Newsom signs emergency bill safeguarding ballots from unauthorized inspection
Citing Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco’s seizure of election ballots last month, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill Wednesday curbing law enforcement’s access to California voter rolls ahead of next week’s gubernatorial primary.
Last week, the Legislature passed a bill from Sens. Sabrina Cervantes, D-Riverside, and Tom Umberg, D-Santa Ana, that bans uniformed officers from inspecting election equipment, including ballots, without a court order or cooperation from local elections officials. The law makes any violation a felony punishable by up to three years in jail and a $1,000 fine and refines the attorney general’s guidance for local elections officials’ interactions with law enforcement.
The emergency law, which took effect immediately with a stroke of the governor’s pen, came after Bianco’s office forcibly took custody of over 650,000 ballots last month. Bianco, backed by a local election deniers’ group, claimed there were irregularities with the vote count in the special election last fall.
A sympathetic judge signed the warrant allowing him to reinspect the ballots, despite there being no evidence of a crime. The Proposition 50 ballot initiative passed in Riverside County by a wide margin.
Bianco is running for governor as a Republican to succeed Newsom, who referred to his would-be successor as “the former member of the Oath Keepers,” referring to the far-right anti-government extremist group of which Bianco was briefly a participant.
Attorney General Rob Bonta sued to stop Bianco, and the California Supreme Court ordered the sheriff to stop recounting ballots.
Newsom signed the election safeguarding bill in his office, flanked by Cervantes, Umberg and Assembly sponsor Gail Pellerin, D-Santa Cruz, who was a Santa Cruz County elections clerk for nearly 30 years.
Newsom cited federal officials’ incursions into battleground states like Georgia as a “pattern” and cited President Donald Trump’s repeated false assertions that he won the 2020 election.
“He doesn’t believe in fair and free elections. He believes in competitive authoritarianism,” Newsom said.
He teased more forthcoming legislation to curb immigration officials’ access to voting booths: “This is not the final word on election integrity.”
