Jenny Farrell, executive director of the League of Women Voters of California, spoke with California Black Media (CBM). She said Proposition 39 is unnecessary because, in her view, California already has safeguards in place to protect elections.<\/p>\n
\u201cProp 39 is part of President Trump’s voter suppression agenda designed to make voting more difficult, undermine confidence in our elections, and narrow who gets to participate in our democracy,\u201d Farrell said. \u201cCalifornia’s elections are already secure, and we already verify voters. There is no problem to solve.\u201d<\/p>\n
Farrell also shared that the in-person identification requirement would disproportionately affect groups that are less likely to have the required forms of government-issued identification.<\/p>\n
The debate has also moved into the courts. Proposition 39\u2019s backers, led by lead plaintiff Assemblymember Carl DeMaio (D-San Diego), filed a lawsuit in Sacramento County Superior Court against Attorney General Rob Bonta and Secretary of State Shirley N. Weber. They argue that the measure\u2019s revised ballot title and summary are biased and violate state election laws requiring impartial language. The original title stated that the measure \u201cestablishes additional voter identification and citizenship verification requirements.\u201d The revised title says it \u201cprohibits citizens from voting unless they present government-issued identification.\u201d<\/p>\n
The lawsuit asks the court to order the state to replace the revised description before voter-information materials are finalized.<\/p>\n
Bonta\u2019s office defended its handling of the measure, noting that ballot language routinely changes after initiatives qualify. \u201cWe take our duty to prepare a title and summary and ballot label seriously, and we are confident the court will agree we have faithfully executed that duty here,\u201d a spokesperson for Bonta\u2019s office said. The court\u2019s decision could determine how Proposition 39 is described to millions of voters in the state\u2019s official voter guide.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis requirement would disproportionately burden people who are less likely to have the sort of ID that Prop 39 requires \u2014 including Black Californians and other communities of color, women and others who have changed their names, seniors, voters with disabilities, and Californians who move frequently,\u201d Farrell said. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe bottom line is that we should be protecting every eligible voter’s freedom to cast a ballot safely and privately \u2014 not creating new obstacles that make it harder for their voices to be heard,\u201d she added. <\/p>\n
The California Democratic Party announced on Aug. 2 that it voted to oppose Prop 39 at its Summer Executive Board Meeting held in San Diego. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jenny Farrell, executive director of the League of Women Voters of California, spoke with California Black Media (CBM).…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":424346,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8,400,989,6095],"class_list":["post-424345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-california-politics","tag-elections","tag-voting-rights"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=424345"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424345\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/424346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=424345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=424345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=424345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}