Borenstein: In California, it’s Democrats trying to undermine election integrity

Once again, Democrats in the California Legislature are trying to undermine ballot transparency. And, shockingly, county election officials around the state are backing the effort.

With conspiratorial attacks on election integrity from President Donald Trump and the MAGA wing of the Republican Party, one would hope that Democrats and our state’s election officials would model responsible behavior.

Instead, they, too, are trying to put their thumbs on the election scales.

The issue in this case is not voter fraud claims that the president so recklessly bandies about, nor GOP attempts to throw up registration barriers in red strongholds and now even in California.

Rather, in our blue state, Democrats and election officials are backing legislation that would hide from the ballot the cost to taxpayers of pricey local tax measures.

This fight is over a different sort of ballot integrity. Not who casts ballots or the imagined illegitimacy of vote-counting, but, rather, whether the information on the ballot is thorough, truthful and transparent.

Sadly, this decade-long battle has turned partisan, with most Democrats supporting legislation seeking to hide the cost of the priciest local tax measures and Republicans trying to protect what little ballot transparency is currently required in California.

To his credit, Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2019 vetoed a similar bill. Depending on what happens in the state Senate in the coming weeks, the fate of ballot transparency might once again ride on the governor bucking his party.

Battle over 75 words

At issue is a decade-long battle over the 75 words that appear on the ballot summarizing local bond measures. These are measures that authorize cities, school districts and other local governments to borrow money to pay for items like classrooms, road repairs, homeless housing or new public buildings such as libraries and police stations.

That borrowed money must be repaid, usually by raising property taxes for decades. And those add-on taxes are costly, sometimes collectively adding thousands of dollars annually to property tax bills.

Commonsense legislation passed in 2015 and 2017 requires that the ballot wording for tax measures include the amount of the tax raised annually, the duration of the tax and the tax rate. If anything, the legislation didn’t go far enough toward sunshining the costs and eliminating campaign consultants’ deliberately confusing ballot wording.

But bond-measure backers and their campaign consultants want to eliminate the transparency requirements. If it were up to them, the ballot wording would never mention that bonds are a form of borrowing that must be repaid — nor that the ballot measures, if approved, also authorize decades of tax increases.

The backers of the measures have whined that they can’t find room to include that information in the 75 words on the ballot. It’s a bogus claim, as we have repeatedly demonstrated.

Related: How to easily explain cost of California local tax measures to voters.

Political calculation

Efforts to overturn the 2015 and 2017 transparency legislation have been supported by politically powerful construction unions, campaign consultants, bond attorneys and other special interests who financially benefit from the bond measures. And by school officials who are so determined to build new facilities that they’re willing to deceive voters to achieve their ends.

They all know that voters are less likely to approve bond measures if they understand the price tag, and that many voters never read beyond the ballot wording. Indeed, polling shows measures lose 5%-15% support when the tax amounts are included in the ballot wording, according to a Senate committee analysis.

In 2018, transparency opponents tried unsuccessfully to sneak through a budget trailer bill that would have delayed the ballot-wording requirements.

In 2019, three Bay Area legislators used a “gut and amend” process — stripping out and replacing the language of an unrelated bill late in the legislative session — to ram through legislation undermining the transparency requirements.

The bill — authored by Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, then-Sen. Jim Beall, D-San Jose, and then-Assemblymember Mark Stone, D-Scotts Valley — would have instead called for ballot wording that sends voters to the voluminous voter guide for the tax rate information. It was that bill that Newsom vetoed, correctly concerned that it would “reduce transparency for local tax and bond measures.”

In 2023, Wiener tried again. But, after the bill was watered down in committee, he dropped the effort.

This year, Assemblymember Catherine Stefani, D-San Francisco, is similarly trying to reduce transparency by sending voters to the voter guide to learn how much taxes would increase. The Assembly in June approved Stefani’s bill, AB 699, almost entirely along party lines. All but six Democrats supported it. Not a single Republican did.

Election officials’ backing

The bill is now in the state Senate, with the support of the California Association of Clerks and Election Officials. In a vacuous June 23 letter of support, the association claims the bill would “standardize and simplify language that is required to appear on the ballot which will help ensure that voters are better equipped to navigate their ballot.” Nothing could be further from the truth.

James A. Kus, Fresno County voter registrar and co-chair of the state association’s legislative committee, says election officials like the bill because it directs voters to the information guide. That’s a laudable goal, but not at the expense of the wording on the ballot, which a critical portion of voters solely rely on to get their information.

It’s disappointing to see Democrats try to tip the scales of elections. It’s troubling to see election officials join them.

In this era of Trump election deceit, Californians deserve better from their leaders.

Reach Editorial Page Editor Daniel Borenstein at dborenstein@bayareanewsgroup.com.