Proposition 40, the proposed one-time tax on billionaires, brought many Bay Area voters to the polls on Tuesday, Nov. 3. Once there, a lot of them said sorting it out from two related measures was a challenge.
Three props, one fight
A "yes" vote on either Prop 41 or Prop 42 would invalidate Prop 40's billionaire tax, Lookout Santa Cruz noted. That tangle showed up in voters' comments around the region.
What voters said
At Stanford, Amari Porter, a member of the class of 2027, told The Stanford Daily she didn't understand the difference between Props 40 through 42 and called them intentionally confusing. Freshman Lawrance Cruz said he was going "back and forth" on Prop 40: "It seemed like a pretty good thing but then a lot of people are against it, so I have to do more research on it."
In Santa Cruz, Richie Andazola told Lookout, "It's very interesting to see how deceiving the commercials for Prop 41 and 42 were." He said the campaign led to conversations with friends that they wouldn't usually have.
Wording was a theme in KQED's interviews, too. "I don't like the way they word things. It's confusing. You don't know if a yes means what you want it to mean or not," one voter told KQED. Oakland voter Daniel Segura said, "There were a lot of trick questions or hidden agendas within the components of the different measures." Junior Mejía, an Oakland health care worker, said ads opposing the billionaire tax actually persuaded him to vote for it.
Need a refresher?
Read our explainers on Prop 41 and Prop 42.
No results had been released when this story was published. Polls and vote centers close at 8 p.m.