Between 2015 and 2019, the California legislature and Governors laid down a series of legislative landmines designed to start the slow unraveling of self-governance in California and transfer growing amounts of power away from the People and to local and state officials.

Part 1 of “Does Your Legislature Believe in Self-Governance?” details those laws.

From 2022 to 2025, the Constitutional rights of Californians were attacked by a new onslaught of laws designed to continue that unraveling.

ROADSIDE BOMB NUMBER 6:

In 2022, California passed AB 2582, requiring that a recall election for a local officer include only whether the officer should be recalled and removed from office or not. The vacancy created as a result of a successful recall will be vacant until filled “according to law”, not elected concurrently with the recall election.

AB 2582 also requires that recall ballots for state officers provide one blank line for a write-in vote. Petitions for recall of school board members must include an estimate of the cost of conducting a special election.

This law discourages self-governance at the level closest to the People by making the recall process for local office a two-step process.

It leaves the People without representation for a lengthy period of time if the recall is successful by separating the recall election from the subsequent election to fill the position, and makes local recalls twice as expensive for the taxpayer by requiring double the number of elections.

ROADSIDE BOMB NUMBER 7:

Also in 2022, California passed AB 2584, increasing the number of required signatures on a recall petition (numbers established in the text of the bill), assigned based on the office in question. The higher the office, the larger the number of signatures required.

Previously, the number of signatures required was a fixed percentage of the number of voters who voted in the most recent election. This law established an entirely new quota.

By increasing the number of signatures to qualify a recall, this law increases the difficulty of the People to self-govern, and appears designed to act as a discouragement for people to initiate any recall efforts.

It also makes the statement and answer in the notice for recall subject to civil or criminal action or penalty in the case of any false, slanderous or libelous material, but fails to establish who or what entity will determine what is “false, slanderous or libelous,” giving state officials unilateral power likely to cause intimidation.

ROADSIDE BOMB NUMBER 8:

Once again in 2022, California passed SB 1061, regarding any election to fill school district or community college district vacancy. It requires a request (petition) for election to include cost estimate on a per-pupil basis, and changes required timing for said elections.

This bill acts on many levels as a clear effort to discourage citizens from pursuing recall efforts.

ROADSIDE BOMB NUMBER 9:

In 2024, California passed SB 1174, prohibiting requirement of voter ID for any election within the state of California.

This bill was a reaction to the city of Huntington Beach, which passed an ID requirement for its local elections.

Not only does the state have no business micro-managing local elections of its municipalities, this law is a blatant admission that the legislature has no willingness to respect legitimate measures to ensure fair, honest, transparent and valid elections, and is corrupt and arrogant enough to pass such a law in direct opposition to the desires of almost 80% of the Californians they represent, from all political parties.

This law tramples citizens’ rights of self-governance.

ROADSIDE BOMB NUMBER 10:

Also in 2024, California passed AB 94, changing Elections Code to read: “There shall not be an election for a successor in a recall of a local officer … If a majority of the votes on a recall proposal for a local officer are “Yes”, the officer is removed and the office shall be vacant until it is filled according to law, provided that the officer who was the subject of the recall election shall not be appointed to fill the vacancy in that office.”

This law punishes the People for exercising their right of self-governance by leaving them unrepresented in local offices

should their recall be successful.

It appears to be designed to dissuade the People from holding any recall.

2024 was a busy year. Two more bills of concern were passed.

ROADSIDE BOMB NUMBER 11:

California passed AB 604, proposing an override of the district lines drawn after the 2020 census to severely limit Republican representation of California in the U.S. House.

The override was taken to the voters as Proposition 50 in a rushed special election, at great expense to taxpayers ($500,000 million), and under what appeared to be suspicious circumstances, the proposal was enacted in time to affect the 2026 midterm elections.

In order to pass the bill that led to the Proposition 50 election, the legislature had to break several of its own procedural rules, violate statues regarding public notification and public input period, and trample a dictate of the California Constitution put in place a few years earlier by vote of the People.

The campaigning for the proposition was intense, tax-payer funded and deceptive, reassuring the voters that its purpose was justified retribution for another state’s legitimate and legal reapportionment due to 2020 census errors, and that the California apportionment procedures would be re-instated in 2030. 

There was no time for the opposition to

mount an informational campaign.

State officials know that if they can force something onto the ballot, they can control its success or failure through the methods of manipulation they have enshrined in the California election code over the last two and a half decades.

There is substantial reason to doubt the legitimacy of the election’s results, which left 40% of Californians likely to emerge from the 2026 midterms with single-digit percentage representation in the House of Representatives.

ROADSIDE BOMB NUMBER 12:

California passed AB 930, which severely impacted the recount process.

The bill requires the person or organization requesting the recount

to reimburse the county for the cost of each member of a recount board.

This requirement has and continues to inhibit candidates from requesting or completing a legitimate recount by pricing them out. It is common for a county to raise the price on a daily basis.

EVERY Californian should be incensed.

California is no longer a Republic, by any sense of the definition.

The question is, will we Californians link arms, drop the partisan bickering and work together to restore a legitimate government in our state?

Only time will tell.

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