SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California voters decisively rejected a Republican-backed voter identification measure Tuesday, delivering a significant defeat to an election security proposal that attracted tens of millions of dollars in campaign spending, just days after the Trump administration suffered a series of federal court setbacks in its efforts to challenge the state’s election procedures.
Proposition 39 failed by a margin of 58.6% to 41.4%, according to Associated Press returns updated at 4:22 a.m. Wednesday.
The Associated Press called the race at 9:39 p.m. Tuesday, with opponents receiving 4,495,607 votes compared with 3,176,217 in favor, based on an estimated 59% of ballots counted.
The outcome came as Republicans nationally sought to make voter identification, noncitizen voting and allegations of election fraud prominent political issues, despite the absence of evidence establishing widespread illegal voting in California.
The measure was spearheaded by Republican Assemblymember Carl DeMaio of San Diego and his organization, Reform California, after earlier efforts to enact similar requirements through the Legislature failed.
Proposition 39 would have amended the California Constitution to require voters to present government-issued identification when voting in person and provide identifying information when voting by mail.
It also would have required additional citizenship verification procedures and the availability of free voter identification cards.
Supporters argued that the changes would strengthen election integrity and public confidence, pointing to identification requirements already in place in other states.
Opponents maintained that the proposal addressed a largely unsubstantiated problem while creating new obstacles for eligible voters, particularly those who lack readily available identification or have difficulty obtaining updated documents.
The campaign attracted substantial national Republican financial support.
Supporters raised approximately $37 million, including $17 million from Republican donor Richard Uihlein and $8 million from Airbnb co-founder and White House official Joe Gebbia.
The opposition raised approximately $35 million, with contributions from the California Democratic Party, labor organizations, tribal groups and individual donors.
Gov. Gavin Newsom, Sen. Adam Schiff and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi were among the prominent Democrats who campaigned against the measure.
The contest also reflected a broader national political effort by President Donald Trump and Republican allies to impose additional restrictions on voting, particularly mail voting, which has become the predominant method of casting ballots in California.
California Secretary of State Shirley Weber and other election officials repeatedly challenged claims that widespread noncitizen voting or voter impersonation justified the proposed restrictions.
Those disputes intensified in October when the Justice Department sought to require California officials to set aside mail ballots associated with 20,930 people whom federal officials identified as potentially ineligible because of their citizenship status.
The federal government’s list was challenged by California officials, who questioned the reliability of the underlying data and warned that eligible voters could be incorrectly identified.
The concerns were subsequently substantiated by an independent analysis conducted by researchers at the UCLA Voting Rights Project, who examined the federal government’s list after a judge ordered the Justice Department to disclose it.
According to an Oct. 31 court filing, UCLA researchers Matt Barreto and Michael Rios found that 8,880 of the 20,930 names identified by the Justice Department — approximately 42% — did not match anyone in California’s current voter registration database.
The finding raised fundamental questions about the reliability of the government’s list because thousands of people identified as potentially ineligible voters could not be located in the state’s current voter records.
The researchers also identified at least 22 confirmed U.S. citizens whose information matched entries on the federal list, along with 66 additional citizen records that were near-certain matches.
Using broader matching criteria, the researchers identified hundreds of additional potentially erroneous matches involving citizens.
Their analysis also estimated that nearly 7,500 naturalized citizens in California were highly likely to be incorrectly flagged as ineligible under the government’s matching methodology.
The researchers emphasized that problems with the federal government’s data could disproportionately affect naturalized citizens, whose immigration records may contain outdated information that does not accurately reflect their citizenship status.
The analysis also identified a significant methodological problem: The Justice Department’s list apparently omitted the voter identification numbers that California election officials use to match individuals to their registration records.
Without those identifiers, researchers said, it became substantially more difficult to distinguish between people with similar names, identify duplicate records or determine whether individuals remained registered to vote.
The findings were submitted as evidence in litigation brought by the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, known as CHIRLA, and California voter Pedro Trujillo, who challenged the administration’s efforts to use the disputed list to alter election procedures.
The UCLA findings did not establish that every person on the government’s list was a citizen or that no unlawful registrations existed.
They did, however, demonstrate substantial discrepancies between the federal government’s allegations and California’s voter registration records, while identifying citizens who appeared to have been incorrectly included.
The Justice Department disputed the research.
