Rob Bonta is trying to doom a popular attempt at improving election integrity.
Rob Bonta is trying to doom a popular attempt at improving election integrity.
C alifornia Democrats have proven that they will stop at nothing to block attempts at passing a voter ID law in their one-party state. In 2024, voters in the City of Huntington Beach approved a measure that would require residents to show ID to vote in local elections starting in 2026. The state legislature then promptly passed — and Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law — a bill that barred local governments from instituting such measures.
Now, California’s Democratic attorney general, Rob Bonta — who is responsible for writing a title and a summary for every proposed voter initiative that will appear on the ballot in November — is practicing his own version of monkey-wrench politics. After more than 1.3 million Californians signed petitions to put a voter ID measure on the ballot, Bonta has changed the language in the state’s voter guide in a way that dramatically differs from the petitions that people had signed.
Bonta had originally provided a straightforward description of Proposition 39, as a measure to “establish additional voter identification and citizenship verification requirements.” But the new description reads: “PROHIBITS CITIZENS FROM VOTING UNLESS THEY PRESENT GOVERNMENT-ISSUED IDENTIFICATION.”
Meanwhile, the summary of Proposition 39 claims that the measure, if passed, “invalidates mail ballots that do not have the last four digits of designated government-issued identification number written on envelope” and, once again, that it “prohibits in-person voting without presenting government-issued identification.” The use of such politically charged negative language — describing proposed additional requirements as a prohibition — has doomed several similar measures in the past.
“When Rob Bonta didn’t think we could get the signatures on Prop. 39, he provided a relatively fair ballot title,” Assemblyman Carl DeMaio says. “But now he has changed it to a biased and dishonest one.”
This isn’t the first time that Bonta has made partisan switcheroos in ballot language. Last year, when Newsom put Proposition 50 — a blatant gerrymander of the state’s congressional districts — on the ballot to replace the maps drawn by an independent commission, Bonta was there to help. The title he foisted on voters echoed the main arguments of the gerrymander’s proponents: “AUTHORIZES TEMPORARY CHANGES TO CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT MAPS IN RESPONSE TO TEXAS’ PARTISAN REDISTRICTING.”
Bonta is required by law to provide a “true and impartial” title and summary. He has clearly abused his power. For years, reformers have called for shifting the authority of writing ballot language from the AG to the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office. But such efforts have always been blocked by California’s Democratic legislature. Backers of Proposition 39 plan to sue Bonta. It’s worth keeping in mind, however, that the state’s supreme court comprises liberal appointees who have so far been reluctant to rein in the attorney general’s power.
Polls show that a voter ID requirement is popular with voters. A poll by the Institute of Governmental Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, conducted in April, found that voters approved of the concept by 56 percent to 39 percent. Perhaps this explains why Democrats are hauling out every by-hook-or-by-crook maneuver to stop Proposition 39. You would almost think they believe that they benefit from California’s current, sloppy excuse for a voting system.