California: This Supreme Court case could strike a major blow to state’s vote-counting system | Bob Egelko/San Francisco Chronicle

The future of mail-in voting — in particular, the power of states like California to count votes that are mailed by Election Day but received afterward — will soon be in the hands of the U.S. Supreme Court. It’s the same court that overturned a key section of the 1965 Voting Rights Act in 2013 that required states and cities with histories of racial discrimination in voting to obtain federal government approval before changing their election laws. It’s also the court that ruled in 2019 that federal judges cannot interfere with partisan “gerrymandering,” the redrawing of election districts for political purposes. Another ruling in 2021 allowed Arizona to reject ballots that were delivered by someone other than the voter. Read Article

California: Trump administration’s demands for voter rolls, including Social Security numbers, rejected by federal judge | Kevin Rector/Los Angeles Times

A federal judge on Thursday dismissed a U.S. Justice Department lawsuit demanding California turn over its voter rolls, calling the request “unprecedented and illegal” and accusing the federal government of trying to “abridge the right of many Americans to cast their ballots.” U.S. District Judge David O. Carter, a Clinton appointee based in Santa Ana, questioned the Justice Department’s motivations and called its lawsuit demanding voter data from California Secretary of State Shirley Weber not just an overreach into state-run elections, but a threat to American democracy. “The centralization of this information by the federal government would have a chilling effect on voter registration which would inevitably lead to decreasing voter turnout as voters fear that their information is being used for some inappropriate or unlawful purpose,” Carter wrote. “This risk threatens the right to vote which is the cornerstone of American democracy.” Read Article

California: Republican challenge to voting map appears hamstrung by Supreme Court precedent | Edvard Pettersson/Courthouse News Service

The California Republican Party’s lawsuit to block the state’s new, voter-approved congressional district map may be doomed by the unwillingness of the the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority to get involved in partisan gerrymandering. In their complaint — filed the day after California voters approved Prop 50 and joined Thursday by the U.S. Department of Justice — Republican politicians and voters argue that the state’s Democratic lawmakers engaged in unlawful racial gerrymandering to benefit Latino voters. “California’s redistricting scheme is a brazen power grab that tramples on civil rights and mocks the democratic process,” U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a statement announcing the Trump administration’s request to join the California lawsuit as a plaintiff. “Governor Newsom’s attempt to entrench one-party rule and silence millions of Californians will not stand.” Read Article

California Prop 50: Gavin Newsom Sued By Republicans 50 Hours After Election | Gabe Whisnant/Newsweek

California Republicans filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday seeking to block a newly approved U.S. House map that voters passed as Proposition 50 in Tuesday’s election. The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, claims the new map illegally uses race as a factor to favor Hispanic voters and violates the Constitution’s equal protection and voting rights guarantees. The measure, backed by Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, redraws congressional boundaries in ways analysts say could help Democrats flip as many as five House seats in next year’s midterm elections. Read Article

California is voting on redistricting. An election skeptic runs the process in one county | Dani Anguiano/The Guardian

When Clint Curtis was appointed to oversee voting in California’s Shasta county earlier this year, the Florida-based lawyer and election skeptic pledged to “fix” the voting process. Curtis had never before administered an election and didn’t live in this rural northern California region. But he was well-known to followers of the US election denialism movement, who believe the voting system is not secure and that Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential election. Curtis, a former congressional candidate, described himself as an expert in elections law and had long argued that voting machines could be hacked and that the government could manipulate the results of elections. The ultra-conservative majority on Shasta county’s board of supervisors was hopeful he could overhaul their elections and set an example for the rest of the US. Now, that vision is being put to the test. Read Article

California Will Bring In State Election Monitors to Monitor Trump’s Federal Election Monitors | Joe Kukura/SFist

