The attorney general rewrote the Prop 39 ballot title after 1.3 million Californians signed it under a neutral one.
For nearly a year, the voter ID petition carried one title: “Establishes Additional Voter Identification and Citizenship Verification Requirements.”
That is what Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office issued on Sept. 19, 2025. It is what more than 1.3 million voters signed under, and what the Secretary of State used when the measure qualified in April as Proposition 39.
In July, after the measure had already earned its spot on the Nov. 3 ballot, Bonta changed it.
The title voters will now see: “Prohibits Citizens From Voting Unless They Present Government-Issued Identification.” The summary now opens with “Invalidates,” describing mail ballots missing an ID number, and the original mention of free state-issued ID cards is gone from the condensed language.
What Prop 39 actually does
The measure requires a government-issued ID for in-person voting and the last four digits of an ID number on mail ballot envelopes. It requires the state to issue a free voter ID card to anyone who asks, and orders election officials to verify citizenship on the rolls.
California is one of 14 states that do not generally ask for ID at the polls. Nowhere does the measure bar a citizen from voting. It sets a condition for a ballot to count, and hands every voter a free way to meet it.
“Sabotaging it before Californians ever get a fair vote”
“Rob Bonta couldn’t stop 1.3 million Californians from putting Prop 39 on the ballot. So what does he do? He changes the ballot title to manipulate how voters see voter ID, sabotaging it before Californians ever get a fair vote,” Rep. James Gallagher wrote on social media.
Rep. Kevin Kiley, now an independent, said the job should not belong to a politician at all. “I actually proposed that we take the ability to write these ballot descriptions out of the hands of an elected political official and instead put it in the hands of a nonpartisan official, the Legislative Analyst,” he told CBS Sacramento.
Bonta’s office told CBS that “It is not uncommon for the ballot title and summary to change from the circulating version,” noting all nine citizen initiatives were revised after qualifying. It did not explain why this revision turned a neutral description into one built around “prohibits” and “invalidates.”
