On Nov. 4, 2025, Californian voters approved Proposition 50, also known as Election Rigging Response Act, allowing an independent committee to temporarily redraw the congressional district map in favor of the Democrats ahead of the 2026 Midterm elections. The measure passed with 63.9 percent of the voters in favor of it, which was a decisive win for the supporters of the proposition.
Voting results indicate general support for Prop 50 in coastal and southern counties, while opposition from northern counties. The proposition saw the biggest support in San Francisco County with “Yes” votes at 80.6 percent. In contrast, Lassen County saw “No” votes at 80.1 percent. In Riverside County, it was highly contested with “Yes” votes at 56.7 percent and “No” votes at 43.7 percent of voters.
General dissatisfaction with the Trump administration has been the primary motivation for the majority of the voters that voted in favor of Prop 50. According to CNN, more than 90 percent of California voters, including those who voted in favor of the proposition, indicated they’d prefer a state congressional district line to be drawn by a non-partisan committee, but that 82 percent of the voters who voted for the proposition view it as a way to counter the changes led by the Republicans in other states including Texas.
More than 60 percent of the “Yes” voters also said that the Trump Administration’s immigration policies have gone too far and that Governor Newsom should not cooperate with President Trump in their effort to enforce such policies. In an interview with NBC, political analyst Dan Schnur said that special elections “tend to have much lower turnout” but this election saw an unprecedented turnout as “Gavin Newsom and his allies recast this initiative, not about issues about drawing legislative or congressional districts, but rather as a referendum on Donald Trump.”
Governor of California Gavin Newsom, one of the most vocal advocates of Prop 50, said in his speech following the victory that it was “not just a victory for the Democratic party, but a victory for the United States of America and the principles that our Founding Fathers lived and died for,” and that it sends a message to President Donald Trump who Newsom called out as “the most historically unpopular president in modern history.”
Opponents of Prop 50 have voiced their dissatisfaction towards the election result as well. President Trump made a post on Truth Social claiming the election was a “giant scam” and that “the entire process, in particular the voting itself, is rigged.” Californian Republicans have also filed a lawsuit against the proposition the day after the election, arguing that it “violates the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection under the law and the right under the 15th Amendment to not have one’s vote abridged on account of race.” As a response to this, Newsom’s office responded on X, “Good luck losers.”
Governor Newsom believes that the advantage the Democrats have gained which effectively cancels out Texas Redistricting could potentially be the “de facto end Donald Trump’s presidency as we know it” in the following 2026 Midterm elections “the minute speaker [Hakeem] Jeffries gets sworn in as speaker of the House of Representatives.”
