Conservatives are up in arms about the new ballot title California Attorney General Rob Bonta gave to Proposition 39, the voter ID initiative. They say it’s misleading and designed to rig the vote against a proposal the state’s Democratic Party establishment is dead set against.
I can see why they don’t like it. The ballot title does focus on the negative.
When the measure was first submitted, the attorney general’s office gave it a fairly innocuous title: “Establishes additional voter identification and citizenship verification requirements.”
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But once the measure qualified for the Nov. 3 ballot, Bonta’s office drafted up a new version that’s, shall we say, slightly more dramatic: “Prohibits citizens from voting unless they present government-issued identification.”
Assemblymember Carl DeMaio (R-San Diego), the main proponent of Proposition 39, is furious. He says the description is inaccurate and that Bonta crafted the language to scare people into voting no.
Inaccurate? Not by my reading of the text of the proposed law submitted by DeMaio’s own group: “Each time a voter casts a ballot in person in any election in the State, the voter shall present government-issued identification.” In other words, if you want to vote, you have to show an appropriate ID.
John Boal
But the second claim, that Bonta’s trying to manipulate voters, is entirely possible — and if so, he wouldn’t be the first attorney general to do it.
Over the last three decades, every California attorney general has been accused, credibly in many cases, of skewing ballot language to reflect their position. In 1996, Republican Attorney General Dan Lungren was sued over the title for the anti-affirmative action initiative, Proposition 209, because it didn’t use the words “affirmative action.” His Democratic successor, Bill Lockyer, was accused of “liberal bias” when it came to his ballot descriptions.
In 2008, Democratic Attorney General Jerry Brown was sued when he rewrote the title of Proposition 8 from: “Limit on Marriage Constitutional Amendment” to “Eliminates Right of Same-sex Couples to Marry.” Kamala Harris as AG was criticized over the wording of a pension reform proposal (another initiative DeMaio was involved with.)
Paul Thornton
Xavier Becerra — currently the Democratic frontrunner for governor — was sued many times over the titles his office wrote. But his most egregious one was this outrageously absurd title on a 2018 proposition to repeal the gas tax: “Eliminates recently enacted road repair and transportation funding by repealing revenues dedicated for those purposes.”
Bonta brushed off the criticism by saying the circulating title and summary are often rewritten to make the stakes clear to voters. But clarity can be relative to one’s principles. You can bet that if Republicans were in charge of writing the Proposition 39 title, they would no doubt cast it in a rosy light, like: “Encourages civic participation and supports a healthy democracy by deterring voter fraud.” (Not a stretch; that verbiage comes directly from the initiative text submitted by the proponents).
Voter ID is such a hot-button issue that I doubt the wording on the ballot will affect its outcome on Election Day. But the practice is still odious and quite clearly leads to distrust of the process. There’s a simple fix that has been endorsed by good-government groups: Hand over responsibility to a nonpartisan third party such as the state Legislative Analyst’s Office, which writes clear and nonpolitical summaries of proposed legislation.
But this change would require its own ballot measure — and we can only imagine what title some future attorney general might dream up to discourage voters from supporting it. “Establishes a process that could bankrupt the state, empty its reservoirs, close schools and outlaw kittens and puppies.”
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