Last summer the California Legislature passed a bill that purports to eliminate cash bail. Its constitutionality is doubtful. Kym posted on the passage here and followed up with this post on some of the constitutional and policy issues. I noted here that the bail bond industry promptly launched a referendum petition drive.
The Secretary of State now lists that referendum as pending signature verification. Qualifying requires 365,880 signatures, and the raw count of signatures totals 503,306. That should be well above the margin needed to remain qualified after invalid signatures are discarded.
A referendum is different from an initiative in that the petitioners are not seeking to enact their own legislation. The petition asks for the people to vote yes or no on the bill passed by the Legislature.
The referendum goes on the next general election ballot unless the
governor calls a special election. See Cal. Const. art. II § 9(c).
Special elections usually have low turnout, and low-turnout elections
historically have a greater proportion of persons of sense voting, as
voters with a diminished sense of personal responsibility are less
likely to bother. On that basis, I would expect Gov-elect Newsom to not call a special and let the bill go to the November 2020 ballot.
However, the historical pattern could change now that California
Legislature has legalized "vote harvesting," in which political workers
go around to people who haven't mailed in their vote-by-mail ballots and kindly offer to turn them in for them. Perhaps they may also helpfully fill in the choices. Who would know? We will have to wait and see what he does.
Qualification of a referendum postpones the effective date of the measure until five days after the Secretary of State files the statement of the vote, if the people approve it. See Art. II § 10, amended last month.
This disturbs & frightens me, being that my NY likes to
play Ché to California's Fidel, & follow suit.
""vote harvesting," in which political workers go around to people who haven't mailed in their vote-by-mail ballots and kindly offer to turn them in for them"
"In 2016, California Gov. Jerry Brown opened the door to fraud by signing a law allowing anyone to drop off a ballot for another person..
[After election night] two weeks later, 7 races that had been called for
Republicans switched and the Democrats were certified to have won.
All 7 were in California and no seats moved the other way —
from blue to red.
~ https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.westernjournal.com/dick-morris-dems-stole-seven-house-seats-california/amp/