What is it?

Prop 4 lifts California's ban on candidates taking public money to run for office.

Prop 4 does not create a public financing program and does not spend any money. It removes the ban and sets rules for any future program. Each city, county, or the state would still have to pass its own law to start one and decide how to pay for it.

Current law

The ban comes from Prop 73, which voters passed in 1988. In 1992 the California Supreme Court ruled it does not apply to charter cities, which set their own rules for city elections. Five charter cities run public financing programs today: Berkeley, Long Beach, Los Angeles, Oakland, and San Francisco. That is why San Francisco's program can match small donations for local candidates, up to $255,000 for a supervisor race and $1.2M for mayor, while the state, all counties, and non-charter cities remain covered by the ban. The Legislature tried to lift the ban by statute in 2016, and a court struck that down in 2019 because changing a voter-passed law requires voter approval. That ruling is why Prop 4 is on the ballot.

Rules for public financing programs

A candidate who takes public funds must accept voluntary spending limits and show broad-based support in their district, for example by collecting donations of $10 or less from a set number of voting-age residents. Public funds cannot pay a candidate's legal defense fees or fines or repay a personal loan the candidate made to their own campaign, and the rules cannot discriminate by party or by whether a candidate is an incumbent or a challenger.

Foreign money

Existing law already bars foreign governments, foreign interests, and foreign nationals from giving to California campaigns. Prop 4's one change is the fine, which becomes a range: at least the amount given or spent, and up to three times that amount. The legal text carries two versions of this section because a separate bill, Assembly Bill 953, rewrote the same law effective January 1, 2026.

Read the full annotated legal text →