Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law Friday a proposal that will make ballot language on statewide referendums easier to understand.
AB 421 will swap the “yes “or “no” question on a referendum to instead ask voters if they want to “keep” or “overturn a law.” It also requires a referendum to list the funders who placed it on the ballot.
Majority Leader of the California Assembly Isaac Bryan (D-Los Angeles) authored the bill. He says the bill will empower voters.
“Often people have to vote on a referendum, and they don’t know what a referendum is,” he said. “They don’t know what it does, and they’re not sure what their vote means, and so this is a bill to clean up this a hundred-year-old process and re-empower voters.”
Why the bill was created
Last year, the California legislature passed SB 1137, a law banning new oil and gas wells near homes, schools and residential areas, and AB 257, a bill that would create a fast food council to set wages and work safety standards.
But the oil and fast-food industries were able to send those bills to the referendum process by spending nearly $34 million combined on the signature-collecting process.
Mabel Tsang is the political director for the California Environmental Justice Alliance, a statewide coalition of environmental justice organizations. She says corporations were using referendums to override new laws.
“The referendum process needed to be reformed,” she said. “Because its been corporate loopholes finding another way to undo policies that impact communities of color and low-income communities that are the hardest hit by the climate crisis, the public health and safety from from oil and gas drilling.”
Bryan, who represents constituents living near the largest urban oil field in the country — the Inglewood…
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