Californians headed to the polls on Tuesday to decide on Proposition 50, a ballot measure of national significance that could play a major role in determining which party controls the US House of Representatives after the 2026 midterms.
If voters approve the proposal, the state will halt the work of its independent redistricting commission and allow the legislature to redraw congressional districts to carve out five additional Democratic congressional seats. The effort is a direct attempt to neutralize Texas’s partisan gerrymander, undertaken at the request of Donald Trump, to create several new safe Republican districts.
Gavin Newsom, the California governor, has said Prop 50 will allow the state to fight back against Trump’s agenda and “efforts to undermine the democratic process”.
Prominent Democrats, like former president Barack Obama, have urged voters to back the measure.
“California, the whole nation is counting on you,” Obama said in an ad for Prop 50. “Democracy is on the ballot.”
Polls opened at 7am local time, and are closing at 8pm. As of Monday evening, 29% of ballots mailed to registered voters had been returned through early voting.
The proposition is popular and appears poised to pass. A poll from CBS News found that 62% of likely voters said they would vote yes on the proposition while an Emerson College poll indicated that 57% of likely voters in California supported it.
The campaign against the measure is far outmatched by pro-Prop 50 groups. Last week, Newsom told supporters they could stop donating: “We have hit our budget goals and raised what we need in order to pass Proposition 50.”
The measure, which advocates have portrayed as a way to push back against the president, has benefited from how deeply unpopular Trump and his agenda are in the state. Kamala Harris won nearly 60% of the vote in 2024 and the state is overwhelmingly Democratic, with the exception of its interior and far north.
The president’s targeting of the state with both Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids that have left communities across California in fear and the deployment of the military in Los Angeles has fueled opposition against Trump. A survey conducted by the Public Policy Institute of California earlier this month found that just 26% of adults and 33% of likely voters approve of Trump’s performance as president.
In the lead-up to Tuesday’s election, the US Department of Justice announced it would send federal election observers to counties across the state, including Los Angeles, Kern, Riverside, Orange and Fresno, in order “to ensure transparency, ballot security and compliance with federal law”.
Days later, Trump, who has said little about Prop 50, repeated false claims that the 2020 election he lost to Joe Biden was rigged and to “watch how totally dishonest” the proposition vote would be. Trump also said there should be no mail-in ballots or early voting.
