California at the center of nationwide redistricting effort on Election Day
Seventy-five days after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation to put a new congressional map before voters, the truncated campaign over redistricting ballot measure Proposition 50 culminates Tuesday night when polls close at 8 p.m.
The Sacramento Bee will be providing updates on the special election throughout Tuesday. Here is where things sit as of 1:45 p.m.
Mix of opinions in Folsom
In Sacramento County, at Folsom Lake College in the afternoon, people stood in line to vote, expressing differing opinions about Prop. 50.
At Folsom Lake College, Alexandra Silva, 29, said she voted “yes.”
Although she isn’t a fan of “changing the systems that are already in place,” Silva said the measure is necessary “to make things more even across the board ... making sure voting is more equal for both parties” for upcoming elections and giving people “the freedom to actually decide who they want representing them.”
“Gavin Newsom is doing a great job representing California being such a large economy,” Silva continued.
Peter Cimacio, 72, said he voted against it, asserting that he’s tired of the government spending time and money to change the existing system without those efforts resulting in benefits for the general public.
“I voted for the train. It’s not there, but we have already spent billions of dollars,” Cimacio said, referring to California’s high-speed rail project that has faced years of delays and cost overruns.
“We spend a lot of money for the homeless people. There’s still a lot of homeless people,” he added.
Election monitoring in Fresno and Southern California
The U.S. Department of Justice deployed election monitors at several polling locations in Fresno County, though they were not apparent as of midday as live voting got underway for Prop. 50.
The department had announced last month, as reported by CNN, that it would monitor Passaic County, N.J., and five California counties: Fresno, Kern, Los Angeles, Orange and Riverside.
The presence of monitors did not stop Fresno resident Beverly Bryant from heading to the polls. “I am going to exercise my right to vote,” she told The Fresno Bee. “I vote to guarantee my right to complain.”
Bryant did notice a few observers at the Fresno County Clerk’s Office while she cast her vote, but it was unclear which department they were from, she said.
Both the city of Fresno and the California Attorney General’s office indicated their departments would also send election monitors to Fresno on top of the DOJ, meaning federal, state and city observers are at the polls.
Voters at several locations across the city reported seeing monitors on Tuesday morning, and all said they had stayed out of the way, simply observing the process, but with no specific department identification.
Elk Grove voters weigh in
A steady stream of voters made their way Tuesday morning to the Laguna Palms Way vote center inside Elk Grove City Council Chambers to decide the fate of Prop. 50.
“We’ve been pretty steady this morning. People are dropping off ballots and in-person voting. It’s been pretty smooth. So far, so good,” said poll inspector Dharon Grayson about 8:45 a.m.
Though Grayson said it was too early to compare the morning’s traffic to that of previous elections, business was brisk as it had been for days at the drop-off kiosk across the street at Elk Grove City Hall.
“A lot of people have been going across the street for days here,” Grayson said. “But there’s still an influx of people who are coming out.”
Clifford Coloma was one, casting his ballot just after 9 a.m. Tuesday.
“It’s something we have the right to do. I don’t take it lightly,” Coloma said outside the city’s council chambers after casting his vote. “It’s very important considering everything going on today. It feels good to do it, actually.”
Dozens of registered voters made appearances at the Elk Grove Public Library, 8900 Elk Grove Blvd., around lunchtime to drop off their pink envelopes enclosed with their decisions whether to vote “yes” or “no” on Prop. 50.
These included Jack Coulson, who voted no because, he said, “California is dead.”
“This situation is very, very important, because what we’re voting on is the redistricting of the state,” Coulson said. “What he’s doing is by redistricting the state, he’s likely to get six more votes in this government. Newsom is very influential in trying to do that because he’s probably going to be running for president.”
Trump, Newsom sound off on social media after polls open
Shortly after polls opened in California, President Donald Trump posted to his social media site Truth Social to slam the special election, with California Governor Gavin Newsom appearing to laugh off the post.
Trump’s post, which came at 8:26 a.m., stated that the election was a scam and that process, including voting, was rigged. Trump added, “All ‘Mail-In’ Ballots, where the Republicans in that State are ‘Shut Out,’ is under very serious legal and criminal review. STAY TUNED!”
Newsom took Trump’s threats in stride, writing in a post to his personal X account at 8:29 a.m. that Trump’s words were “the ramblings of an old man” who knew he would be losing shortly.
Strong voter interest in El Dorado County
Around 8:40 a.m. on Tuesday morning, voters steadily made their way into the Cameron Park Community Services District building in El Dorado. There was no line outside, but the door swung open constantly as one voter after another arrived to cast their ballot.
In El Dorado County, 45% of all registered voters had cast their ballots as of Monday evening, according to the county’s elections office. The general sentiment among voters exiting their polling places, including the Cameron Park district building, was against Proposition 50.
