Month: October 2026

California General Election 2026 – just vote No (mostly)

November 3, 2026, will be our General Election in California. There are 14 propositions on the ballot this year. Just Vote No

Well, mostly.

There is a strong reason to vote no: legislation is put before the voters in Proposition form because the legislature (elected officials) could not stand to put their name on it. In other words, the proposed legislation is such a stinker that no one who will run for reelection later wants to have this stinky legislation on their permanent record.

$11 billion for housing affordability programs? Oh heck no: my California State Assembly member and State Senate member does not want to be on the record for spending that huge amount of money on something that will probably be another example of government waste. But hey, if this stinker passes because the voters pushed it through, then that’s on them.

That’s just Prop 1. And (mostly) they all stink like that.

Looking at it from the other side, there was nothing stopping my State Assembly member and my State Senate member from getting with the other members and pushing housing affordability programs through the legislature by normal means. If it was a good idea, they’d have already done it! Then they would have told you how wonderful it was and that you should reelect them for more future goodness.

There are exceptions. Sometimes, a citizen initiative placed on the ballot is a good thing.

The classic example is Proposition 13 of 1978. No elected official would ever vote to limit taxation – so Prop 13 had to come from the governed. After Prop 13 passed, the projected income became rock-solid. Because the change in taxation covered every county, and random reassessments became a thing of the past,1 it became almost trivial to project next year’s income. This was good for the California legislature because they could budget well. There haven’t been any fiscal surprises in property tax collection for 47 years.2

Proposition 39 is one I will vote for. It would require a valid government ID to vote. This one is a no-brainer to me. The only people who want unverified voters to be able to vote are people who organize voting fraud. Only criminals dislike honest vote tallies.3

Proposition 43 is one I will vote for. It establishes the same rules for increasing local taxes as the government has to use. In other words, if your local government wants to raise a tax, they are required by law to get a 2/3 vote in favor by all voters, or else the proposal fails. But currently, if a citizen initiative puts a tax-raising proposal on the ballot, it can pass with 50% of the vote (plus 1). Prop 43 will make the playing field level: either 2/3 of the voters agree, or they don’t, no matter how the tax proposal got put in front of them. I favor more consistency and a clearer landscape of what tax proposal passes when.

So there we have it: for twelve propositions I will vote No, and for two, Prop 39 and Prop 43, I will vote Yes.

For elected officials, I’m going to vote against Vince Fong. When it came to the Epstein Files Transparency Act, he (or his office) emailed me that he would rather support the weasel alternative, House Resolution 668, which directed the government to keep with the cover-up. Fong also sent a generic email blast on September 28 containing “Last month, I had the honor of welcoming U.S. Department of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to the Central Valley for a roundtable ….” Okay, yeah, I’m done. I hope Fong loses, and I’ll let my friends know it. Fong also has gotten $46,000 from AIPAC, although that’s comparatively small compared to some politicians. Still, if one doesn’t wish to be called an AIPAC toady, one shouldn’t be an AIPAC toady.

I’m going to vote against Rob Bonta for attorney general. Speaking of protecting criminals, the so-called “Stop Nick Shirley Act” – California Assembly Bill 2624 – was authored by Assemblymember Mia Bonta, Attorney General Rob Bonta’s wife.4 If the attorney general’s wife is a protector of criminals, what does that say about the attorney general?

I don’t really want to vote for Steve Hilton for governor. His campaign was the worst for sending me spam texts begging for support and money. I don’t have a particular person in mind that I want to vote for, though.

  1. And … County assessors could not be bribed to reduce the taxes on their friends, which was happening too. ↩︎
  2. But just because Sacramento can forecast precisely how much their income will be does not mean that they spend wisely. That is a different issue. They’ve been given the tool to know exactly how much they get to spend. They just spend more than they get because they are irresponsible. ↩︎
  3. Oh, hey – look at some of the donors fighting against Prop 43: The California Democratic Party (nearly $5.5 million in campaign donations), M. Quinn Delaney ($1.5 million), Patty Quillin ($1.5 million), SEIU California State Council ($1 million), Dignity CA / SEIU Local 2015 ($1 million), and Reed Hastings ($1 million) (Netflix co-founder; listed separately from Quillin). ↩︎
  4. Nick Shirely posted on February 4, 2026, “California fraud videos coming soon.” Then on February 16, he published a 23-minute video alleging fraud in California. Then on February 20, Mia Bonta introduced AB 2624 so that more fraud videos could not be recorded. ↩︎