Statewide Election Tuesday, November 4, 2025 - Governor Newsom Pushing for Mid-Cycle Redistricting Plan in Response to Texas' Plan
- Elisa Ballard
- Oct 1, 2025
- 4 min read
Updated: Nov 2, 2025
Proposed Congressional Districts Map
In 2010, California voters put a Citizens Redistricting Commission on the ballot and it passed overwhelmingly. The commission has fourteen members—five commissioners each from the two main political parties and four commissioners not registered with either of those two parties. The commission draws the boundaries of the state’s U.S. Congressional, State Senate, State Assembly, and Board of Equalization districts. Congressional District maps are drawn every 10 years based on the latest census; however, contrary to that 2010 law, Governor Gavin Newsom has asked the legislature to redraw the districts and is putting the new district map on the ballot for the voters to approve or disapprove, assigned as Proposition 50 by the Secretary of State and also known as the Election Rigging Response Act. He indicates that he is doing this in response to Texas’ mid-cycle plan to redraw their districts, which will likely push several democrats out of office there. The new district map proposal is found in Assembly Bill 604 and has some very unusual boundary lines.
The proposed boundaries, if approved by the voters, would threaten several Republican representatives’ seats, including District 1 Representative Doug LaMalfa, whose district encompasses Shasta County and other nearby counties. Doug states on his website that “No one can look at these maps – one with a district spreading from Modoc County to Marin, another shaped like a giant elephant with a trunk to bring in downtown Sacramento with Tahoe, or sticking Lassen and Plumas Counties way over on the Nevada border with Santa Rosa in a coastal county – and say they appear credible.”
District 3 Representative Kevin Kiley is fighting the proposal by trying to introduce a bill in congress (HR 4889) that would ban mid-cycle redistricting. His district currently includes the northern Sierra Nevada and northeastern suburbs of Sacramento, stretching south to Death Valley. If the proposed new map is enacted, his district’s shape would change dramatically adding more left-leaning voters from Sacramento and cutting off the southern portion of his district. Kiley’s bill is gaining bipartisan support, including Democratic Congressman Ami Bera of Sacramento’s District 6. So far, House Speaker Mike Johnson has not introduced the bill to the House floor but Kiley remains hopeful as he said many representatives think this gerrymandering is unfair and this bill would put a stop to it if passed and signed into law by President Trump. However, reports have indicated that President Trump asked Texas to redraw their districts and approves of Texas’ mid-cycle redistricting plan, so at this point, it doesn’t seem likely that Speaker Johnson will allow Kiley’s bill to be introduced.
The California GOP members filed two lawsuits against the Governor’s plan but both have been rejected by the California Supreme Court. Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton also recently filed a lawsuit in the U.S. Central District Court of California’s Southern Division and is alleging that the new plan denies equal protection under the law, violating the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in that the legislature did not use, or did not have, current census data to insure that the districts are largely equal in population. In the 2024 presidential election, California voters cast 9.27 million votes for Democrats and 6.08 million votes for Republicans; however, current district maps have resulted in 43 seats for Democrats and 9 for Republicans, while the proposed new district map will likely result in 48 seats for Democrats and just 4 for Republicans, leaving Republican-leaning voters even more short-changed under the new plan.
The average number of constituents (residents) per house member has risen over the years with the growing U.S. population. The Apportionment Act of 1929 capped the number of U.S. House representatives to 435. Each of the 50 states is given one guaranteed seat, even though several states have total populations less than the current average district size of 761,169. Six states have only 1 representative due to their smaller size. California’s population has decreased since the 2020 census, while Texas’ population has gone from 29,239,570 to 31,290,831. In August, President Trump asked the Commerce Department to begin work on a new census that will not be counting people who are in our country illegally.
Former body builder, actor, and former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has been appearing on programs such as “Real Time with Bill Maher” and CNN, calling out “extreme gerrymandering” in blue states. He said this has been going on for 200 years. He said he worked hard to establish an independent commission to draw congressional district lines in California. Now Proposition 50, if passed, will destroy this. He also said that states are trying to out-cheat each other. The political parties should be out-performing each other to gain seats. To illustrate his point about gerrymandering, Schwarzenegger stated “In a state like Massachusetts that has 40% of the people voting for President Trump, zero representatives from the Republican party are sent to the House. The same thing is happening in other states such as New Mexico - 45% of the people voted for Trump and Republicans candidates, but zero representatives who are Republican are being sent to the House.” – CNN; Yahoo!News
This California special election will take place on Tuesday, November 4, 2025. Millions of dollars have been donated to the campaigns for and against Proposition 50. All active voters will receive a vote-by-mail ballot which will begin being mailed out by October 6th. If you plan to mail in your ballot, ballots must be postmarked on or before election day and received by November 12th.
To view the full voter information pamphlet which includes the current and proposed district boundary maps, you may click on this link:
