Ballot Measure

Half a year out from California’s presidential primary, you can already envision an enthusiasm gap creating a turnout gap. But Democrats are holding back.

San Francisco, Oakland, and Fresno are getting sued—all because the California Supreme Court has yet to answer a simple question: How many votes does it take for a new tax to become law?

These maps illustrate how California counties split over the midterm ballot propositions.

This year, with hundreds of millions of dollars rolling into initiative campaigns over housing and health care, California has hit a new record: The $111 million campaign against Proposition 8 on kidney dialysis clinics amounts to the most money poured into a single side of a ballot measure in the United States—at least since electronic record-keeping began in 2002, and possibly ever.

Advocates today submitted signatures to qualify a 2020 ballot initiative that would generate tens of billions of dollars for local and state governments by undoing part of California's landmark Prop. 13.

After months of signature gathering and legislative wrangling, here's the final list of propositions that made the cut for the November election.

1. Trump mattered For months, the two top Republicans in the race, John Cox, a businessman from Rancho Santa Fe, and Huntington Beach Assemblyman Travis Allen, were within sniping distance of one another in most credible public opinion polls. Then, sometime between April and late May, something changed. Republican voters began to rally around the […]

After losing in California courts, three lead paint companies are asking voters to overturn the ruling that says they must pay to clean up toxic lead paint in older homes.

As Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrapped up a second day being grilled by Congress about whether the company adequately protects the personal data of its 2 billion users, news broke in California that Facebook will stop spending money to oppose a privacy measure aiming for the state’s November ballot. Facebook is one of five tech […]

How companies collect and share consumers' personal information is likely to grow into an expensive fight as election season unfolds in California.