(The Center Square) – Two constitutional amendments introduced by Republican lawmakers in California were pushed in a press conference on Thursday morning on election integrity.
Neither amendment is advancing in time for consideration by the Democratic-controlled Legislature, and Republicans don't expect either one to be on the Nov. 3 general election ballot. GOP lawmakers also haven't announced whether didn't they plan to introduce the amendments next year. But they went ahead with the press conference to stress the importance of secure elections.
Assembly Constitutional Amendment 23, authored by Assemblymember Josh Hoover, R-Folsom, and Assemblymember Natasha Johnson, R-Lake Elsinore, would make the California Secretary of State’s Office a nonpartisan office. Current secretary of state candidates can declare a party preference, and Secretary of State Shirley Weber is a Democrat.
Many other elected positions in the state, including those on the local level, are required to be nonpartisan positions, the amendment’s advocates said.
“California law already requires elections to be nonpartisan for judicial, school, county and city offices, as well as the state superintendent of public instruction,” Hoover said at the Sacramento press conference. “This constitutional amendment would give California voters the opportunity to add the Office of Secretary of State to the list.”
The other amendment, Senate Constitutional Amendment 3, was introduced in 2025 by Sen. Roger Niello, R-Fair Oaks. That amendment would shift responsibilities for writing ballot measure titles and summaries from the partisan California Attorney General’s Office to the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office, Niello said at the Thursday press conference. Niello’s amendment stalled in an Assembly Appropriations Committee meeting on May 14 this year, essentially killing the bill, according to the state’s bill tracker.
Niello said on Thursday that the amendment he introduced was in response to what he said were efforts from the Attorney General’s Office to write ballot measure titles and summaries that misled California voters. The current attorney general is Rob Bonta, a Democrat.
“This has been a continual abuse of the attorney general putting his or her thumb on voters’ opinions with regard to a biased title and summary statement,” Niello said.
Niello pointed to the titles and summary statements for the initial high-speed rail ballot measure, which California voters passed in 2008, as well as Proposition 47, which downgraded certain crimes from felonies to misdemeanors.
“Proposition 47, which has had tremendous public safety consequences, was titled by Kamala Harris as the Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act because she wanted that to pass,” Niello said of the Prop. 47 measure. At the time, Harris, a Democrat who later became the vice president under the Biden administration, was the California attorney general.
Niello, Johnson and Hoover, who all recently rose into prominent leadership roles in the Republican caucuses of their respective chambers of the Legislature, pushed their measures just days after a state Superior Court decided to uphold the ballot title and summary for Prop. 39, a voter identification ballot measure heavily touted by Republicans this year.
That ballot measure, if California voters pass it in November, would require voters to present identification at the ballot box when they vote, or write the last four digits of their Social Security or driver’s license number on their envelope when voting by mail. Opponents of the measure said voter ID restricts certain voters – predominately voters of color – from voting.
Republican lawmakers previously told The Center Square that Prop. 39 is meant to increase election security, not restrict eligible voters from voting.
However, Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco and chair of the Senate Elections and Constitutional Amendments Committee, told The Center Square on Thursday morning that he believes that Republican lawmakers are pushing conspiracy theories about voter fraud and illegal voting.
“Those conspiracy theories are just false,” Wiener said. “We have a really good voting system in California. The rate of voter fraud is unbelievably low.”
Wiener, who said he hadn’t seen either amendment, added that there’s nothing wrong with California’s election system.
“We’ve seen this at the federal level, too,” Wiener said. “It’s all a pretext to restrict voting. Here, the secretary of state does a really good job, and the attorney general does a really good job. There’s no reason to make these changes.”
