Newsom Signs Law To Simplify Ballot Language For Referendums

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law Friday a proposal that will make ballot language on statewide referendums easier to understand.

AB 421 will swap the "yes "or "no" question on a referendum to instead ask voters if they want to “keep” or “overturn a law.” It also requires a referendum to list the funders who placed it on the ballot.

Majority Leader of the California Assembly Isaac Bryan (D-Los Angeles) authored the bill. He says the bill will empower voters.

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"Often people have to vote on a referendum, and they don't know what a referendum is," he said. "They don't know what it does, and they're not sure what their vote means, and so this is a bill to clean up this a hundred-year-old process and re-empower voters."

Why the bill was created

Last year, the California legislature passed SB 1137, a law banning new oil and gas wells near homes, schools and residential areas, and AB 257, a bill that would create a fast food council to set wages and work safety standards.

But the oil and fast-food industries were able to send those bills to the referendum process by spending nearly $34 million combined on the signature-collecting process.

Mabel Tsang is the political director for the California Environmental Justice Alliance, a statewide coalition of environmental justice organizations. She says corporations were using referendums to override new laws.

"The referendum process needed to be reformed," she said. "Because its been corporate loopholes finding another way to undo policies that impact communities of color and low-income communities that are the hardest hit by the climate crisis, the public health and safety from from oil and gas drilling."

Bryan, who represents constituents living near the largest urban oil field in the country — the Inglewood Oil Field, says people have been fighting for decades to hold oil companies accountable.

"People who live near the oil field, they die sooner," he said. "They have higher rates of heart conditions. They have higher asthma rates for their children."

Not all are on board

The California Chamber of Commerce, which champions employers and business interests, opposes the bill. It says the bill sets a "very dangerous precedent"

California Assemblymember Bill Essayli (R-Riverside) also opposes the bill. He says AB 421 makes it harder for voters to exercise their constitutional right over the legislature.

"This bill is designed to make it harder for the people of this state to pass a referendum, to qualify and to pass it," he said on the Assembly floor. "That is wrong and it is an attack on our democracy."

But Bryan says under the current referendum process, corporations and lobbyists can override everyday people's and civic institutions' work.

He says for the first time in California's history, more women are in office than ever before. As well as the largest Black, LGBTQ+ and Latino caucuses.

"Now that the People's House more accurately reflects the people of California," he said. "The kind of policy coming out of here is centered on everyday Californians and less on concentrated special interests."