By Ande Jacobson
The thing that strikes me about our current moment is the extreme amount of manipulation that is becoming normalized. Teri Kanefield discussed this at length in her book, A Firehose of Falsehood, which I wrote about here and here. Watching the amount of disinformation intended to manipulate the voting public in the upcoming election though has reached heights I’ve never imagined. It got me thinking about something that happened about 30 years ago when I was the lead of a team of technical advisors for an important government system we were supporting.
Our team was comprised of a number of technical experts from several different government contractors, and each company had a manager in place working alongside their direct reports. One of these managers was quite the wheeler-dealer. He was a smart man, but he was very manipulative. Thinking about that time, I suddenly realized that leading that team and working with that particular individual was actually good training for our current moment.
That individual was always coming up with suggestions for changes he wanted us to make, and one day he hit me with a proposal that I honestly didn’t know whether we should implement or not at the time. I told him that I needed to think about it and get back to him. He pushed hard for a quick answer giving me all sorts of justifications for what he was proposing. I held firm telling him that I needed to think about it and refused to give him an immediate answer.
The more I analyzed his proposal, the less I liked it, and more importantly the more it appeared to be a dangerous maneuver that would hurt the team. It became clear that if we were to have implemented the changes he was suggesting with this particular proposal, they would have given him some significant personal benefits at the expense of the team as a whole. I talked with my management about it and told them what I had determined, and they agreed with my assessment. After taking the time to do my due diligence, I told him that we were not going to implement what he was suggesting, but that level of outright manipulation stuck with me. In taking the time to do a rigorous analysis before making a decision on his proposal, I stumbled upon the way I needed to deal with this guy – never give him an immediate answer on any proposal. Always take the time to do a full analysis of course, but also always investigate what’s in it for him.
What’s in it for the one making the proposal is key, and it’s a crucial question that we all must ask ourselves these days more than ever before.
This is something that as a voter we also need to ask when filling out our ballots. We always need to research the candidates, but in many states there are also often propositions that must be evaluated. In California, the sheer number of propositions on the ballot for any given election can at first seem overwhelming, but there are numerous sources for getting honest analyses of the ramifications of each proposition.
In the 2026 general election, there are several propositions on the California ballot that are causing the public to be bombarded by disinformation campaigns engaging in fear mongering and backed by huge amounts of money. That’s the first level of analysis that a responsible voter must complete – follow the money and see who is financing each of the propositions. Look at the arguments pro and con and see which organizations are behind them. Then start evaluating the propositions and the arguments around them honestly.
While several propositions would have impacts on us all in California, one in particular deserves serious attention – Prop 39 is a new voter-ID proposition sponsored by Reform California, an ultra-conservative Republican political group. Prop 39 is funded by Republican mega donors (many of whom are out of state) who want to severely restrict voting. They are using this proposition as a test case to pursue similar actions in other states.
Common Cause and other voting rights groups staunchly oppose Prop 39, and Civil rights groups like the ACLU also oppose this initiative because voter fraud is exceedingly rare, and if passed, it would make it far more difficult for eligible voters to register and vote.
Prop 39 is effectively a California version of the SAVE Act and is a direct attempt at voter suppression. California’s elections are very secure under current laws and processes, and the state doesn’t need a new voter-ID law. The ACLU has put together a helpful analysis of the proposition. There is also information in the voter’s handbook which not only lists a summary and text of all of the propositions, it lists who wrote the arguments pro and con and includes the organizations that they represent. The handbook also lists who has endorsed the propositions.
Another source for evaluating the California propositions is Pete Rates the Propositions . Peter Stahl can be a little snarky at times, but he does his homework and writes an informative rundown of the propositions for each election.
With respect to Prop 39 though, it is already illegal for non-citizens to vote, and doing so could result in deportation. That’s a risk that non-citizens are loathe to assume. Voter fraud is exceedingly rare as shown by numerous nonpartisan studies. Even in those few instances when an ineligible person casts a ballot, their ballot would fail all the checks already in place and would not be counted. Prop 39 would cost taxpayers millions of dollars to fix a non-problem and in the process make it much more difficult and risky for eligible voters to vote.
As currently written, it’s not clear which IDs would be allowed for voter access. If Prop 39 passes, all voters would need to re-register to designate their approved government ID number whether it be a Social Security number or other government issued ID. That number would then then need to be written on the outside of their envelope for mail-in voting each election increasing the potential for identity theft.
Re-registering wouldn’t be simple either, especially if somebody had a name change at any point in their life. To prove their citizenship to register, they would need to provide a birth certificate that matches their current name or an active passport, both of which cost money to obtain. This would disproportionally affect married women who changed their name along with anybody else who went through a legal name change for any reason.
If Prop 39 becomes law, it also makes it far more likely that valid ballots would be rejected due to simple errors such as incorrectly listing their designated ID on the envelope because if a voter makes an error on their envelope, under Prop 39 they wouldn’t be notified that there was a problem. Their ballot would just be rejected, and they’d never know.
Under current law, if a voter forgets to sign and date their envelope, uses the wrong envelope, or has any other irregularity that brings their ballot’s validity into question, they are notified of the problem and have the opportunity to cure their ballot, i.e., correct the issue, and still have their vote counted.
We shouldn’t be making it harder for people to exercise their constitutionally guaranteed right to vote.
Vote No on Prop 39.
