California bans cops from seizing election ballots

from Maya S. MillerCalMatters

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Law enforcement officials will be barred from interfering in California elections under a new law signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday, just in time for the June 2 primary.

The law, effective immediately, criminalizes the act of confiscating ballots from the arrest of a local election official as a gubernatorial candidate Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco did earlier this year when he seized more than 600,000 ballots from his own county’s voter registry. Although Bianco claims to be checking for evidence of fraudulent voting, there was no evidence to assume that the ballots were cast incorrectly.

“We need to step up and we need to draw the line. We need to clarify the rules of engagement,” Newsom told reporters before signing the legislation. “This is a warning to people who think they can do the bidding of the Trump administration.”

State lawmakers originally introduced the measure, Senate Bill 73to guard against potential federal interference in California elections, given the Trump administration’s hostility to the state and the president’s desire to keep Congress in GOP hands.

But Bianco’s decision to seize the ballots turned a hypothetical threat into a real one, spurring lawmakers to seize the moment and rush the bill so it could take effect before Election Day.

The new law makes it illegal for a county clerk to hand over ballots or voting equipment to law enforcement agents like Bianco or his deputies. Riverside County Clerk Art Tinoco would be breaking the law by allowing the sheriff’s department to take the ballots despite the search warrant they presented.

“Voters should never have to wonder if ballots were mishandled,” said a lawmaker Gail Pellerinone of the bill’s Democratic co-sponsors and a former Santa Cruz County clerk. “Law enforcement powers should never be abused in ways that threaten the integrity of our democratic process.”

The law also reiterates that the attorney general, secretary of state or local county election officials can sue any person, business or entity that takes a “package containing ballots” from the custody of an election official.

Election and voting advocates praised the Legislature for its swift response to what they said was an “unprecedented” act of local law enforcement seizing ballots from a polling station.

“This has never happened anywhere in the country before,” said Kim Alexander, president of the nonprofit California Voter Foundation. She added that the Legislature’s decision to push through this law shows voters that they are “aware that something unprecedented has happened.”

Lawmakers included safeguards in the law that allow the attorney general and secretary of state to revoke the authority of a county election official in certain circumstances — such as if the registrar allows armed personnel to be present near polling places.

These superior privileges are targeted, pre-emptive maneuvers, possibly prompted by the threat of a rogue county election official like the embattled Shasta County Registrar of Voters, Clint Curtis. The self-proclaimed “defender of election integrity” lived in Florida and had no experience administering elections before the county board of supervisors appointed him secretary in 2024.

Lawmakers are seeking to ensure that state officials are “able to override local efforts to undermine state rules,” Alexander said. “This is not the first time the state has responded to events occurring in Shasta County.”

Curtis joined the 2020 election deniers, publicly expressed skepticism about voting machines and greatly reduced the number of ballot boxes in the county. He stands up several allegations of workplace violence and harassment, including threats to drag employees out of his office by their hair. Curtis has denied all charges.

The new law also prohibits any person from allowing any law enforcement agent to “access, disrupt, modify or seize” any voting technology without a court order.
Another provision prohibits election observers from contesting voters’ signatures. Last fall, the US Department of Justice, at the request of the Republican Party of California, announced that it would send observers to the elections in California for the Proposition 50 special election, which has raised concerns that President Donald Trump is interfering in an attempt to change the outcome.

Ballot seizure is just one way outside actors can interfere in California elections, Alexander said. Another is the state’s lengthy ballot-counting process, which has fueled conspiracy theories and baseless claims that the results should not be trusted.

Advocates are pushing for Newsom to include about $55 million in the state budget for county election offices to buy new equipment and hire more staff to speed up the count.

Newsom told reporters Wednesday that the funding talks are “very, very positive” and “we’ll get to a number very, very soon.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.