Court Opinion

ID: 9786310
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-30 23:53:02.640101+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:36:44.234222
License: Public Domain

KENNARD, J., Concurring and Dissenting.
I concur in the majority’s holdings that: (1) Preelection judicial review of a challenge to an initiative measure is appropriate when the challenge is based on a claim that the measure does not comply with procedural requirements necessary to qualify *1031the matter for the ballot; (2) our state Constitution and statutes require that the version of a proposed initiative submitted by its proponents to the state Attorney General be the same as the version circulated to the public for signatures sufficient to qualify the initiative for placement on the ballot; and (3) the doctrine of substantial compliance applies to procedural challenges to initiative measures.
I dissent, however, from the majority’s conclusion that here the proponents of Proposition 77 substantially complied with the constitutional and statutory requirements that a copy of the proposed initiative be provided to the Attorney General before the proposal is circulated to the public for signatures. Like the trial court and the Court of Appeal, I conclude that to substantially comply with the constitutional and statutory provisions, a party wishing to circulate a proposed initiative must give the Attorney General a copy that does not differ in meaning from the version of the initiative circulated to the public for signatures. The purpose of these provisions is to furnish the Legislature, government offices and officials, as well as the electorate, with accurate information so they can make informed decisions. When, as here, the proposed initiative has two competing versions that differ in meaning, the goal of the constitutional and statutory provisions is undermined and the integrity of the electoral process is compromised.
I.
Petitioners were the proponents of Proposition 77, an initiative measure that proposed changing the process for redistricting California’s Senate, Assembly, congressional, and Board of Equalization districts. At the November 8, 2005, special election, the voters rejected the initiative. The question here, however, does not concern the defeat of the initiative, but whether the proposition should have been presented to the voters at all.
On December 7, 2004, the proponents started the initiative process by submitting to the Attorney General a version of the proposed initiative prepared on December 6 (the December 6 version). (Cal. Const., art. II, § 10, subd. (d); Elec. Code, § 9002.) That same day, Tricia Knight, the Attorney General’s initiative coordinator, notified the proponents that any substantive amendments to the proposed initiative would have to be submitted within 15 days of the initial submission, that is, on or before December 22, 2004. The proponents did not present any amendments.
On February 3, 2005, Knight sent to the proponents, to the Secretary of State, and to the Chief Clerk of the Assembly, the title and summary prepared by the Attorney General as well as the December 6 version of the proposed initiative that the proponents had provided to the Attorney General.
*1032The proponents then arranged for the printing of the initiative petition for circulation to the electorate to try to gather enough signatures to qualify the measure for the ballot. The printed petition contained the Attorney General’s title and summary of the proposed initiative, but the version of the proposed initiative in the petition was not the same as the December 6 version that the proponents had submitted to the Attorney General. Instead, the petition contained an earlier draft of the proposed initiative, a draft dated December 3, 2004 (the December 3 version).
In mid-May 2005, the proponents learned that they had circulated to the electorate the wrong version of the proposed initiative. They did not, however, disclose that to the Secretary of State until June 13, 2005, after he had certified that the proposed initiative qualified for the ballot and so notified the Legislature’s Assembly and Senate.
On July 8, 2005, the Attorney General brought this action for a writ of mandate to prohibit either version of the proposed initiative from being placed on the ballot. The trial court found that the error was the result of an inadvertent mistake. The court acknowledged the applicability of the legal doctrine of substantial compliance in limited situations involving the initiative process. It determined, however, that the proponents had not substantially complied with the constitutional and statutory requirements for qualifying a measure for the ballot. The differences between the proposed initiative submitted to the Attorney General and the version submitted to the public, the trial court said, “go to the substantive terms of the measure.”
In a two-to-one decision, the Court of Appeal affirmed the trial court’s judgment. On August 12, 2005, a majority of this court granted the proponents’ petition for review, stayed the judgment of the trial court, and directed the Secretary of State to place the December 3 version of the initiative (the version included in the petition signed by the public) on the ballot for the November 8, 2005 election. The voters rejected the initiative.
II.
The California Constitution reserves to the people the powers of initiative and referendum. (Cal. Const., art. IV, § 1.) “The initiative is the power of the electors to propose statutes and amendments to the Constitution and to adopt or reject them.” (Cal. Const., art. II, § 8, subd. (a).) Of particular relevance here is this provision in the state Constitution: “Prior to circulation of an initiative or referendum petition for signatures, a copy shall be submitted to the Attorney General who shall prepare a title and summary of the measure as provided by law.” (Cal. Const., art. II, § 10, subd. (d), italics added.) The Constitution further directs the Legislature to “provide the manner in which *1033petitions shall be circulated, presented, and certified, and measures submitted to the electors.” (Cal. Const., art. II, § 10, subd. (e).) The Legislature has enacted a number of statutes implementing these provisions. (Elec. Code, § 9000 et seq.)