The Trump administration has already declared they’re sending election monitors to California for next week’s Prop 50 vote. But the Gavin Newsom administration just announced they’ll have their own monitors to monitor Trump’s monitors. We are just about a week out from the November 4 California vote on Prop 50, which would redraw California’s congressional districts in hopes of blunting President Trump’s notorious Texas redistricting. Though there is not much suspense around Prop 50, which is up by 20 percentage points in the polls, and will almost certainty be declared a landslide victory for Governor Newsom’s effort about one minute after the polls close next Tuesday at 8 pm PT. Though there was suddenly some controversy around Prop 50 at the end of last week, when Trump’s Justice Department declared they would send election monitors to California polling places for that election, because Trump still genuinely believes his 2020 election conspiracy theories involving Chinese bamboo, evil corrupt voting machines, and whatever else Mike Lindell told him at Four Seasons Total Landscaping. Read Article

California Governor Newsom warns of possible Trump interference in California election | Sophia Bollag, Alexei Koseff/San Francisco Chronicle

As Election Day approaches, Gov. Gavin Newsom is raising concerns that President Donald Trump may try to interfere in California’s special election to redraw congressional districts. In an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle editorial board, Newsom pointed to Trump’s federalization of National Guard troops, the government shutdown and the president’s past criticisms of mail voting. Trump first federalized thousands of California National Guard troops in June over Newsom’s objections and deployed them to Los Angeles to quell protests over his mass deportation campaign. On Aug. 15, the same day Democrats released proposed new congressional maps, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth sent Newsom and the head of the California National Guard a letter saying most soldiers would be released from the L.A. mission but that 300 would remain under federal control through Nov. 4. Read Article

California: Money for Los Angeles County voting machines ended up in bribery ‘slush fund,’ feds allege | Rebecca Ellis and Richard Winton/Los Angeles Times

An election technology firm allegedly overbilled Los Angeles County for voting machines used during the 2020 election and funneled the extra cash into a “slush fund” for bribing government officials, federal prosecutors say in a criminal case against three company executives. Smartmatic, a U.K.-based voting system company, had bribery embedded as part of its business model, prosecutors allege in a Florida federal corruption case against company co-founder Roger Alejandro Piñate Martinez and two other company officials. Prosecutors do not indicate who benefited from the alleged pot of Los Angeles County taxpayer money. Dean Logan, the county’s top voting official, has acknowledged regularly meeting with Piñate, a Boca Raton resident who was charged last year with bribery and money laundering in the Philippines. Read Article

California’s long ballot count may be Trump’s next target in the war over voting | Adam Noboa/NBC

The latest salvo in President Donald Trump’s campaign against mail-in voting arrived Monday, as he announced he wants to “lead a movement” against mail ballots and advocate instead for in-person and paper ballots, which he says are “faster, and leaves NO DOUBT, at the end of the evening, as to who WON, and who LOST, the Election.” Trump has criticized mail-in ballots since their rapid rise in 2020, when after years of slower growth they exploded as a key innovation of the Covid election. But the logistics of counting mail-in votes helped keep the nation in suspense over who won for nearly four days after polls closed. This latest push by Trump may also have the convenience of being the latest line of attack in the redistricting wars. In California, state Democrats are attempting their own mid-decade gerrymander to counter the Trump-led push by Republicans to draw more friendly districts in Texas. And California sticks out as one of the most prominent embracers of mail-in voting — and among the slowest to count them. Read Article

California: Clint Curtis is asking for millions more for Shasta County elections. Without it, he says, he might not be able to increase trust. | Annelise Pierce/Shasta Scout

“What would that cost?” It’s a question only one Shasta County supervisor, Chris Kelstrom, asked during the interview process for Shasta’s top elections job in April this year. Kelstrom queried Clint Curtis on the cost of his promised plan to film ballot processing during elections, something Curtis says is needed to ensure trust in elections. Curtis never answered the question, but Kelstrom and two other supervisors, Kevin Crye and Corkey Harmon, voted to appoint him anyway. They said they didn’t think there were any significant problems with Shasta County elections but the ballot processing model Curtis was championing could serve as a model nationwide. The newly appointed election official stepped into his role in late May. At budget hearings a few weeks later, Curtis told supervisors he didn’t have real numbers yet on how much his plans would cost to implement, but it likely wouldn’t be much more than the budget they were already approving. Read Article

