The purpose of this page is bring together information about voter-initiatives, as opposed to government-initiatives, that are related to elections.
The initiative power and referendum power were reserved to the people of California by Proposition 7 (1911) by amending the constitution. Insofar as the statewide powers were concerned, the measure was self-executing. That means that all the rules for how it worked were written into the constitution. Those rules can only be changed by a future constitutional amendment.
In addition, Proposition 7 ("Prop 7") reserved those powers, excluding the rules, to the people of counties and cities. Prop 7 provided that the Legislature (or charter cities) should make the rules for those local powers. The Legislature complied and created those rules in 1912 in an enactment for counties and a separate enactment for cities. Later the Legislature extended those powers to special districts that are authorized to enact ordinances. There are very few of those.
While the powers exist for counties and cities, the rules are completely different. The Legislature created the rules, and can change those rules as it determines. In 1912, the Legislature implemented the initiative and referendum powers for both the electors (people) and the governments. This is critical to understand. The governments were permitted to place initiatives on the ballot for voter approval, just like the electors could. The ability of the government to do that did not exist prior to that, except in the case of charters where statutes already governed charter law.
Even though both initiative and referendum powers were provided, this page focuses on initiatives.
The proponents or purported (fake) proponents of statewide initiatives frame their initiatives to their best advantage. Talking points and promotional sales puffery abound. Whatever you see, hear, or read from proponents is 99.44% propaganda. Unless you actually read the language of the initiative AND understand how that language is used in the context of existing constitutional or statutory provisions, you will not be able to determine how far away or how close the propaganda is to the truth.
This page is dedicated to providing you with analyses that compare the propaganda to the actual language so that you can distinguish what is true and what is not. We have been heavily commenting on statewide voter-initiatives lately (2024 to 2025).
As we put some organization into this, temporarily, what you'll find is links to other commentary that we have already written.
The page is organized into statewide voter-initiatives and county or city voter-initiatives. It will not include government-initiatives.
Active initiatives are those that are in the process of being placed on the ballot or have already qualified to be on the ballot at a future statewide general election.
Version 1 contains a provision to vitiate previous county or city tax measure elections for special taxes that don't comply with the provisions. Some of those measures date back to 2018.
Version 2 does not vitiate the elections that Version 1 would vitiate.
Fake initiatives are those that are not in the process of qualifying. In order to be classified as Fake, the initiative text must be a secret. In other words, all the public knows about them is the proponent's propaganda. They have not been filed. They are completely imaginary, except in the eyes of the purported proponent who may be recruiting volunteers and donors to back the scheme.
Inactive initiatives are those that have been withdrawn by the proponent, have failed to qualify, or have been removed by court order.
These are county or city voter-initiatives that passed with a majority vote instead of a two-thirds vote as required by Proposition 13 (1978).
| County | Letter | City/County | Tax Type | Pass Pct. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| November 6, 2018 (x of x passed under 2/3) | ||||
| San Francisco | C | City of San Francisco | _ | _ |
| June 7, 2022 (x of x passed under 2/3) | ||||
| November 8, 2022 (7 of 14 passed under 2/3) | ||||
| Alameda | Y | City of Oakland | parcel tax | 62.5% |
| Contra Costa | L | Crockett Community Services District | parcel tax | 62.8% |
| Los Angeles | GS | City of Santa Monica | property transfer tax | 53.3% |
| Los Angeles | ULA | City of Los Angeles | property transfer tax | 57.3% |
| Mendocino | O | County of Mendocino | transactions and use tax | 60.8% |
| Sacramento | A | County of Sacramento | transactions and use tax | 55.3% |
| San Francisco | M | City of San Francisco | other tax | 54.5% |
| March 5, 2024 (2 of 3 passed under 2/3, 2 passed over 2/3) | ||||
| Calaveras | A | County of Calaveras | transactions and use tax | 57.2% |
| Sonoma | H | County of Sonoma | transactions and use tax | 61.7% |
| November 5, 2024 (9 of 17 passed under 2/3) | ||||
| Alameda | FF | City of Berkeley | parcel tax | 60.9% |
| Los Angeles | A | County of Los Angeles | transactions and use tax | 57.8% |
| Los Angeles | E | County of Los Angeles | parcel tax | 55.1% |
| Madera | T | County of Madera | transactions and use tax | 51.5% |
| Marin | P | City of San Rafael | parcel tax | 52.0% |
| San Francisco | L | City of San Francisco | business license tax | 56.2% |
| Santa Cruz | Q | County of Santa Cruz | parcel tax | 60.2% |
| Solano | F | City of Benicia | transactions and use tax | 61.8% |
| Sonoma | I | County of Sonoma | transactions and use tax | 62.8% |
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