The constitutional and statutory requirement that the Attorney General be given a copy of a proposed initiative serves the objective of providing consistent, reliable information about the initiative to the Legislature, to certain government offices, to those who may want to comment on the proposal, and to the public. Accordingly, the Attorney General is required by law to prepare a title and summary of the document submitted (Elec. Code, §§ 9002, 9004); to give copies to the Department of Finance and Joint Legislative Budget Committee for preparation of cost estimates (id., § 9005); and to send copies with the Attorney General’s title and summary of the proposed initiative to the proponents, the Secretary of State, the Senate, and the Assembly (id., §§ 9004, 9007). Based on the copy furnished by the Attorney General, either or both houses of the Legislature may hold public hearings on the measure. (Id., § 9007.) The Attorney General’s transmission of the summary of the “chief purposes and points” of the proposed initiative must be prepared within 15 days of the Attorney General’s receipt of the final version of the proposed initiative or 15 days from receipt of the cost estimates from the Department of Finance and Joint Legislative Budget Committee, whichever is later. (Id., § 9004.) The Attorney General’s transmission of the summary triggers the official notification by the Secretary of State to the county election officials, and it starts the time during which the petition is circulated to the electorate for signatures to qualify the initiative for placement on the ballot. (Id., § 336.) Each page of the petition must bear the Attorney General’s summary. (Id., § 9008.)
As the majority here observes, “there can be no question but that the relevant constitutional and statutory provisions require that the version of a measure submitted to the Attorney General by the measure’s proponents prior to circulation of the petition be the same version of the initiative measure circulated for signature.” (Maj. opn., ante, at pp. 1011-1012, italics added.) That the proponents failed to comply with this requirement is not in question. The majority acknowledges that the version of the proposed initiative submitted by the proponents to the Attorney General was substantively different from the version circulated to the public for signature gathering. (Maj. opn., ante, at pp. 1023-1024.)
Nevertheless, the majority concludes it was proper to place the initiative on the ballot because the proponents substantially complied with the purpose of the constitutional and statutory requirement that the Attorney General be given a copy of the proposed initiative. (Maj. opn., ante, at pp. 1025-1026.) The *1034purpose of this requirement, the majority says, includes ensuring “that all the relevant officials are ‘on the same page.’ ” (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 1024.) The majority reasons that differences between the two versions were brought to the attention of public officials and opponents of the measure before the ballot materials were printed for distribution to the electorate, and the disparities were such that the public officials had adequate time to make revisions necessary “to reflect the version that was to be voted upon in the election.” (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 1025.) I disagree.
With respect to initiatives, we measure substantial compliance by asking whether the failure to comply with the law frustrates the constitutional and statutory goal of giving the electorate pertinent information about the measure. (Assembly v. Deukmejian (1982) 30 Cal.3d 638, 652-653 [180 Cal.Rptr. 297, 639 P.2d 939].) In my view, there is no substantial compliance if the copy of the proposed initiative submitted to the Attorney General differs substantively from that circulated to the public for the gathering of signatures.
The copy of the proposed initiative that the proponents submit to the Attorney General is accepted and treated as the official version of the proposal. It is disseminated throughout the government at both the state and county levels and made generally available to the public as a public record. All who receive the text of the initiative through this process should be entitled to rely on its accuracy. When, as here, the text of an initiative that appears on the ballot differs substantively from the text furnished to the Attorney General, to the Legislature, to any affected party, and to the public, each loses the opportunity to fully assess the measure’s impact at the time and in the manner contemplated by the state Constitution and the state election laws.1
When, as here, the Attorney General is given a copy of a proposed initiative that is different in substantive respects from the version that ultimately appears on the ballot, the Attorney General becomes the unwitting agent of misinformation by disseminating the variant text throughout state and local government and to the public. The effects of this misinformation are *1035difficult to trace and quantify, but may well be profound. The inaccuracies in the variant text may influence groups and individuals specifically interested in the subject matter of the proposed initiative as they decide whether or not to endorse or oppose the measure, and it may lead them to make inaccurate public comments about how the measure will operate or what its likely impact will be. In turn, registered voters who sign petitions to place the measure on the ballot may be affected by the presence or absence of public comments endorsing or opposing the measure, or explaining its operation and effects. When the process of qualifying the initiative for the ballot is thus tainted at the outset by information that is incomplete or misleading, the basic integrity of the electoral process is placed at risk.
