Soon after 14 ballot measures were locked in for California’s November election, the author of one of the propositions made an unusual declaration: She hopes no one votes for the measure she wrote.
“I authored ACA (Assembly Constitutional Amendment) 22 not because I wanted it to become law,” Assembly Member Buffy Wicks, D-Oakland, wrote in a multipart post on X this week. “But because it was the only path left to get the more dangerous initiative off the ballot before time ran out.”
Wicks’ bill is the kind of legislative compromise that has come to typify the ballot measure deadline process in recent years, using the Legislature’s ability to place measures on the ballot as a potential bargaining tool. Her plea for voters to reject the plan she created underscores the slapdash nature of the process at times — Wicks now says the eleventh-hour deal is better than nothing, but doesn’t actually want it to succeed…