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As expected, Gov. Gavin Newsom today called for a Nov. 4 Special Election to amend the state constitution, giving politicians the power to manipulate the lines of their election districts. In response, CA State Assemblymember Carl DeMaio vowed to fight back and lead a campaign to defeat the plan at the ballot box through his Reform California movement.
“California politicians are using Trump as the window dressing to advance a corrupt and dishonest scheme to end fair elections in our state by eliminating the non-partisan Independent Citizens’ Redistricting Commission process to draw election districts,” DeMaio said.
“This is a blatant attempt to rig elections by allowing politicians to choose voters rather than letting voters choose politicians – and if this measure passes, the independent Citizens’ Redistricting process will be dead forever,” DeMaio warned.
DeMaio emphasized that state politicians strongly opposed the citizens’ effort advanced by California voters in 2010 that explicitly removed redistricting power from politicians through two voter-approved initiatives. Newsom’s proposal would reverse that, handing map-drawing power back to the very politicians voters said they couldn’t trust.
“I plan to spend every day fighting Gavin Newsom’s assault on democracy through this partisan redistricting scheme – and we believe we have a comprehensive plan to stop him,” DeMaio pledged.
DeMaio announced that the 10,000 volunteers he has recruited statewide to collect signatures for the CA Voter ID Initiative will now also be asked to harvest ballots with NO votes against the redistricting plan — at the same time that they are collecting 1 million signatures to qualify Voter ID.
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