The Attorney General’s inadvertent dissemination of misinformation about the initiative was exacerbated by the proponents’ delay in notifying the Secretary of State of the differences between the version of the initiative that was submitted to the Attorney General and the one that was circulated to the public. The proponents submitted the proposed initiative to the Attorney General on December 7, 2004. In mid-May 2005, the proponents discovered that the version circulated to the public for signatures was different from the version they had given to the Attorney General. Yet they waited until June 13, 2005, before notifying the Secretary of State of their error. Both versions were judicially enjoined from being placed on the ballot until August 12, 2005, just three days before the contents of the voter information guide had to be received by the State Printer for printing and distribution to all of the approximately 12 million registered voters in California. When the existence of the two different versions finally became a matter of public knowledge, the confusion and uncertainty about which version, if either, would be placed on the ballot necessarily impaired the ability of interested parties to understand the measure and to debate its merits during a crucial preelection period.2
*1036There is no need to so jeopardize the integrity of the electoral process. The constitutional and statutory mandate of providing a true copy to the Attorney General of what will be circulated to the electorate for signatures is readily and easily met. All any proponent of any initiative measure need do to satisfy this mandate is to read and compare both versions, a simple matter of proofreading. Moreover, the proponents had, after submitting to the Attorney General a copy of the proposed initiative, at least 15 days in which they could make any changes to the submitted text. (Elec. Code, § 9004.) As the trial court put it: “There is no good reason to put the courts in the position of having to decide what is good enough for qualifying an initiative measure for the ballot when actual compliance is easily attainable.”
The Attorney General asserts that the doctrine of substantial compliance should apply here only if the differences between the copy of the initiative submitted to the Attorney General and the version circulated to the public for signature gathering do not effect a change in the meaning. I agree. The majority rejects that position, however, on the grounds that it would invalidate a circulated petition without regard to the significance or insignificance of the particular differences in meaning (maj. opn., ante, at pp. 1026-1027); that it would not tolerate “any departure” in meaning (id. at p. 1027); and that it would include “an inadvertent mistake in the printing of an insignificant numeral” (ibid.). The doctrine of substantial compliance, as urged by the Attorney General, is not as strict as the majority implies; it does allow insignificant differences, minor departures from legal requirements, and inadvertent mistakes, as long as they do not affect the meaning of the proposed initiative. (See Assembly v. Deukmejian, supra, 30 Cal.3d at p. 653; California Teachers Assn. v. Collins (1934) 1 Cal.2d 202 [34 P.2d 134].) When two versions of a proposed initiative differ in ways that change its meaning, however, as occurred here (see p. 1035, fn. 2, ante), the doctrine of substantial compliance should not apply, in light of the significant risk of confusing or misleading the public. (See Boyd v. Jordan (1934) 1 Cal.2d 468 [35 P.2d 533].)
Citing prior decisions involving court comparisons of titles and summaries of proposed initiatives to substantive provisions of the measures, the majority asserts that the courts are quite capable of determining whether variances in different versions of a proposed initiative pose a realistic danger of misleading the electorate. (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 1028.) The issue here, however, does *1037not involve an inaccurate title or summary; instead, it involves separate versions, differing in meaning, of the very text of the initiative. Moreover, the inquiry goes beyond whether the voters may have been misled in the voting booths. Also to be considered are the consequences of furnishing different versions of the proposed initiative to the Legislature and to the public. Given the narrow timeframe for a preelection challenge, how can a court accurately determine that differences in meaning in the two versions could not have affected decisions within the legislative branch about whether or not to hold hearings, the form and content of such hearings, and whether to propose or enact legislation addressing the same subject? And, given the narrow time-frame, how can a court reliably determine that the differences in meaning in the two versions were not significant to any organization, group, or prominent individual in taking an early stand for or against the proposed initiative measure, or refraining from taking a stand? Inaccurate information about the meaning of a proposed initiative, widely and officially disseminated at an early stage of the political process, when key judgments are being made about whether to support or oppose the initiative, and about how to frame the public debate concerning it, can subtly alter the entire electoral process and thereby compromise its integrity.3
Misplaced is the majority’s reliance on MHC Financing Limited Partnership Two v. City of Santee (2005) 125 Cal.App.4th 1372 [23 Cal.Rptr.3d 622] as support for a contrary conclusion. There, unlike here, the court addressed the issue in the context of a postelection challenge to an initiative that was never submitted to the electorate. Here, we are concerned with preelection challenges and whether, when similar situations arise in the future, proposed initiatives should be submitted to the electorate for a vote.4
Preelection judicial review of challenges to initiative matters, as the majority recognizes, presents issues and concerns different from those involved in postelection review. In particular, an election may render moot a *1038challenge to an initiative based on failure to comply with procedural requirements of the initiative process. (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 1007.) In addition, the Court of Appeal in MHC Financing assumed that the only purpose of the requirement of Elections Code section 9203 that a proposed local initiative be submitted to the local election official (there, the city clerk) was for preparation of a summary and title by the city attorney. (MHC Financing Limited. Partnership Two v. City of Santee, supra, 125 Cal.App.4th at p. 1391.) As we have seen {ante, p. 1034 & fn. 1), the constitutional directive that the proponents of a statewide initiative submit a copy to the Attorney General serves many purposes in addition to preparation of a summary and title for the initiative.