California: Elon Musk and X notch court win against deepfake law | Chase DiFeliciantonio/Politico

A federal judge on Tuesday struck down a California law restricting AI-generated, deepfake content during elections — among the strictest such measures in the country — notching a win for Elon Musk and his X platform, which challenged the rules. But Judge John Mendez also declined to give an opinion on the free speech arguments that were central to the plaintiffs’ case, instead citing federal rules for online platforms for his decision. Mendez also said he intended to overrule a second law, which would require labels on digitally altered campaign materials and ads, for violating the First Amendment. The judge’s decisions Tuesday deal a blow to California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who signed the laws last year in a rebuke of Musk, vowing to take action after the tech billionaire and then-Donald Trump supporter shared a doctored video of former Vice President Kamala Harris ahead of the election. Read Article

California: Was a dog sent a ballot? Inside the DOJ’s strange lawsuit seeking state voter data | Sara Libby/San Francisco Chronicle

When the Department of Justice sued Orange County last month amid a squabble over election integrity, some legal experts were perplexed. Republicans have long pushed thin arguments that voter fraud has buoyed Democrats. But why was the Trump administration seeking information that the county considered clearly private — including the Social Security numbers and voting preferences of people whose registration had been canceled? The answer, in part, may rest upon who wrote the lawsuit: Michael Gates, the deputy assistant U.S. attorney general for civil rights. Gates was until February the city attorney in Huntington Beach, where he made it his mission to antagonize the state’s liberal leaders. Read Article

California: They hope to form a new state. Shasta County’s top elections official is paying attention. | Nevin Kallepalli and Madison Holcomb /Shasta Scout

Last Saturday, less than a thousand people cast votes on an issue they hope will soon determine the fate of 40 million Californians. New California State (NCS), a movement attempting to separate from California to form its own state, held the July 12 election in order to approve a provisional constitution. According to NCS, participants representing more than 50 of California’s 58 counties voted, with some making long drives to reach one of the 26 NCS precincts. In Shasta County, ballots were cast in an unassuming conference room at the Redding Red Lion Hotel. One especially noteworthy voter was Shasta County Clerk and Registrar of Voters (ROV) Clint Curtis, the public official tasked with running the county’s official California election process. Many of the same local activists who have consistently cast doubt on the integrity of the Shasta Election Office over the last several years helped administer the event. Read Article

California: Justice Department sues O.C. registrar for noncitizen voting records | Salvador Hernandez and Laura J. Nelson/Los Angeles Times

Federal authorities sued Orange County’s top elections official Wednesday, alleging the county registrar violated federal law by refusing to disclose detailed information about people who were removed from the voter rolls because they were not citizens. The lawsuit, filed in federal court, alleges that Orange County Registrar Bob Page is “concealing the unlawful registration of ineligible, non-citizen voters” by withholding sensitive personal information such as Social Security and driver’s license numbers. The 10-page lawsuit does not allege that any noncitizens voted in Orange County. Read Article

California: New Shasta County elections chief ‘terminates’ popular assistant registrar of voters | Damon Arthur/Redding Record Searchlight

Shasta County’s assistant registrar of voters was “terminated” from her position working for the County Clerk’s Office by the new head of the department, who was appointed to the post just two weeks ago. Joanna Francescut, who made the announcement Tuesday, worked in the elections department for the past 17 years and was passed over for the position twice in the past two years, this year in favor of a Florida attorney with no elections department management experience. “I am deeply disappointed that during his first week in office, the new county clerk and registrar of voters (Clint Curtis) did not make any effort to meet with me or provide an opportunity to work collaboratively,” Francescut said in a statement. Read Article

