Voters put a lot of faith in their ballots to be accurate and clear. If the wording of a measure is difficult for the average adult to understand, said wording could alter the course of the entire election. As such, it is essential for the attorney general to be nonpartisan and neutral. Unsurprisingly, they’re not only elected, but partisan.
Recent California attorney generals have abused this power for years, skewing ballot language to persuade voters to favor a certain outcome simply by word choice alone. This was recently exemplified by California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, a partisan Democrat, who released the ballot description for a proposed $12.5 billion in new annual taxes on business properties, but neglected to mention the fact that this tax increase was, in fact, a tax increase. However, he was more than happy to mention that the measure would be funding education three times within 100 words.
The proposal had previously polled in its full, accurate entirety, and failed to gain traction with voters. Becerra’s attempt was a last-ditch effort to coax voters into seeing things a certain way—his way.
He isn’t the first, however. In 2015, then-Attorney General Kamala Harris spun a title and summary for a pension reform measure, which turned out to be too much for even the backers to handle. They abandoned the measure, and Harris took it in like a stray. Her preaching about “reaching across the aisle” is simply hypocritical when you look at her past actions—and proves how easily attorney generals can act as partisan hacks.
Sadly, Becerra is only following in Harris’ footsteps of corruption. Citizens need to continue to be vocal about these obvious problems with our state government, and demand change.
