00:00A Sacramento court has sided with California Attorney General Rob Bonta, who rewrote the
00:06description of Proposition 39, the voter ID initiative, in a way that proponents of voter
00:12ID say gives the opposite meaning of the original one intended. Originally, the description of Prop
00:1939, which was approved by Bonta's office, said that the proposition would establish additional
00:25voter identification and citizenship verification requirements. The new description, which Bonta
00:31provided at the last minute, says that the proposition will prohibit citizens from voting
00:37unless they present government-issued identification. It's a complete 180 in terms of emphasis. The
00:44original formulation was more positive, that it would protect the ballot from fraud, and the new
00:51formulation is negative, that it will prohibit citizens from voting. Now, proponents of Prop
00:5839 went to court to challenge Bonta, saying he had misled the public, but the courts sided with
01:03the Attorney General. In fact, they've done so many times in the past on the same issue, every time
01:08Democrats have pulled the same trick. In 2018, there was a proposition to repeal a gas tax increase,
01:16Proposition 6, and then-Attorney General Javier Becerra, who is now running for governor, did the
01:21same thing. The proponents of Proposition 6 went to court. They won initially in the lower courts,
01:26but lost on appeal. Generally, California's courts give considerable leeway to the Attorney General to
01:33describe ballot initiatives as he or she wants to do, and they seem especially partial to the
01:39Democrats, who almost always hold that office. So, if voter ID is going to pass in the Golden State,
01:46it's going to have to rely on voters who can look past a misleading or arguably partial description
01:53of the voter ID initiative and cast their vote for voter ID anyway.
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