The dust hasn’t even settled on Proposition 50, but another proposed initiative for voters to decide is already in the works.
Orange County attorney James V. Lacy filed a proposal with the California attorney general’s office this week for an initiative that would scale back the mid-cycle congressional redistricting plan approved by voters this week.
Proposition 50 makes changes to California’s congressional maps for the 2026, 2028 and 2030 elections. The goal is to give California Democrats an advantage in five more House races for the upcoming midterms, and the subsequent two elections, to offset similar gerrymandering by Republicans in other states.
Lacy’s proposal would ask voters if they’d like to restrict the new congressional maps only to the 2026 elections. The congressional districts already established by California’s independent commission would be used in the 2028 and 2030 elections, the proposal states.
Calling it “a pretty simple proposition,” Lacy said the idea is to restore the congressional lines already drawn by the independent commission in time for the 2028 election and reinforce that future maps will also be drawn by the commission rather than the state legislature.
“Since Proposition 50 restores the commission in 2032, why should we wait? We can accept that voters made the change for 2026, but why wait for 2032?” said Lacy, who voted no on Proposition 50 but was not involved in any of the campaigns that attempted to defeat it.
The Dana Point resident also said there is some concern, too, that the state legislature could “turn around and take away the temporary nature of Proposition 50” and again draw future congressional maps.
Representatives for the Assembly speaker and Senate president pro tem did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The attorney general’s office — which is responsible for preparing a title and summary for proposed initiative measures — is accepting comments on the initiative through Dec. 5.
Once the attorney general’s office gives the OK, those behind the proposed initiative can begin collecting signatures to qualify it for the ballot. Lacy said they will need to collect more than 800,000 signatures and hope to get it on the November 2026 ballot.
In the meantime, California Republicans filed a lawsuit earlier this week to stop the new maps from taking effect. They alleged that Proposition 50 unconstitutionally gerrymandered congressional districts and are asking a judge to stop the maps’ implementation while the case plays out in court.
As of Thursday afternoon, more than 8 million votes had been counted, per the California secretary of state’s office, with nearly 64% of them (nearly 5.23 million) in favor of Proposition 50 and about 36% (or almost 3 million) in opposition.
Lacy was recently heavily involved in another election-related ballot measure: Measure DD in Santa Ana last year, which would have granted noncitizens the right to vote in local elections if it had passed. Lacy successfully sued earlier in the campaign to have the ballot language rewritten, arguing that it was misleading to voters.