to politicians, but the state’s voters can be fairly savvy when it comes to initiatives. They routinely are far more conservative in their initiative votes than their candidate votes, as voters routinely reject rent control and tax hikes.

So what gives? California voters generally don’t like Republicans — and they certainly don’t like the current national administration. I’d guess most of them held their collective noses and voted for Proposition 50 because they wanted Democrats to gain seats to battle Trump. Most also saw through Republican hypocrisy. It’s hard to make a principled case against shameless gerrymandering and also remain silent when Republican states do the same. Gov. Gavin Newsom, whose bet on Prop. 50 will surely cement his position as head of the nationwide Trump resistance, clearly made the case that this measure was defensive.

U.S. Rep. Kevin Kiley, R-Rocklin, whose seat has been shredded by the redistricting vote, made the principled (albeit self-interested) case for banning all mid-decade redistricting. But that didn’t go anywhere in Congress after the president urged red states to carve out more GOP seats. Play stupid partisan games and get stupid partisan prizes, and we get the booby prize here in California.

Republicans remain in a pickle here as they must operate in a state where voters should be open to reform ideas after decades of Democratic mismanagement — but are no fans of MAGA. As I see it, the GOP can embrace the election integrity narrative and go all in on a costly voter-ID initiative — or they can deal with reality and spend their time crafting a better message and recruiting better candidates.

Steven Greenhut is Western region director for the R Street Institute. Write to him at sgreenhut@rstreet.org.

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