Redistricting Back on Ballot

The California Supreme Court handed Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger a major victory Friday, putting back on the Nov. 8 ballot his initiative to change how legislative district lines are drawn.

The brief order, issued by a 4-2 vote, ends a monthlong legal battle between supporters of the initiative, Proposition 77, and Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer. The attorney general had won two rounds in lower courts. Those judges accepted his argument that the measure should not be voted on in November because its backers had violated election law in the way they got the measure on the ballot.

The Supreme Court overturned those lower-court decisions. But it left open the possibility that the election-law violations could still sink the ballot measure. If voters approve the measure, the justices said, they might then review the legal issues to determine if it is valid.

“The court hasn’t ruled on the merits,” said Lance Olson, a Sacramento attorney representing opponents of Proposition 77, “so we don’t know if it’s a valid initiative or not.”

The order preserves a key element of Schwarzenegger’s agenda for the November special election. Proposition 77 is one of three initiatives he has endorsed of the eight that are scheduled to appear on the ballot.

In a statement released after the court’s announcement, Schwarzenegger said he was “pleased” by the decision. “The people of California will have an opportunity to vote on Proposition 77 this November,” he said.

The measure is designed to strip politics from the once-a-decade job of redrawing congressional, legislative and Board of Equalization districts to ensure that they contain roughly equal numbers of people.

Currently, those district lines are drawn by legislators. Whichever party dominates the Legislature tends to draw lines to its advantage, seeking to have voters who favor them be the majority in as many districts as possible, even if it means creating contorted, oddly shaped districts.

In the last redistricting, in 2001, Republican and Democratic lawmakers struck a gentlemen’s agreement to draw new districts to protect the existing balance of power. Many political experts called those districts a major reason not one of 153 seats in the Legislature or the state’s congressional delegation changed party hands in the last general election.

In endorsing Proposition 77, Schwarzenegger said that outcomes like that are “not real democracy.”

Proposition 77 would take the power to draw districts from the Legislature and give it to a panel of three retired judges chosen by the Judicial Council and legislative leaders.

Having won in court, the governor now has a significant task ahead to get voters to back the initiative. Californians have rejected four redistricting initiatives since 1982, and in June, a Field Poll showed Proposition 77 well short of a majority.

Only 35% of Californians deemed likely to vote said they would vote yes on the measure, 46% said they would reject Proposition 77, and 19% were undecided.

Generally, support for ballot measures fades during campaigns. However, Schwarzenegger has demonstrated an ability to persuade large numbers of voters to get behind the measures he backs.

The legal dispute does not involve the merits of the proposition. Instead, it has revolved around how it qualified for the ballot.

Under state election laws, the sponsor of a ballot initiative must first give a copy to the attorney general, who prepares a title and a summary of 100 words or fewer to tell voters what the measure would do. The proposed initiative is also posted on a state website. Once the title and summary are done, the sponsor can circulate the initiative to get voter signatures.

In this case, the sponsors gave a copy to Lockyer, but then circulated a different version for signatures.

The versions varied in more than a dozen places, sometimes by a word or two and sometimes by an entire paragraph. One version gave legislative leaders an extra day to choose the redistricting panelists.

Backers of the initiative say the different versions were circulated accidentally.

Lockyer went to court July 8 after learning of the discrepancies, saying that circulating a version different from the one sent to his office violated election law. He won in the Sacramento County Superior Court and the 3rd District Court of Appeal, which ruled Tuesday.

Supporters of Proposition 77 filed an emergency petition to the Supreme Court, asking justices to decide the case before Monday, when the state printer is scheduled to begin producing 12 million voter information guides.

The four Supreme Court justices who voted to keep Proposition 77 on the ballot wrote in their order that “it would not be appropriate to deny the electorate the opportunity to vote on Proposition 77” unless Lockyer could show that the discrepancies between the two versions were “likely to have misled the persons who signed the initiative petition.”

Because Lockyer had not attempted to prove that, the measure should remain on the ballot, the justices said.

Voting in favor of the order were Chief Justice Ronald M. George, Associate Justices Marvin R. Baxter and Ming W. Chin, and Court of Appeal Justice Richard D. Aldrich, who was named to the court temporarily to fill a vacancy. Justices Joyce L. Kennard and Carlos R. Moreno dissented.

One justice, Kathryn M. Werdegar, was unavailable and did not participate in the case, the court announced.

The court has one vacancy because Janice Rogers Brown has been named to the federal appeals court in Washington.

The court’s order was in line with a ruling late last month that restored another proposition to the ballot. In that case, involving Proposition 80, which deals with electric utility regulation, the high court also said that a challenge should wait until after the election.

In a statement released Friday evening, Lockyer said he had pursued the case to protect “millions of current and future voters who will exercise their right to direct democracy.”

“That right,” he said, “is undermined when the process is sullied, when participants violate fundamental constitutional requirements designed to ensure integrity -- and get away with it.”

Ted Costa, chief executive of People’s Advocate Inc., the Sacramento antitax group that pushed the measure and mistakenly submitted the different versions, said:

“We’re off thin ice now. We knew we were skating on thin ice. We knew it could crumble between us at any time.”