All of that, that the bill isn’t perfect, and there might be loopholes, and it’s hard to actually figure out what “assets” are, and on and on. Never mind the fact that any starting point would be better than nothing.

I mean even fucking Planned Parenthood came out against it [1], which is profoundly disappointing.

Sergey Brin alone supposedly spent at least $100 million to defeat it [2]. The motherfuckers even funded three different poison pill props to neutralize it. Pretty much every tactic they could use they did. Newsome and Becerra being against it didn’t help either.

1: https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/joegarofoli/article/planned-parenthood-billionaire-tax-california-22336650.php

2: https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/10/google-co-founder-sergey-brin-has-now-spent-100-million-to-fight-the-billionaire-tax/

I’ve been telling everyone the entire election cycle that we were being propagandized to hell here in CA. Every single commercial break had at least one ad about how the wealth tax was going to be used to tax regular Californians because of a “loophole” (incredibly dishonest reading of the text that almost certainly wouldn’t have survived court had anyone tried it).

I think the rejection is pretty straightforward... It's a lack of trust. California doesn't have a revenue problem; it's got a spending problem. When you couple that with some well known cases of "taxes on the wealthy" morphing into taxes on the ordinary over time (like AMT), it makes voters suspicious that this proposition was actually for it's stated purpose, and even though slippery slopes are a logical fallacy, people don't always employ logic when voting.

There are other factors too of course, but the bill's sponsors failed to overcome the general distrust voters have of their elected officials and California tax authorities.

Billionaires don't need arguments when they can carpet bomb the state with bullshit advertisements.

They just automatically vote against anything related to taxes. It didn't seem like they actually read what the prop was. It literally just affected like 200 people out of millions....

And that’s how we get red states!

but people don’t read stuff I guess?

I mean people voted for Trump....3 times....stating he's a good businessman so he can run the country when there's mountains of documentation proving he's a fraud and failed businessman. I remember in high school there were kids that couldn't make it through a sentence when it was their turn to read out loud.

If there's anything the last decade has taught me, it's that the majority of humans, especially Americans, are duuuuuuuuumb.

Those were the worst

Is it bullshit though? This exact proposal, sure. But every other tax that was initially applied only to the wealthy eventually expanded to hit the entire population. Look at income taxes. They applied initially only to the ultra wealthy. Why should wealth taxes be any different? It's not a slippery slope fallacy if you can point to actual historical examples of a very thing happening.

They ran so many ads. I was visiting family in CA a few weeks ago and every second commercial was saying if the law passes they'll use it to put a tax on everyone. Obviously bullshit but I can understand why some lower half of the bell curve people would believe it.

Lots of comments in all the blue tsunami posts talking about how the public must finally "get it". They now think like rational humans who will choose what's best for a society and in their own best interest.

At best this is reactionary revenge voting meant to punish the ruling party for the ways policies have impacted them recently. I think the next election we'll be right back to a split government with no power to undo any of the techbro billionaire fascist ratcheting that has happened the last decade.

The really frustrating part is that many Californians also voted to increase sales taxes again. Sales taxes are incredibly regressive.

But what if I become a billionaire? \s

It wasn't close at all. I could tell it had failed not long after polls closed from the results.

"are 'they' in the room with us right now?"

people are really stupid

Wrong. People are generally intelligent.

Propaganda is just very effective, even against intelligent people, and most people don't have the extra time/energy or desire to investigate each prop. Which is a structural failure to not prioritize it, but that's the point. There are systems in place to make political research feel both not important and also very exhausting. You live in a society full of very intelligent people, a slice of those intelligent people use their positions of power to add layers upon layers of friction to the political system so that they can retain their power.

You are not surrounded by idiots, but, you ARE ruled by criminals.

At least SF voted for prop 40, but yeah sucks that we're sending wiener to congress and giving the billionaire mayor more power.

I feel very thankful the only political ads I see are hundreds of mailers clogging my mailbox and so many text messages I have to turn alerts off.

Mine was stalled like that, even after I turned in the ballot last Thursday. Finally showed as counted on Monday.

Mine hasn’t either, and I also wanted to be hopeful that there’ll be enough slow counted votes to turn it… but I don’t know

I received it as a text:

A message from California Secretary of State on behalf of County Registrar. Your ballot for the November 3, 2026, General Election was received and will be counted. Thank you for voting!

You should be able to check your current status following the info here:

https://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/ballot-status

California always has delays in Getting everything through the system, a side effect of having reasonable election laws that let you mail in ballots up to election say, a huge population, and a thorough counting process. Be patient but follow up.

I turned mine in yesterday and got the confirmation it was received today. I did a drop off box and not the mail though, but it has 7 days to get there to be counted.

I didn't get a notice, but went to the county website that shows it was accepted and counted.