California voters will face a ballot this November jammed with competing propositions, some written specifically to knock each other out. It’s a tactic that’s been around almost as long as Proposition 13 itself.
That landmark measure passed in June 1978 and rewired California’s property tax system in ways the state hasn’t escaped since. Schools took the worst of it. Their primary funding base collapsed almost overnight, forcing Sacramento to step in and cover education costs the state was never designed to carry. What didn’t make the history books, though, is how hard California’s political class tried to stop Prop. 13 before a single vote was cast.
Gov. Jerry Brown and a Democrat-controlled Legislature put a competing measure on that same primary ballot. Proposition 8 offered property tax relief for homeowners while leaving commercial property untouched. The calculation was straightforward: give voters a moderate alternative and drain support from the more sweeping Prop. 13.
Didn’t work.
Prop. 13 passed overwhelmingly. Prop. 8 lost narrowly. And Brown, who’d campaigned against the winning measure, pivoted inside of weeks and declared himself a “born-again tax cutter,” said analysts who’ve studied the period. The counterplay was buried so quickly that most accounts of the 1978 election treat it as a footnote.
But the strategy itself didn’t disappear.
The California initiative process dates to 1912, when it was added as a check on the Legislature’s power. For decades, it was used sparingly. Prop. 13 changed that calculus entirely. It showed industries, unions, and advocacy groups just how much a ballot measure could accomplish when Sacramento wouldn’t move. Since 1978, the process has exploded. According to Swing Strategies, a Sacramento political consulting firm that focuses on ballot measure campaigns, nearly a thousand measures have been proposed in just the last 20 years.
That’s not a civic surge. That’s an industry.
The firm’s numbers on cost put the scale in hard terms. Getting a measure onto the ballot can run more than $10 million, much of it burned on paid signature-gatherers. Full campaigns can top $100 million. Swing Strategies told attendees at a webinar held this week that most of these propositions don’t represent broad public movements. They represent specific economic or ideological interests that couldn’t get what they wanted through the Legislature.
For 2026, the firm tracked 48 measures that were originally proposed for the fall ballot. Of those, 36 tried to qualify by gathering the required number of valid voter signatures. As the April 17 petition submission deadline closes in, 17 are considered serious contenders. That’s 17 propositions potentially sitting on a single ballot in November.
Some of those 17 follow exactly the logic that Brown’s team tried in 1978, put a competing measure in front of voters and split the coalition behind the one you’re trying to defeat. CalMatters has tracked several of these dueling pairs heading into the fall campaign season.
One example involves SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West, the major health care worker union backing a measure to cap health care executive compensation. Their opponents didn’t just run ads against it. They drafted their own measure for the same ballot, designed to give voters a softer version of the same idea and pull support away from the union’s version. It’s the same move Prop. 8 was built on. It failed in 1978, but campaigns keep running it because it’s cheap relative to a full opposition campaign, and it occasionally works.
What’s different now is the volume. In 1978, voters dealt with two competing property tax measures. In 2026, they could face a ballot that’s 8 or 13 propositions deep before they get to a single candidate race. That’s not voters making law. That’s voters being asked to referee fights that well-funded interests couldn’t resolve in Sacramento.
Swing Strategies didn’t offer a verdict on whether that’s good or bad. They offered numbers. And the numbers suggest the April 17 deadline is going to determine how crowded November gets.