(The Center Square) – Proposition 50, California’s mid-decade congressional redistricting initiative, passed with a majority of the vote, according to multiple national news outlets.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Passage seemed imminent at 9:19 p.m. local time Tuesday with 64.7% of voters approving Prop. 50 and 35.3% rejecting it, according to the Secretary of State\u2019s website. Approximately 44.8% of election night precincts had partially reported their numbers by that time.<\/p>\n
The results of the\u00a0special election<\/a>\u00a0on\u00a0Prop. 50<\/a>\u00a0in California will be officially reported by the\u00a0California Secretary of State’s Office<\/a>.<\/p>\n In a sign this wasn\u2019t just any election, an estimated 200 people waited in a long line to cast their vote in the Proposition 50 special election at the Simi Valley Public Library – all within minutes of the polls closing at 8 p.m. Simi Valley is near Los Angeles.<\/p>\n The line stretched from a flagpole past the Simi Valley Police Department through a large civic center to the library, according to those who dropped off their ballots after the sun set on Tuesday.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s very exciting to see the enthusiasm, the results look amazing and California has spoken,\u201d Assemblymember Gail Pellerin, D-Santa Cruz and chair of the Assembly Elections Committee, told The Center Square Tuesday night. \u201cThis is just a really pivotal election.\u201d<\/p>\n Pellerin added that Democrats face more work before the 2026 midterm elections.<\/p>\n \u201cWhile it does give us the opportunity to redistrict to create five seats in Congress that lean more Democratic, we still have work ahead to elect a Democrat to those seats in 2026,\u201d Pellerin told The Center Square. \u201cSo this momentum, this excitement, this fight we have on our hands is not going to end.\u201d<\/p>\n Secretary of State Shirley Weber, a Democrat, previously said she hoped that voter turnout for the Nov. 4 special election in California would bring out 60% to 70% of registered voters<\/a>.<\/p>\n With the passage of Prop. 50, many rural, mostly conservative areas in the state would be grouped with large, urban areas that lean Democratic. One such community is Lodi, just north of Stockton.<\/p>\n The entire city of nearly 70,000 people is currently part of the 9th Congressional District. Under Prop. 50, Lodi will be divided into three congressional districts, with one being looped in with part of Sacramento. The other two will be looped in with cities and communities in the San Francisco Bay Area, according to a map on the California State Assembly\u2019s Elections Committee website<\/a>.<\/p>\n The state\u2019s Legislative Analyst\u2019s Office<\/a> shows that the special Prop. 50 election in California cost $200,000, a one-time expense, which counters Prop. 50 critics\u2019 claims that the election cost California taxpayers an estimated $200 million – a figure shown in arguments against Prop. 50<\/a> on the Secretary of State\u2019s website.<\/p>\n The Prop. 50<\/a> push to re-draw congressional districts mid-decade follows Texas\u2019 recently-redrawn congressional districts<\/a>, which Newsom has publicly said<\/a> was a bow to political pressure from President Donald Trump to create five new seats in Congress for Republicans. Newsom, who pushed for California\u2019s own redistricting effort this year, said California would even the scales with its newly-created five House seats that are widely expected to be filled by Democrats under Prop. 50.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re not just drawing maps. We\u2019re drawing a line in the sand,\u201d Newsom said on CNN in October<\/a>. \u201cWe\u2019re going to win on Proposition 50. We are going to fight fire with fire.\u201d<\/p>\n However, the five California Republican congressmen who stand to lose their seats with the passage of Prop. 50 – Kevin Kiley, R-Rocklin; Doug LaMalfa, R-Yuba City; Darrell Issa, R-San Diego County; Ken Calvert, R-Riverside County, and David Valadao, R-Bakersfield – see the initiative as a power grab from the Democratic Party.<\/p>\n \u201cMy message to voters is simply that if you disagree with gerrymandering, then you should vote no,\u201d Kiley said on CBS News in October<\/a>. \u201cThis proposition is about one thing and one thing alone, and that is to bring California back to the era of political gerrymandering.\u201d<\/p>\n Most of those five congressmen took to social media on Tuesday to urge voters in California to vote against Prop. 50.<\/p>\n \u201cDon\u2019t let Democrats silence your voice and eliminate citizen redistricting in California,\u201d wrote Calvert on his official Facebook page<\/a>.<\/p>\n Kiley, LaMalfa, Calvert, Issa and Valadao were all unavailable for comment on Tuesday night.<\/p>\n Early polling in the weeks before the election showed that more likely voters in California were in favor of Prop. 50 than likely voters were against the initiative, according to an Emerson College poll<\/a>. Republican lawmakers in California told The Center Square on Tuesday night that more could have been done to sway voters against the mid-decade redistricting effort.<\/p>\n \u201cThe data that I\u2019ve seen early on, they don\u2019t show the most positive sense for those who are no on 50,\u201d Assemblymember David Tangipa, R-Fresno and member of the Assembly Elections Committee, told The Center Square before election results were reported. \u201cI think we can run a better campaign, there\u2019s a lot of groups we worked together with, and there\u2019s more we could\u2019ve been doing to really push it as much as we can.\u201d<\/p>\n Both state district and congressional district lines in California are normally drawn by the independent California Citizens Redistricting Commission<\/a>, which draws both boundaries after the U.S. census, which happens once every 10 years. The commission was created after California voters authorized its creation in 2008. That initial vote gave the commission the task of drawing state Assembly and Senate lines. Through a 2010 vote, the commission\u2019s mandate was expanded to include drawing congressional district lines.<\/p>\n