SAN DIEGO, Calif. — California voters overwhelmingly approved a ballot measure Tuesday that allows the state to temporarily redraw its congressional districts to favor Democrats ahead of the midterm elections, dismissing the maps the independent redistricting commission drew to prevent that very thing.
The passage of Proposition 50 marks a major political victory for Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA), the frontrunner for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination. Newsom framed the Proposition 50 fight as one between California and President Donald Trump. It has allowed him to expand his national profile and draw donations from more than 107,000 individual donors.
The Associated Press called the race at 8:01 p.m. PT, as the polls closed.
“We’re proud of the work that the people of the state of California did tonight to send a powerful message to an historic president,” Newsom said. “Donald Trump is an historic president. He is the most historically unpopular president in modern history. In every critical category, Donald Trump is underwater. He promised to make us healthier. He promised to make us wealthier. We’re sicker and poor, and he fundamentally understands that.”
Proposition 50 was the sole item on the statewide, special-election ballot. Supporters had turned it into a referendum on Trump, while opponents called the measure an underhanded power grab by Democrats.
“One thing [Trump] never counted on, though, was the state of California,” Newsom said. “Instead of agonizing over the state of our nation, we organized in an unprecedented way, in a 90-day sprint, people from all over the United States of America contributed their voices and their support for this initiative. We stood tall and we stood firm in response to Donald Trump’s recklessness, and tonight, after poking the bear, this bear roared with an unprecedented turnout in a special election with an extraordinary result.”
Voters across California were acutely aware of the role the state is playing in the national redistricting war, which began after Trump demanded Texas Republicans redraw their maps earlier this summer to give the GOP five more seats. In response, Newsom and state Democrats passed new maps in the legislature.
One voter told the Washington Examiner, “To be transparent, I am still confused a little bit on it, but I am glad that California is fighting back against Trump.”
San Diego voter Olivia Brielle said she knows “two wrongs don’t make a right, but that politics is a messy game too.” Brielle said she didn’t know if she would be voting in Tuesday’s special election if the fight was framed around anyone other than Trump.
“To be honest, I’m not a big fan of Newsom’s,” she said, adding that she disliked Trump more.
California’s constitution requires that an independent redistricting commission draw the map and that voters approve any changes. That means even though the state legislature passed the map, voters had to choose to use it for the 2026, 2028, and 2030 elections.
“No one likes gerrymandering,” University of California-Riverside political science professor Shaun Bowler told the Washington Examiner. “It’s not a popular thing. So everybody’s conflicted on it in the sense of, ‘Well, it’s not a good idea’ but they’re asking themselves, what’s the bigger bad? And for a lot of voters, Trump is the bigger bad because Texas and the Republican Party have made this overt, open, frank, in full daylight attempt to essentially gerrymander an election in the interests of Donald Trump. And so people are going to sort of hold their nose and vote for Prop 50.”
The new map put three Republican-held seats into safe Democratic hands and turned two others into those that lean Democratic. Specifically, the map changes districts held by Reps. Doug LaMalfa (R-CA) and Kevin Kiley (R-CA) in Northern California. In Southern California, Reps. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Ken Calvert (R-CA) would be at risk, and in the Central Valley, Rep. David Valadao (R-CA) will now have a much harder time getting reelected.
All five Republican lawmakers at risk of losing their seats told the Washington Examiner that the process and speed by which the maps were created and passed undermined democratic values.
Issa told the Washington Examiner that he wasn’t going anywhere.
“California is my home and it’s worth fighting for,” Issa said.
Kiley said in a statement that the election “fell well short of the ideals we ought to strive for in our democratic process,” and vowed to continue to fight partisan gerrymandering.
Earlier in the day, Trump called the California special election a “giant scam” and claimed it was “rigged.”
“The Unconstitutional Redistricting Vote in California is a GIANT SCAM in that the entire process, in particular the Voting itself, is RIGGED,” Trump posted on Truth Social minutes after polling stations opened across California.
Newsom dismissed the president’s claims on X as “the ramblings of an old man that knows he’s about to LOSE.”
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt claimed, without providing examples, that California was receiving ballots in the name of undocumented immigrants who could not legally vote.
Last week, the Justice Department announced it would dispatch election monitors to five California counties: Orange, Los Angeles, Riverside, Kern, and Fresno.
Attorney General Pam Bondi said the move would “ensure the American people get the fair, free, and transparent elections they deserve.”
California Attorney General Rob Bonta, in response, pledged to send the state’s own army of election watchers to watch the DOJ’s watchers.
California GOP Chairwoman Corrin Rankin, a former Trump campaign surrogate, asked fellow Californian and Justice Department civil rights head Harmeet Dhillon to send the monitors. Newsom called the move “a bridge too far.”
Bonta agreed, speculating that Trump was preparing to challenge the possible passage of Proposition 50. He said Trump’s efforts foreshadow attempts to challenge future elections. Orange County Registrar Bob Page confirmed to the Washington Examiner that a monitor from the DOJ and two from Bonta’s office had been in the county.