Bill Essayli, who leads the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles, publicly dismissed the analysis as a “bogus report,” while Justice Department officials maintained that the government had an obligation to prevent ballots from being cast by ineligible voters.
The administration argued that every unlawful ballot could effectively cancel out a legitimate vote.
The dispute over the list became central to a series of federal court proceedings immediately before Election Day.
On Oct. 28, U.S. District Judge David O. Carter rejected the Justice Department’s request for a temporary restraining order that would have required California to segregate ballots associated with individuals on the federal list.
Carter concluded that the government had failed to establish a sufficient legal basis for the requested intervention and raised concerns about disrupting election administration shortly before voting concluded.
The Justice Department pursued emergency relief in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which denied the request on Oct. 30.
The appellate court found that the government had not demonstrated the necessary grounds for emergency judicial intervention.
Meanwhile, in Washington, D.C., U.S. District Chief Judge James Boasberg ordered the Justice Department to provide the disputed list to attorneys representing CHIRLA and the UCLA Voting Rights Project.
That order enabled researchers to conduct the analysis that identified thousands of unmatched records and confirmed citizens appearing on the list.
On Nov. 2, Boasberg granted a preliminary injunction blocking the federal government from demanding that California election officials segregate ballots or depart from established state election procedures based on the disputed list.
In his ruling, Boasberg specifically addressed the UCLA research and the potential consequences for eligible voters.
The judge found Barreto to be a qualified and credible expert and cited the evidence that confirmed citizens had been included on the federal government’s list.
Boasberg concluded that the plaintiffs had demonstrated a concrete risk that eligible citizens could have their voting rights impeded.
He also found that the executive branch likely exceeded its constitutional authority by attempting to impose ballot-processing requirements that Congress had not authorized.
The court determined that the Constitution’s Elections Clause gives states and Congress authority over election procedures and does not permit the executive branch to unilaterally impose its preferred methods of verifying voter eligibility or counting ballots.
The injunction prevented federal officials from continuing to demand that California election administrators set aside ballots based on the challenged lists.
The litigation also reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which on Nov. 2 declined to grant emergency relief sought by the Trump administration.
The Supreme Court’s decision did not resolve the underlying legal dispute, but it left existing restrictions on the administration’s ballot-segregation effort in place immediately before Election Day.
Together, the rulings represented repeated judicial setbacks for the administration’s attempt to alter California’s ballot-processing procedures based on disputed allegations of noncitizen voting.
The UCLA findings added a significant factual dimension to the legal controversy by demonstrating that the government’s allegations rested on records containing substantial discrepancies.
Federal law prohibits noncitizens from voting in federal elections, but the presence of a name in an immigration database or a discrepancy between government records does not independently establish that someone is ineligible to vote.
Nor does a potentially inaccurate citizenship record establish that an unlawful ballot has been cast.
The distinction is particularly important for naturalized citizens, who may appear in older immigration databases under classifications that no longer reflect their legal status.
California officials maintained that the state’s existing voter registration requirements, signature verification procedures and other election safeguards were designed to protect election integrity without imposing additional barriers on eligible voters.
Against that backdrop, Proposition 39 asked California voters whether additional identification and verification requirements should become part of the state’s election system.
The measure’s supporters argued that stronger safeguards were appropriate even without evidence of widespread fraud, emphasizing public confidence and the prevention of future violations.
Opponents countered that election rules should be based on demonstrated problems and warned that additional requirements could result in valid ballots being rejected.
The nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office estimated that implementation could cost the state and local governments tens of millions to hundreds of millions of dollars.
The election also demonstrated the limits of national polling showing support for voter identification requirements.
Although surveys have often found bipartisan support for the general concept of requiring identification to vote, California voters rejected the specific constitutional amendment placed before them.
The result does not establish how voters would respond to other voter identification proposals with different requirements, but it represents a clear defeat for the initiative advanced by DeMaio and Republican donors.
For the Trump administration, the election followed an unsuccessful attempt to obtain emergency judicial authority to change California’s ballot-handling procedures.
For California Republicans, the defeat of Proposition 39 followed unsuccessful legislative efforts and a campaign that attracted substantial financial backing from outside the state.
The measure was rejected while federal litigation over California’s voter records and election administration continued, leaving the courts to resolve the remaining legal disputes after Election Day.
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