III.
The state Constitution and the implementing statutory provisions require that the proponents of a proposed statewide initiative, before circulating it for signatures, give a copy of its text to the Attorney General, who then prepares a title and summary of the initiative and distributes the text of the measure to various government offices and officials and to interested members of the public. This requirement serves the crucial purpose of establishing the official text of the initiative so that its merits may be carefully and accurately examined and debated within the Legislature and in other public forums during a period of months leading up to the election at which the initiative will appear on the ballot. When this clear and easily satisfied directive is breached, and misinformation about the initiative’s meaning is inadvertently disseminated at the outset of the campaign, the inevitable result is distortion of the public debate on the initiative and compromise of the electoral process.
I would affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeal and hold that when, as here, the copy of the proposed initiative submitted by its proponents to the Attorney General differs in meaning from the version circulated to the electorate for signatures, the measure should not be placed on the ballot.
Moreno, J., concurred.

 At the direction of the Court of Appeal, the Attorney General prepared a title and summary for the December 3 version of the initiative that did not materially differ from the title and summary prepared for the December 6 version. But the purpose of the constitutional and statutory requirement that the proponents of an initiative give the Attorney General a copy of the proposed initiative goes far beyond the preparation of a title and summary. The Attorney General’s title and summary may not exceed 100 words and is limited to the “chief purpose and points” of the proposed initiative. (Elec. Code, § 9002.) As the Court of Appeal observed: “If the measure of substantial compliance is the adequacy of such a general summary to encompass both the submitted and circulated versions, an unlimited number of substantive changes not contained in the copy submitted to the Attorney General could be made to the circulating copy.”

 The majority concedes that the differences between the two versions are substantive (maj. opn., ante, at p. 1024), but then attempts to characterize them as “relatively minor” when it concludes that public officials and others had enough time to comment on the version to be voted upon at the election (id. at p. 1025). Whether opponents, public officials, and others would consider the substantive discrepancies significant or minor, and if so, why, is a matter for them to decide for themselves as they determine what information to provide or arguments to make to the public. In any event, there are significant disparities between some of the major provisions in the two different versions involved here. The “Findings and Declarations of Purpose” differed. For example, the December 6 version added provisions in the findings and declarations more directly accusing incumbent legislators of conflicts of interest and asserting that retired judges are better suited to apportioning districts in California. The difference is potentially significant because such findings and declarations of purpose are critical considerations in determining the intent of the voters in adopting an initiative and thus may affect how its provisions are understood and construed when disputes later arise. (See People ex rel. Lockyer v. R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company (2005) 37 Cal.4th 707, 716 [36 Cal.Rptr.3d 814, 124 P.3d 408]; California Assn. of Psychology Providers v. Rank (1990) 51 Cal.3d 1, 15 [270 Cal.Rptr. 796].) In addition, the December 3 version of the proposed initiative stated that except *1036for judicial decrees its provisions are the exclusive means of adjusting boundaries. The December 6 version added to this statement language saying that the initiative and referendum powers reserved to the people in article II of the state Constitution could be used only as specified in the proposed measure itself. The December 3 version could well be read as allowing modification of the measure by future initiatives independent of the terms of the measure itself, while the December 6 version cannot. In my view, a difference that may restrict the people’s reserved initiative and referendum powers by barring their use to modify a constitutional provision is not “relatively minor.”

 The majority also asserts that a rule barring submission of an initiative to the voters because of substantive disparities between the two versions of the initiative could compel a court to withhold from an election a “universally popular and urgently needed ‘good government’ constitutional initiative.” (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 1027.) The rule could equally serve to withhold from an election a highly undesirable initiative measure. The majority’s argument is unsound, because the rule of substantial compliance does not, and should not, depend on the court’s view of the desirability of the initiative. Indeed, the majority’s comment highlights a major disadvantage of its approach—the risk that, with a vague and subjective substantial compliance standard, inappropriate considerations will actually influence a court’s substantial compliance determination, or that the public will perceive the court to be so influenced.

 Although the filing of this case occurs after the November 2005 election, we decide this case in the context of preelection review because the issue being resolved is whether the Court of Appeal and trial court erred in enjoining the initiative from being placed on the ballot before the election.