California: ‘Sketchy:’ Shasta County’s newly appointed elections chief’s work history questioned | Damon Arthur/ Redding Record Searchlight

For the second year in a row, the Shasta County Board of Supervisors has appointed someone with no elections oversight experience to be the county registrar of voters and whose work history has raised questions. The top candidate also says he wrote a computer program that allows votes to be secretly altered. Clint Curtis, who was passed over for the job last year, was appointed by the board on Tuesday, May 13. Curtis, 66, of Titusville, Florida, will be the county’s third registrar of voters in two years. Read Article

California: Shasta County Files Legal Action Over Proposed Ballot Measure to “Reform” Elections | Annelise Pierce/Shasta Scout

A group of five local community members have submitted paperwork to the Shasta County Elections Office in hopes of amending the County’s new charter, a document that outlines specifics about how the County is governed. The group behind the February 19 petition includes election activists Laura Hobbs, Deirdre Holliday, Kari Chilson, Richard Gallardo, and James Burnett. Their goal is to get permission from the Elections Office to circulate a petition for signatures to put the proposed measure on the fall ballot. If enough signatures are gathered, the document could provide the community an oppportunity to vote on a ballot measure that Hobbs and others say is designed to “reform” local election law. But Shasta County is pushing back. In a March 13 complaint filed in Shasta County Superior Court, attorney Joseph Larmour alleged that the proposed ballot measure will be used to attempt to implement actions that he believes are illegal and would violate the United States Constitution, the California Constitution, and the federal Help America Vote Act or HAVA. Read Article

A California Republican won a seat he didn’t want. Now taxpayers are paying for a new election | Ryan Sabalow/CalMatters

San Joaquin Valley Republican Vince Fong was on the ballot this fall for an Assembly race, but he didn’t want to win it. After all, he left that job for Congress earlier this year, and he planned to stay in the nation’s capital.He even went so far as to endorse the Bakersfield city councilmember who was listed as running against him on the November ballot. But voters chose Fong anyway for the Assembly. They chose him again for Congress, too, since he was listed on the same ballot twice. Now, since Fong “won” his Assembly race, Kern and Tulare County taxpayers in Assembly District 32 will end up paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for a special election to fill the seat that Fong doesn’t want any more. Read Article

California: How an ultra-right majority in Shasta County picked a novice to run its elections |  | The Guardian

When Shasta county had to search for a new official to oversee its elections earlier this year, there was an obvious candidate. Her name was Joanna Francescut, and she had been the assistant elections clerk and registrar of voters in this remote region in California’s far north. Francescut had worked in elections for more than 16 years, oversaw the office of the county clerk and registrar of voters for months after her boss went on leave, and was endorsed by elections officials and prominent area Republicans alike. Instead, the ultra-conservative majority on Shasta county’s board of supervisors in June selected Tom Toller, a former prosecutor who had never worked in elections and vowed to change the office culture, improve public confidence, and “clean up” voter rolls. Read Article

California: Judge blocks law that targeted deepfake campaign ads | Jon Healey/Los Angeles Times

With deepfake video and audio making their way into political campaigns, California enacted its toughest restrictions yet in September: a law prohibiting political ads within 120 days of an election that include deceptive, digitally generated or altered content unless the ads are labeled as “manipulated.” On Wednesday, a federal judge temporarily blocked the law, saying it violated the 1st Amendment. Other laws against deceptive campaign ads remain on the books in California, including one that requires candidates and political action committees to disclose when ads are using artificial intelligence to create or substantially alter content. But the preliminary injunction granted against Assembly Bill 2839 means that there will be no broad prohibition against individuals using artificial intelligence to clone a candidate’s image or voice and portraying them falsely without revealing that the images or words are fake. Read Article

California sees significant election official turnover amid threats, misinformation | Julie Watts/CBS