Michael Benedetti, 50, said he voted no on Prop 50. “I don’t think what happened in Texas should influence California,” he said. “We need to focus on our own state’s issues.”
“We already have a good system in California, there’s no reason to adapt to something going on somewhere else,”Benedetti said.
“It’s a big expense for us to undertake when it wasn’t that many years ago we came up with the current system — to spend this much money to try to undo it based on what states do in other places, is wasted taxpayers dollars.”
California’s GOP officials, including Assemblymember James Gallagher, R-Yuba City, and Assemblymember Carl DeMaio, R-San Diego, have claimed that more than $230 million would be spent to hold a special election for Prop. 50, while the state’s official fiscal analysis estimates “a few million dollars statewide and one-time costs to the state of roughly $200,000.”
Rhett Hazelton, 40, said he also voted no on Prop. 50, noting that “independent committee is the right way to go” and that the measure is “just making it more unfair” for Republican supporters.
Democrats “are going out of their way to try to basically rig our elections here, and the new districts are not going to favor Republicans in any way,” Hazelton said.
“We’re already underrepresented in the state of California percentage wise — you look at the amount of representatives we have compared to the amount of Republicans registered in the state.”
Not every El Dorado County voter was against Prop. 50. Gena Chappell, 55, said she voted in favor of the proposition, citing her disapproval of President Trump’s policies and hoping the measure could serve as a check on his administration.
“Regular people who work 40 hours are having a hard time holding on, let alone poor working people or people who aren’t employed,” Chappell said. She also blamed Trump for the government shutdown that threatens federally funded programs like SNAP.
“They need a hand up instead of putting our foot on their necks,” she said.
Background on Prop. 50 heading into Tuesday
Prop. 50 is Newsom’s munition in a redistricting arms race sweeping through the nation ahead of the 2026 midterms.
As of Monday, almost 30% of California’s 22.3 million registered voters had returned a ballot, according to data from the Secretary of State’s Office and political cartographer Paul Mitchell. He drafted the redistricted map, which aims to draw liberal voters into five districts currently held by Republican congressmen at the request of Newsom, state Democratic lawmakers and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
Those seats are currently held by Republican Reps. Darrell Issa, Kevin Kiley, David Valadao, Ken Calvert and Doug LaMalfa. Valadao’s seat and another Central Valley swing district currently held by Rep. Adam Grey, D-Merced, would remain competitive even if Prop. 50 passes as is predicted.
The redistricting effort began earlier this year when Texas Republicans redrew their state’s congressional districts to favor their party at the urging of President Donald Trump.
Newsom and legislative Democrats quickly responded with Prop. 50, a constitutional amendment that asks voters to adopt a new, gerrymandered congressional map that would give Democrats an advantage in five California House districts currently held by Republicans.
What began as a tit-for-tat between the two most populous states has now spread to Missouri, North Carolina, Virginia and other states. Newsom has pitched redistricting as a springboard for the Democratic Party to make a political comeback and counter the White House’s broadsides on higher education, media and judicial independence.
The California governor has used his initiative to build his national profile for a potential presidential campaign in 2028, boasting a war chest that swelled so quickly that last week he asked donors to stop giving to him and redirect their money elsewhere.
In media interviews and press conferences, Newsom has argued that state voters recognize how “precious the current moment” is as Trump briefly flirted with running for a third term, which is prohibited by the U.S. Constitution, and has threatened to or defied court orders to send military troops to liberal states.
“This is just unprecedented in American history, and so Prop. 50 is our way of fighting back,” he told reporters during a press conference announcing a lawsuit to restore federal food aid. “I think they’re (the people of California) going to send a very powerful message to the rest of the country that there has to be a new approach to dealing with Trump and Trumpism, that what we’ve done in the past has not been working.”
Opponents of Prop. 50 argue that Californians have already voted to create an independent body to handle once-a-decade redistricting and ban politicians from drawing their own boundaries.
Though he campaigned separately from the Republican-led opposition groups, former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger became a de facto spokesperson against Prop. 50. Late last month he told CNN the redistricting war is about both political parties “trying to outcheat each other rather than outperform each other.”
“Now this is spreading like wildfire all over the country and it saddens me to see that we’re going in the opposite direction rather than having an independent commission draw the district lines,” he said during an interview from a Gold’s Gym in the Venice neighborhood of Los Angeles.
The two campaigns against Prop. 50, led by former Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Republican megadonor Charles Munger Jr., went silent on the air after running out of money. They raised a total of about $44 million, far less than the $114 million brought in by Newsom’s campaign.
The Sacramento Bee’s Darrell Smith and Marcus Smith and The Fresno Bee’s Liliana Fannin contributed to this story.
This story was originally published November 4, 2025 at 6:00 AM with the headline "California at the center of nationwide redistricting effort on Election Day."
