People complaining that $200 million was spent promoting Prop 22 don't understand that gig companies were up against some very powerful forces in California: Namely Democratic congress persons and California unions they were allied with. Unions tried to strong arm Uber and Lyft because they hoped to unionize drivers. CA lawmakers passed AB5, which was a disaster at the start because musicians could no longer pick up backing musicians when they toured, for example, and freelance writers were suddenly having a hard time getting work. Lawmakers had to carve out a bunch of exceptions. It became clear that they were only going after mainly Uber and Lyft. Most people I talked to understood AB5 was a bad law because a lot of people do extra work on the side or have family members that do.
Surveys showed most drivers wanted to stay independent. About 70% are part time drivers and wanted to continue to work where, when and for how long they wanted. Of the 30% that are full time drivers, it was never clear to me what percentage of them wanted to be employees. As I explained here [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24866382], many drivers who wanted employee/union protection were not very good drivers. For example, one driver the unions put in front of cameras said he only made $67 on a 12 hour shift in San Francisco. You have to be doing something very wrong to only make that much in 12 hours in San Francisco. If that were the case then the many drivers from the Central Valley wouldn't work SF. It wouldn't be worth it.