Props To You, Californians: A Preview Of What’s On Your November Ballot

By Ben Christopher, from CalMatters:

After a bit of last-minute legislative maneuvering, the list of propositions that California voters will be asked to weigh in on has been — more or less — finalized.

This past week marked the deadline for citizens and special interests to snag their spot on the November ballot. Eight measures made the cut. They address matters as vital and/or esoteric as rent control, property tax law, dialysis clinic staffing requirements, stem cell research funding and the preservation or final dispatch of cash bail in California.

The same date also marked the deadline for legislators to place their preferred measures on the November ballot. But lawmakers have a bit more flexibility when it comes to deadlines — they can just make new laws. On Monday, the Senate passed Senate Bill 300 to Gov. Gavin Newsom who signed it. The law effectively extended the Legislature’s deadline to July 1.

(Technically, the deadline wasn’t extended but created anew. The law calls for the Legislature’s favored measures to go before voters in a whole new election — conveniently to take place on the same day and same ballot as the ordinary November 3 election.)

That extension gave lawmakers a few extra hours to add four measures: two to expand voting rights, one that ends a 22-year-old ban on affirmative action, and one that is a tortuously complicated property tax measure that somehow ropes in Realtors, wildland firefighters and “The Dude” from the Big Lebowski.

Here’s your November ballot preview:

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