When the majority of Californians get together to attack democratic safeguards in the name of preserving a balance, we aren’t really getting a compromise. Instead, it’s a loud, blatant signal that the system is eating itself. Proposition 50’s passage signifies that political polarization has gotten to the point that people on both sides of the ideological spectrum are willing to dismantle our systems of representative democracy. More specifically, Prop. 50 overturns California’s tradition of using an independent redistricting commission to prevent partisan manipulation for a few years.
This should scare people.
If unaware, Prop. 50 is a “countermeasure” against mid-decade redistricting actions taken by other states in order to secure short-term partisan advantages by gerrymandering district lines mid-decade. This will openly rig the 2026 midterm elections to secure five seats for democrats in the House of Representatives. Although the new maps are temporary, delineating on the ballot that after 2030 the California Redistricting Commission will go back to drawing fair electoral maps, they are incredibly gerrymandered.
On November 4th, Californians approved this new map with 64% in favor of the measure passing. The new map has been drawn specifically with the intention of eradicating Northern California GOP seats held by Doug LaMalfa and Kevin Kiley, as well as squeezing Southern California’s Representatives Young Kim and Ken Calvert into one district. Also in Southern California and the Central Valley, the new districts will tip the scales out of favor for Republicans Darrell Issa and David Valadao. The key issue is not which party benefits from such changes, but that the districts are being engineered to predetermine electoral outcomes, thereby usurping the will of communities affected.
This shift illustrates how Prop 50 disrupts the representative relationship between voters and those elected to speak for them. The two GOP members who together represent the whole of Northern California – Doug LaMalfa and Kevin Kiley – will now have their districts redrawn, changing their historically comfortably safe Republican seats to areas with Democratic advantages of 8 and 11 points, respectively. Rural Modoc County, which voted 77.5% against Prop 50, will now be linked to the whole of coastal California down to urban (and liberal) Marin County. The goal here is straightforward: gain a partisan advantage. Fairness becomes defined not by our own democratic norms but by a refusal to be outmaneuvered.
However, this tradeoff reveals something deeper than just political tactics. It exposes how there has been a mental shift in how both parties view democratic institutions. Constraints set in place by such institutions, such as independent redistricting commissions, are designed to ensure the highest level of equality possible. Yet, these constraints turn into obstacles to overcome when electorally convenient. And once hurdled, one side will have a clear advantage. Republicans did it first, Democrats responded. Legislature on both sides advertised it as “reactions” to something the others did, but it all culminates in the fact that we have started racing to the bottom. What makes this really troubling is that this is a bipartisan effort to erode democracy. One party is not attacking democratic norms while the other stands tall to defend them. Both sides are now treating things like equal access to representation as expendable because it becomes a tool.
Republicans make up 23.9% of registered California voters and 20% of the seats in Congress. Yet after the redistricting and 2026 elections, Republicans are projected to hold only 4 seats, 7%, of California’s representation. Northern California, as aforementioned, and which overwhelmingly opposed this measure, will not have any Republican representation. It makes up the highest concentration of California Republicans. These are not abstract principles at stake. Real people will see their economic and cultural interests vanish from Congress.
Representative democracy depends on voters trusting their elected officials to share their values and advocate for their interests. Political scientists call this “descriptive representation,” and it is essential for legitimate governance. The California Independent Citizens’ Redistricting Commission was created specifically to preserve this bond by preventing gerrymandering and creating districts where the most people could feel comfortable with their representation. And so far, it has worked. California, the big, diverse state that it is, has a large pool of diverse interests represented in Congress. But Prop 50 dismantles this protection.
The rhetoric around Prop 50 was all about how it was a necessary response to Republican gerrymandering happening elsewhere. But what happens when “necessary response” becomes “acceptable political strategy”? Newsom is already calling for other states to follow California’s lead and redraw their maps. When retaliation becomes the norm and vindictive politics becomes standard practice instead of being a reluctant bending of the rules, we start losing democracy. This is how democratic backsliding works. There is no one moment of total collapse; there are smaller steps that seem justifiable when you look at them with a small picture lens. We can continue to tell ourselves that bending the rules is just in the overall defense of democracy, but every time we allow an expectation for our side, it becomes a tool available to everyone. The argument shifts from “this is wrong” and “this has to be done,” to “this is just how it is.”
The irony of these tactics is that they accelerate the very polarization which they claim to combat. When rural Californians see their representation eliminated through gerrymandering, they are not going to roll over and agree that it was what the Democratic Party had to do. They will absolutely believe that they have just become victims of a system rigged against them. Republicans in other states are unlikely to see this as a justified retaliatory measure, but instead as an attack. It’s a cycle: polarization justifies the need to break norms, which then increases polarization, and justifies more norm-breaking. Eventually, the rules go out the window.
I voted for Prop 50 because I recognized the stakes. But supporting it does not change the fact that the passage of this measure represents a weakening of Americans’ commitment to democracy. If both parties continue to take swings at each other and continue to dismantle democratic customs in the hopes that they will gain a partisan advantage, the United States will simply continue to become further polarized and divisive. When we set undemocratic precedents with the argument that it is in defense of the system as a whole, we start rewriting that very system as a whole. Fairness becomes defined not by our own democratic norms, but by a refusal to be outmaneuvered.
Michelle Obama’s famous line, “When they go low, we go high,” captured the essence of the Democratic Party for nearly a decade. Proposition 50 marks the abandonment of that principle. When they go low, we have now declared that we will also go low, even if that means discarding institutional norms. Once both parties accept that logic, then it will become apparent that there is no floor, and we will go lower.
Featured Image Source: LA Times
