2025 California Special Election Live Results: Proposition 50

Voters across the state headed to the polls Tuesday to cast their ballots in the special statewide election on Proposition 50 to determine whether the state would continue to use congressional maps drawn by the state’s nonpartisan citizen redistricting commission following the 2020 census or use new legislatively-drawn maps for the next three election cycles.

Shortly after the polls closed at 8 p.m., the Associated Press called the race in favor of Prop 50. Results from across the state, including Riverside County, will continue to be updated throughout the coming weeks as additional ballots are counted. A livestream of the counting process can be found here.

As the sun went down, a video posted to Instagram by Inland Empire United showed a long line outside of the Riverside Main Library. Earlier in the day, election workers said the site had been busy since it opened at 7 a.m.

“I’m 76, and I’ve been voting since I was legal age,” Lindsay Burgess Abercrombie, who voted mid-day at the library, said. “And other than during the pandemic, I have gone to the polls as my duty and right, purposely.”

Burgess Abercrombie was just one of dozens who came out to vote at the library on Tuesday.

“It’s just everything that’s going on right now,” Peter Reynoso, who came to take advantage of California’s same-day registration policy and cast his ballot, said. “The president is making a lot of changes, and we need to keep what we got right now before we lose it.”

He came with Leticia Rodriguez who came to the vote center to drop off her already filled out ballot.

“Once it was tied into the benefits that people receive, whether it be like SNAP, whether it be Medicaid or Medicare, I think it affects many people, and it might even affect us at some point in our lifetime,” she said when asked why she felt it was important to vote in this election. “So I think it’s really important for us to go out and have our voices heard.”

Also in line were Kourtney and Evan Strickland, who brought their daughter with them to cast their ballots.

“Number one, we don’t really have childcare right now,” Evan said of their decision to bring her to the polls, noting that they do talk about the importance of participating in elections as part of their homeschool curriculum. “Today, specifically, we were just talking as we walked up about how districts are made up in the state, and not wanting to sway things one direction or another, just because we think it’s a more favorable outcome for a certain political party.”

Kourtney, who said she was happy to see so many people out at the polls, also felt it was important to expose their daughter to the process and show her how democracy works.

“They are future voters,” she said. “So if you’re not teaching them, then they’re just open to getting swayed by media or opinions of teachers or friends or things like that, so I think it’s the responsibility of parents to teach them.”

As of Monday, the Riverside County Registrar of Voters (ROV) had issued approximately 1,459,482 vote-by-mail ballots, which included supplemental voter registration and ballot reissues, with approximately 390,035 returned good, according to the ROV’s website.

“Overall, operations are running smoothly,” ROV Public Information Officer Elizabeth Florer said in an email to The Riverside Record. “Only minor issues have been reported, nothing outside the norm for a typical election.”

Last month, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that it would monitor polling sites in six jurisdictions, including Riverside County, to “ensure transparency, ballot security, and compliance with federal law.”

In response, the California Department of Justice said it would send its own observers to the impacted counties.

Florer said there were several observers present in the county Tuesday and said that the ROV would “continue to welcome anyone who wishes to observe our election processes first hand.”