Voter ID has passed in 36 states. California could be next — and the measure on this ballot is trailing in the polls even though the same policy wins by a landslide almost everywhere else in the country. Orange County GOP Chairman Will O'Neill joins Phil and Camille to make the case for Prop 39 (voter ID and citizenship verification) and Prop 5, a recall reform written by the one state legislator who's actually lived through a successful recall himself.
We get into what Prop 39 would actually require at the polls and by mail, who's funding the campaign behind it, and why it's polling worse in California than nationally. Then we turn to Prop 5 — the mechanism problem it's solving, the irony of its authorship, and the structural objection Republicans have to how it would work in practice.
No vote recommendations here — just the documents, the money, and the mechanism, so you can decide for yourself.
Read more from Phil in The Gilded State, his book on California's political dysfunction.