Attorney General Rob Bonta swapped out the ballot title for a voter ID initiative that gathered 1.3 million signatures, and Republicans say the new wording is designed to scare voters into voting no.
Assemblyman Carl DeMaio filed suit against Bonta on Friday, July 25, demanding a state court block the attorney general's rewritten title for Proposition 39, the Voter Identification, Citizenship Verification, and Registered Voter List Administration Initiative. The measure had already qualified for the November ballot under a title Bonta's own office approved back in September 2025: "Establishes Additional Voter Identification and Citizenship Verification Requirements." That was the language on the petitions more than 1.3 million Californians signed to put the measure before voters, according to DeMaio's group, Reform California.
Bonta's office then swapped it for this: "Prohibits Citizens From Voting Unless They Present Government-Issued Identification."
DeMaio called it "a blatant attempt to rig the November election" through language he says is built to alarm voters rather than describe the measure. Republican Rep. James Gallagher went further on social media, accusing Bonta of "trying to rig the language" and writing that the attorney general "sabotaged it before Californians ever get a fair vote," according to Fox40 and CBS Sacramento, which both confirmed the title change and the backlash.
Proposition 39 would require voters to show government-issued identification at the polls and require proof of U.S. citizenship when registering to vote. It cleared signature gathering with support from more than a million Californians, according to the Secretary of State's office, a threshold that alone put it ahead of most citizen initiatives this cycle. The original AG-approved description was a plain summary of what the measure requires. The rewritten version leads with what it would supposedly "prohibit," a framing critics say is engineered to trigger a no vote from anyone skimming the ballot without reading the fine print.
Bonta's office has defended the switch as procedure, not politics. A spokesperson pointed to a provision of the state elections code allowing the attorney general's official title and summary to "differ from the legislative, circulating, or other title and summary of the measure" once an initiative formally qualifies for the ballot. The office also told reporters all nine citizen initiatives on this cycle's ballot received revised titles, framing Prop 39's rewrite as routine housekeeping rather than a targeted hit job.
That explanation does not answer the harder question: why the revision for this particular measure reads like an argument against it rather than a description of it. California law gives the attorney general title-and-summary authority precisely because that office is supposed to write neutral language voters can trust before they ever see a campaign ad. DeMaio's lawsuit argues Bonta blew past that line, turning a procedural power into a tool for shaping the outcome before a single vote is cast.
A pattern worth watching
Bonta is a Democrat who has spent his tenure as attorney general fighting Republican-backed ballot measures and defending the state's existing election procedures, which do not require photo ID to vote. Whether the other eight retitled initiatives received comparably loaded language, or whether Prop 39 was singled out, is the question DeMaio's suit will have to answer with something more than a press release. If the other rewrites read as neutral procedural updates and only the voter ID measure got language warning voters it would "prohibit" them from casting a ballot, that pattern would undercut Bonta's standard-practice defense considerably.
California courts have stepped in before to police ballot title fights when language crosses from description into advocacy, and DeMaio is betting a judge will see this one the same way. A ruling could come before ballots go to print this fall, meaning the title voters actually read in November may not be the one Bonta's office wrote. Until then, the fight over nine words is doing what campaign ads usually do, months before either side has spent a dime on one.
Also read: NJ Governor Admits Software Error Let 6,600 Noncitizens Register to Vote • RNC widens six-state fight over voters who never lived there • Trump alleges China stole 220 million voter files as networks skip speech
