Your Moral Duty to Vote in California
Detailing why we have to vote for Proposition 50 in California, regardless of whether you're a Democrat or Republican.
To understand Proposition 50, you can’t start with Texas and gerrymandering. This began in 2020:
In 2020, Donald Trump did something unprecedented in American history: he blatantly and illegally tried to change the presidential election results. First, he called Governor Brian Kemp of Georgia to create voters who did not exist. When that failed, Trump launched the alternate slate of electors scheme, which is similarly unprecedented, far more criminal, but less understood by the broader public.
Our electoral college is a very old and outdated system based on when state legislators would send people known as electors to vote for president instead of a direct vote of the people. Now, we the people vote for the president, and our state legislators ceremonially send electors representing our votes to tally them in Washington, with the Vice President giving the final sign-off.
Trump and Rudy Guiloni tried to override the votes of the American people by lobbying Republican state representatives in swing states that voted for Joe Biden to not send the electors that would vote for Biden, but an “alternative slate” that would vote for Trump. This plot got quite far but failed because Trump’s Vice President, Mike Pence, refused to accept the alternate slates, because he was a Republican who was loyal to our Constitution, not Trump. Trump then sicced thousands of protesters onto the Capitol with the explicit intent of coercing Pence into overriding the election or lynching him if he refused.
This is corruption unheard of in modern American history, and many of Trump’s lackies went to prison or were convicted over it (and he pardoned all of them this year). Social media, from the top down, algorithmically replaced bad memories of this plot with pro-Trump memes for the famously inattentive and short-memory span American public. By 2024, the shock had become numb, and the man who launched the biggest attack on American democracy since the Confederates declared secession in 1861 was re-elected in 2024.
Here’s where Proposition 50 becomes relevant. Suppose in an alternative universe that Trump had a loyalist like J.D. Vance as Vice President in 2020 instead of Mike Pence. Suppose J.D. Vance agreed to override the official electors for Trump’s fake and criminal electors. Suppose that several red states decided to override their Trump-voting electors with another undemocratic slate for Biden, counter-balancing the election back to its rightful outcome.
This is what Proposition 50 is attempting to do.
The current gerrymandering crisis is Trump re-doing his attack on democracy, but because of his successful 2024 election, he has been granted total criminal immunity by the Supreme Court. This year, Trump called Governor Greg Abbott of Texas to find him votes. This time, by using gerrymandering — the act of drawing congressional boundaries in unfair ways to guarantee a party victory — to suppress, nullify and segregate the votes of urban, minority and college-educated white voters in Houston, Austin, Dallas and Fort Worth.
Gerrymandering is how many Republican-majority states maintain majorities even when in the national or local minority. Conservatives started using gerrymandering en masse in the South to compensate for the death of Jim Crow laws and continuing the disenfranchisement of Black voters. Today, it’s almost exclusively practiced in Republican states, save for Illinois.
States that ban gerrymandering and draw congressional maps through fair, nonpartisan commissions are 100% Democratic or swing states, including California. This is why Californians must vote on Prop. 50 rather than accept a decree by the legislature, like in Texas. There was a bill to ban gerrymandering nationwide and mandate that all election maps be drawn by nonpartisan fair commissions that passed the Democratic-majority House of Representatives in 2021 on a party-line vote (all Democrats in favor, all Republicans against), but it did not have 60 votes in the Senate to proceed. Democrats wanted to abolish the filibuster to pass the bill on a simple majority vote, but Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema blocked it.
The Republican-run Texas state legislature, fanatically loyal to Trump, re-drew its congressional maps right before next year’s midterms to prevent a Democratic retaking of Congress. Their maps shrink the proportional voices of urban and suburban dwellers who are disproportionately Hispanic, Black, queer, or White people with college degrees and are more liberal. Texas Democrats in the legislature then fled the state to not allow a quorum to approve these new maps, begging a brave blue state to counter-balance Texas and restore their voice.
After a brief period of cowardly blue states comforting themselves in moralist appeasement, Gavin Newsom and the California legislature stepped forward to offer support to the marginalized of Texas. Proposition 50 will counter-balance the 5 Democratic votes Texas stole by adding 5 Democratic districts in California, temporarily suspending our fair and nonpartisan district system.
Other Republican-run states, astonished that feckless liberals are for once not engaged in suicidal pacifism, have announced that they will suppress their city dwellers and non-white voters even harder, irrespective of California’s decision. Whereas Proposition 50 is merely temporary and ceases once Texas stops its hardcore gerrymander — not even all gerrymandering, just Trump’s commissioned 5 additional Republican seats — red states have unapologetically decided to enact one-party rule in Congress.
Trump has now successfully gotten enough red states to add 12 additional Republicans to Congress ahead of the 2026 midterms, chosen by Trump’s gerrymandered districts and not the people. No red state will put its maps up for vote like California and most blue states are still pretending that the way to beat a rigged election is to play fairly. Despite Trump’s unpopularity growing rapidly and voters itching to replace Trump loyalist Republicans in Congress in 2026, Trump’s gerrymandering will keep him and his party in power, irrespective of the American people’s voice.
If Proposition 50 passes, this will reduce the Republicans’ gerrymandering advantage to about 7 additional seats. The American people will have a non-zero chance of flipping the House in 2026 if Democrats overperform. If Proposition 50 fails, Trump will have nothing to stop him from stealing the 2028 election, and elections will cease to matter.
That is what Californians will vote on come November. Many of you reading this have received your ballots by now. As with trials of the past, the forces of democracy today must deal with a clique of appeasers — some mix of MAGA supporters who support gerrymandering and honest people who are easily fooled — telling you not to vote for Prop 50.
I’ve heard so many people, particularly infrequent voters in California with the privilege of fair voting rights, argue that this is a cynical attempt to make Newsom look good. So what? Many actors in politics are conducting politics rather than practicing pure ideology, but that doesn’t invalidate the merits of the proposal.
Gavin Newsom didn’t ask for Proposition 50, the disenfranchised people of Texas asked for Proposition 50. When you don’t vote or vote no, that’s who you’re turning on your back on, not Gavin Newsom. Their representatives literally fled their homes over this while Californians sat comfortably. They don’t get a chance to vote directly on whether they should engage in Trump’s crimes. Californians do.
I have a moral obligation to vote for Prop 50. My family still lives in Texas. They lost their power to choose who represents them in Congress. The power to vote is what my ancestors fought for in the Civil War; what my family, and thousands of others, journeyed across a continent from the violence of the South to California to obtain; what thousands marched and died for to see enshrined in federal law.
I don’t have to do even a fraction of what they did. Instead, we can take 30 seconds to make a pen mark, lick an envelope, sign a signature, and walk a block or two to the mailbox. If you can’t defend democracy, you don’t deserve democracy. Anything but a Yes on 50 is nothing more than a green light to Trump’s planned election theft in 2028. Trump and his goons are depending on you to console yourself with liberal self-righteousness and not fight back.
I would say if you’re No on 50 that you should move to Texas, ideally trading places with a Texan who values the right to vote and could use the legal protections Californians take for granted, and embrace living in a state that explicitly hates you and keeps you from voting. But there’s no need: If Trump and the Republicans keep the Congress, nothing is stopping them from appointing Trump in 2028. Remember, it was only honorable Republicans like Mike Pence and Brian Kemp that stopped him last time.
Prop. 50 is temporary, unsavory but necessary. It’s not about being pro one party. It is about your patriotic duty to defend the right to vote. Period. Republicans and Democrats should compete fairly and should not cower to authoritarianism.
