Californians: it is critically important to vote yes on Proposition 50 this November.
You may have seen the clamor when the Texas legislature announced it would vote to use a new district map starting with the 2026 election. This map is designed to give the Republican Party a five-seat gain in the House of Representatives. You can explore some more details about it on Princeton’s Gerrymandering Project.
Crucially, these seats will not be gained through voters deciding at the ballot box that the GOP should represent them—instead, the GOP is choosing voters who are statistically more likely to vote for their candidates. This is as anti-democratic as it gets.
Proposition 50 is the best lever Californians can pull to make sure the apportionment of seats in the House ends up as close as possible to the actual popular vote split.
When congressional districts become uncompetitive, the likelihood that the composition of the House of Representatives diverges from the composition of the nationwide popular vote increases.
Combine that with the fact that control of the House of Representatives was decided by less than five seats in all three elections from 2020 to 2024.
It’s very possible that this added structural advantage for the GOP could result in a Democratic popular vote victory and Republican control of the House.
Note that the inverse would be just as bad! Control of the House should always go to the most vote-getting party. Other schemes might be more appropriate for the Senate.
The California Citizens Redistricting Commission was created through 2008’s Proposition 11. 2010’s Proposition 20 gave it the power to draw congressional districts. Prior to this, elected representatives proposed and approved congressional maps that they could then stand to benefit from.
The establishment of the Commission was a hard-won victory for folks who believe that representatives have to earn our votes and the winners of elections should not decide who gets to vote for them next time around. It’s a shame to toss it aside in favor of a map gerrymandered to favor the Democrats.
But Proposition 50 has a built-in expiration date. The Commission would draw a map following the 2030 Census which will replace the temporarily-gerrymandered map advocated for here. This feature is necessary for Proposition 50 to be a valid response to other states’ redrawn maps.
There is no one solution to gerrymandering. We need 50.
Each state draws its congressional maps and determines how its citizens are represented in the House. Gerrymandering ebbs and flows over time, and 2025’s instances are unfortunately some of the most forceful and egregious in recent memory. It’s up to everyone in all 50 states to hold their elected officials responsible for this backslide so that we can break this vicious cycle.
Another thing that’s important to keep in mind is that almost nothing in politics endures. What benefits one party today may hinder it in a decade. Even though this problem seems intractable today, new pathways will be open in a decade or two or three.
In California, your mail-in ballot will be counted if it’s postmarked on or before Election Day, even if it arrives after. But USPS has made a recent announcement highlighting that:
[…] the presence of a postmark (also known as a “cancellation”) on a mailpiece confirms that the Postal Service was in possession of the mailpiece on the date of the postmark’s inscription, the postmark date does not inherently or necessarily align with the date on which the Postal Service first accepted possession of a mailpiece.
USPS explicitly reserves the right to postmark your ballot days after it first enters the system. It’s always been a good idea to mail your ballot in as early as possible, but there’s no reason to wait.
Don’t risk it. If Election Day is just a few days away and you haven’t returned your ballot, drop it off at a polling place to guarantee it gets counted.