From the Cheap Seats: Prop 50 is an Indecent Proposal

In the 1993 film “Indecent Proposal,” a couple accepts a million dollars for a single night that destroys their marriage. California’s Proposition 50 offers a similar bargain: surrender your constitutional right to independent redistricting, and in return, you will “get Trump.” This is not reform but seduction — a cynical invitation to trade principle for passion, to exchange what is permanent and fair for what is fleeting and vengeful. The deal is as indecent as the title suggests: an appeal to anger over integrity, wrapped in the false allure of a nakedly partisan ploy. By elevating disdain for Donald Trump above the rights of political minorities, Proposition 50 asks Californians to forsake the very fairness their constitution was written to protect.

When Californians approved Propositions 11 and 20 in 2008 and 2010, they created a strong defense against gerrymandering. The Citizens Redistricting Commission removed map-drawing from politicians and gave it to ordinary citizens—Democrats, Republicans and independents working together in public.

Proposition 50 would erase that achievement. It would scrap the commission and substitute maps devised in Washington by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. The result: lines that splinter communities of interest, carve up rural counties, and tilt the playing field toward one party and its favored incumbents.

The architects of Proposition 50 do not hide their intent. Their pitch is blunt: help stop Donald Trump by changing who controls the map. It is a bribe, not a policy argument. They are gambling that California’s antipathy toward Trump—he lost the state to Kamala Harris by twenty percentage points in 2024—will lead voters to abandon fair districts. Californians are being asked to discard a reform earned through decades of civic effort.

That is what makes this measure indecent. It exploits the polarization the commission was meant to mitigate. It motivates voters who oppose a single man while forfeiting a safeguard against political corruption that protects everyone. The ballot question is not whether one likes or loathes Trump; it is whether California will remain a state where voters choose their representatives or return to an era when politicians choose their voters.

The damage would fall hardest on rural counties already struggling to be heard. The DCCC-drafted maps slice through farming regions into fragments of urban-centered districts where votes will be diluted. Urban power brokers drew the lines in private, three thousand miles away, assuming rural Californians are too few to matter and too far to fight back.

But they are fighting back. County boards of supervisors in Siskiyou, Shasta, Kern and Fresno have formally opposed Proposition 50. Mendocino’s board refused to endorse it. These are not partisan extremists but thoughtful people alarmed by losing their community’s voice. They know that once D.C.-based map-drawing is normalized, it will not stop at congressional districts. County lines, school boards and water districts could be redrawn to serve party goals.

Law enforcement sees the danger too. Thirty district attorneys and thirty-seven county sheriffs across California have publicly opposed Proposition 50. In a joint statement they warned that it “destroys transparency, silences voters and dismantles one of the few truly nonpartisan institutions in our state.” When prosecutors and sheriffs agree a measure threatens accountability, voters should take note.

Independent voters are the real victims here. They helped create the Citizens Redistricting Commission. Proposition 50 attacks that achievement. To no-party-preference voters: do not become accessories to this corrupt bargain. The right to independent redistricting is your shield against both parties’ excesses. If you surrender it today because it is convenient, you may never get it back when power shifts.

The moral of “Indecent Proposal” is simple: some offers, no matter how tempting, are not worth the cost. Proposition 50 is one of them. It tempts Californians to exchange integrity for vengeance, transparency for power, independence for obedience. The price is the end of fair representation in a state that once led the nation in redistricting reform.

The choice before voters is not about Trump or the next election. It is about whether California remains an honest, citizen-controlled republic. Proposition 50 asks you to give that up—for politics, for spite, for nothing. Decline the offer. Keep your vote, your maps, and your dignity.