In 25 of California’s 58 counties, the person in charge will be running the presidential election there for the first time this year – impacting nearly half of California’s registered voters. “Experience is super important because you have the opportunity to learn from what happened in a past election,” Adona said. “You’re also able to more quickly adjust.” But while turnover has skyrocketed in California since the last presidential election cycle, looking back two decades, this level of turnover is not extraordinary. And not everyone new to the top job is inexperienced. Bob Page is the new Orange County registrar of voters. He previously held the position in San Bernardino County. Read Article

California: Orange County and state say digital poll books are legal in response to lawsuit that challenges them | Hanna Kang/Orange County Register

Digital voter records are completely separate from the equipment used to tally votes, so allegations in a lawsuit that conflate the two are unfounded, lawyers for the county and state argue in a response recently filed in court. Earlier this month, lawyers representing the state and the county filed their response to a lawsuit alleging that the digital voter records, which are connected to the internet, are a part of the voting system and thus in violation of California law. The lawyers argued the lawsuit has no grounds and asked an Orange County Superior Court judge to dismiss it. Three registered Republican voters in Orange County filed the lawsuit in March against OC Registrar of Voters Bob Page, the OC Board of Supervisors, Secretary of State Shirley Weber and Gov. Gavin Newsom, alleging that the California Voter’s Choice Act goes against the state election code. Read Article

California: In Shasta County fights over elections have left wounds that just won’t heal | Jessica Huseman/Votebeat

To understand the forces tearing apart California’s Shasta County, consider what has happened to Cathy Darling Allen. In five consecutive elections, voters in the rural county have selected her as their chief election official. That means that since 2004, she’s been responsible for voter registration, the administration of elections, and a host of related tasks. She’s consistently been the only Democrat in countywide office in the conservative county, where Donald Trump won more than 60% of the vote in 2020. In 2022, her most recent appearance on the ballot, she took in nearly 70% of the vote. By those indicators, she seems pretty popular. But she has received a steady stream of threats from a loud minority of Shasta County residents who falsely believe the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. She has been repeatedly accused in public meetings and on social media of engaging in both satanism and witchcraft. The most committed MAGA activists have circulated petitions accusing her of sedition and treason. She’s been followed walking to her car. Someone — she still isn’t certain who — installed a trail camera behind her office, where votes are counted. Read Article

California: Shasta County supervisors hire lawyer to lead county elections office | Damon Arthur/Redding Record Searchlight

The Shasta County Board of Supervisors on Wednesday appointed as its next registrar of voters a semi-retired former prosecutor with no experience in managing an elections department, a job he described as a “critical” position with a presidential election looming in November. Thomas Toller, 62, said during his public job interview with the supervisors Tuesday and Wednesday that he could quickly get up to speed on learning California election laws and get to know the staff at the county clerk and registrar of voters office. “I look forward to the opportunity to serve the people of Shasta County. And my greatest hope is that I can bring some transparency to the office and increase people’s confidence in how we process votes here in Shasta County,” Toller said after the board’s 3-2 vote to hire him. Read Article

California: Shasta County election lawsuit goes to court, with an unusual twist | Damon Arthur/Redding Record Searchlight

It appears the Shasta County Board of Supervisors and a woman who is suing the county after she lost in the March primary election for District 2 supervisor are making the same argument about why she lost the election. The lawyer for Laura Hobbs, who lost in the election, said in Shasta County Superior Court on Tuesday that one of the primary arguments for contesting the outcome of the election was how candidates’ names were placed on the ballot. Haberbush’s claim was similar to this statement issued last week by a majority of the county supervisors: “The registrar of voters made an error by not using the California secretary of state’s randomized alphabet; as a result, the order names were listed on the ballot was not correct. California law specifies this requirement to randomly place names on the ballot to not afford any advantage to a specific candidate; instead, the name placement is essentially a lottery process. The Board majority believes this may have affected the election outcome and may have harmed those placed on the ballot. Nonetheless, the court is the trier of fact and will ultimately make the determination in this case.” Read Artixcle

