From Sacramento to San Luis Obispo: Fix the voting game — don’t rig it | Opinion

The MAGA movement didn’t invent authoritarianism, but it made it fashionable again. Its followers bend reality to their will, bullying election officials and conjuring conspiracies to excuse the inexcusable.

Jan. 6 is a cautionary tale of what happens when grievance becomes theater and theater becomes mob rule. Brute force masquerading as patriotism.

Now look west. California’s version is smoother and subtler. Bureaucratic capture disguised as progress. The state’s own Gotterdämerung moment came when Proposition 50 passed by a two-to-one margin, giving Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Democratic Legislature the power to redraw congressional maps mid-cycle. The final tally: 65% said yes, 35% said no. Only 49% of registered voters bothered to vote. The result may be legal, but it isn’t legitimate.

California Democrats will control the Legislature, the courts, every statewide office, and soon about 90% of our congressional seats. That’s twice the share of their registered voters.

SLO County is ‘mirror image’ of the state

San Luis Obispo County provides a local mirror image. Jordan Cunningham’s old Assembly District 35 was carved out by the state’s independent Citizens Redistricting Commission — not by local officials — that split San Luis Obispo County in ways the county’s own Board of Supervisors had unanimously urged the commission to avoid. This turned the 55/45 majority won by Cunningham, a GOP centrist, in 2016 into a safe 60/40 split for progressive Dawn Addis in 2022.

Today, Democrats make up about 40 percent of registered voters. Yet the explicit ambition of their local apparatchiks, led by SLO County Democratic Party Chair Tom Fulks, is to ensure every elected office carries a “D.” That’s not competition. That’s a monopoly.

When winning becomes the only goal, the referees get replaced, the rules get rewritten and the spectators stop believing the score.

In “Civil War Comes to the West,” the political theorist David Betz warns that our divide is no longer ideological, but structural. Bureaucracy versus citizen. Party versus people. The public senses it. Trust collapses, polarization hardens and violence begins to feel like a shortcut. The next civil war won’t be regional. It’ll be existential, fought between those who wield power and those who’ve run out of patience.

Prop. 50 isn’t a coup, but it rhymes with one. It sidelines California’s independent redistricting commission and hands line-drawing power to the very people whose careers depend on those lines. The state says it’s “fighting fire with fire” after Republican gerrymanders in Texas and Florida. When both sides rig the rules, what you’re left with isn’t democracy, it’s choreography.

A way forward for California

So where does that leave California?

With a choice and a chance. If Democrats truly want to honor their name, then by 2032 they will have had 20 years of complete control. They could use that power not to entrench dominance, but to reform democracy itself. To make California a model for fair play rather than a cautionary tale of authoritarian one-party rule.

The blueprint isn’t complicated:

• Make the attorney general and secretary of state non-partisan offices with no party affiliation listed on the ballot.

• Guarantee equal ballot access for independents and new parties, so ideas compete instead of labels. Rewrite ballot rules to slash thresholds and lower the barrier to entry for new parties.

• Enact strict campaign finance laws that require real-time, fully public disclosure of every dollar spent.Cap donations from unions, corporations and wealthy people to PACs and candidates, and punish attempts to hide money.

• Reinstate independent redistricting forever. 

• Impose strict term limits. Tighten term limits to eight years total in the state Legislature and push cities, counties and Congress to follow suit.

• Adopt open or ranked-choice primaries so incumbents can’t hide behind safe seats. Keep open primaries but add ranked choice so voters, not party machines, decide who survives.

• Upgrade our voting system to a secure digital platform so it is easier to vote, harder to cheat and every ballot is auditable.

None of that is radical, unless accountability gives you hives.

With seven more years of one-party rule, Democrats have all the time in the world to prove power can clean up after itself.

The public wants it. A recent Gallup poll found that 47% of Americans want their leaders to “compromise to get things done,” while only 24% want them “to cling to purity.”

The people aren’t asking for perfection, just begging for sanity. To engage the whole community instead of enraging half of it. Power is only virtuous when it invites dissent.

Authoritarianism does not seize power. It borrows it, promises to tidy up, and never gives the keys back. California handed over the keys. Time for the Democrats to change the rules or for the people to change the locks.

Clive Pinder hosts “CeaseFire” on KVEC 920AM/96.5 FM and writes at clivepinder.substack.com. He figures if apathy is a mandate, California is the most legitimate place on earth.

This story was originally published November 16, 2025 at 10:00 AM.