California: District 16 recount reveals that one county was plagued with thumb flubs and other voting errors | Grace Hase and Harriet Blair Rowan/The Mercury News

In the end, it came down to 19 ballots in Santa Clara County that ultimately made the difference in the hotly contested Congressional District 16 race — ballots that were never counted the first time around due to simple human error. While a change equal to just a fraction of a percent of votes is unlikely to shift the entire results of most elections, a once-in-a-generation perfect tie in this case exposed the gaffes and fumbles by one county in the tabulation process. What followed the March primary was two months of counting and recounting more than 182,000 votes in the race to replace retiring U.S. Rep. Anna Eshoo — a stunning saga that finally came to a close on Wednesday afternoon. Read Article

California: Two months to count election ballots? State’s long tallies turn election day into weeks, months | Micharl R. Blood/Associated Press

Nearly two months after the election, a recount settled the outcome in a Northern California U.S. House primary contest, breaking a mathematically improbable tie for second place but also spotlighting the lengthy stretch it took count the votes. Most California residents vote by mail, and in the pursuit of accuracy, thoroughness and counting every vote, the nation’s most populous state has gained a reputation for tallies that can drag on for weeks — and sometimes longer. Voting in the state’s primary election concluded on March 5. At time when many Americans have doubts about election integrity, a two-month stretch to tally votes in one House race “absolutely is a problem from an optics point of view,” said Kim Alexander, president of the nonpartisan California Voter Foundation, which seeks to improve the voting process. Read Article

California: Advocates for blind people sue over mail voting rules | Bob Egelko/San Francisco Chronicle

Advocates for blind and other disabled voters in California are urging federal courts to intervene, arguing that the state’s current mail-in ballot rules force them to rely on others to cast their votes, violating their right to privacy and independence. They are seeking permission for those with print disabilities to return their ballots using fax machines or electronic equipment, citing the need for accessible alternatives like those provided in 13 other states. Currently, visually impaired voters can use electronic devices to fill out their ballots, but they must then print and deliver them, compromising the secrecy of their votes. Read Article

California supervisor who tried to get rid of Shasta County vote-counting machines survives recall | Adam Beam/Associated Press

A local official in a rural Northern California survived a recall attempt spurred in part by his effort to get rid of the county’s vote-counting machines following unfounded accusations of fraud amplified by former President Donald Trump. Kevin Crye was elected to the Shasta County Board of Supervisors in 2022. He and two other supervisors then voted to get rid of the county’s vote-counting machines, directing local officials to hand count ballots. The machines were made by Dominion Voting Systems, the company at the center of debunked conspiracy theories of how Trump lost the 2020 presidential election. The decision divided the community and prompted a group of residents to file a recall petition to remove Crye from office a little over one year into his four-year term. That effort failed by just 50 votes out of more than 9,300 ballots cast, according to official results that were certified on Thursday by the Shasta County Registrar of Voters more than three weeks after Election Day. Read Article

California county on edge over bid to recall far-right, election-denying official | Dani Anguiano/The Guardian

The recall election in northern California’s Shasta County, targeting far-right supervisor Kevin Crye, remains undecided with Crye maintaining a slim lead of less than 50 votes out of over 9,000 cast. Crye, part of a far-right majority on the board, gained attention for his promotion of conspiracy theories and support for manual vote counting, meeting with figures like Mike Lindell of MyPillow. Crye’s potential loss reflects a shift in sentiment, exemplified by incumbent Patrick Jones’s defeat, suggesting voters may be seeking change. Crye’s supporters argue against the recall, portraying it as a Democratic effort, while critics cite his failure to fulfill campaign promises. The outcome could have implications for Shasta County’s political direction, with national figures like Rand Paul and Kari Lake weighing in, and the California governor potentially selecting Crye’s replacement if he loses. Read Article