California

A California sheriff seized ballots. The court ruling shutting the probe will resonate nationwide | Jeremy Herb and Tierney Sneed/CNN

The California Supreme Court has halted Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco's unlawful seizure of 650,000 ballots, setting a major judicial precedent aimed at protecting chain-of-custody protocols ahead of November. The court ruled that allowing law enforcement unfettered, secret access to count ballots poses a direct threat to election integrity, ordering Bianco to return the seized materials from a 2025 referendum. Driven by concerns over similar law enforcement interference, including an earlier FBI seizure of 2020 ballots in Fulton County, Georgia, California and other states have enacted strict new notification requirements and criminal penalties for illegal ballot seizures, while legal scholars work to educate magistrates on chain-of-custody safeguards when evaluating warrants targeting voting materials. Read Article

California Supreme Court rules sheriff must return seized ballots | Patrick Marley/The Washington Post

The California Supreme Court on Thursday ordered a sheriff to return more than 650,000 ballots he seized from election officials, finding that he lacked the authority to review them based on a thin allegation of fraud. Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco (R) impounded the ballots after voters weighed in last year on a measure to redraw the state’s congressional map and give Democrats an opportunity to capture five more House seats. The measure passed by 56 percent in Riverside County and 64 percent statewide. Bianco was reacting to a review of public records by the citizens group Riverside Election Integrity Team, which claimed the county had counted 46,000 more ballots than it had received. The county’s registrar of voters, Art Tinoco, has said the group misinterpreted county data. His office’s review found the county counted 657,322 ballots. That is 103 votes more than the number of people recorded as having voted, a much smaller discrepancy that is in line with typical election errors. Read Article

California: ‘I did not find them’: GOP chairman makes rare apology for election fraud claim | Anabel Sosa/SF Gate

As voter fraud allegations run rampant within the Republican Party, the head of Marin County’s party made an unexpected apology last week for claims he made about dead people voting in the county last year. John Turnacliff, the chairman of the Marin County Republicans, claimed in February that dozens of dead people voted on Proposition 50, last year’s redistricting measure, and he requested that the county’s registrar of voters investigate. But during an open comment period during a county meeting last Tuesday, Turnacliff admitted that he was wrong after no election fraud was found. “I’m here today to retract that statement that I made a few months ago as far as those voters being on the roll. I did not find them,” he said. “I apologize to the Board of Supervisors and to the registrar’s office and to the registrar for any angst and consternation that could have put on you since then.” Read Article

California: Becerra joins voting rights group in urging Shasta County grand jury to remove Registrar of Voters Clint Curtis – Shasta Scout

California gubernatorial candidate Xavier Becerra, along with a state voting rights group, is urging the Shasta County Grand Jury to do its “duty” to initiate the process to remove Registrar of Voters Clint Curtis. The UCLA Voting Rights Project, a group for which Becerra is the senior legal advisor, wrote a letter today to the grand jury, board of supervisors and district attorney that outlined what they said is the jury and county officials’ responsibility to remove Curtis for “willful or corrupt misconduct in office.” Curtis, who was appointed to his role, is slated to hold his seat through early January. He responded to news of the letter by saying he “would love to go to court.” A press release by the voting rights group noted that despite certifying the results of the June primary election, one in which he lost to former Assistant ROV Joanna Francescut, Curtis has since raised unsubstantiated concerns about ballots and locked them in the elections office in hopes federal officials would investigate them. Read Article

California: Convicted MAGA election denier declines job in Shasta County amid pressure from Newsom | Hailey Branson-Potts/Los Angeles Times

Tina Peters, who served prison time for tampering with voting machines on behalf of the MAGA movement, has declined a job offer helping to oversee elections in a conservative Northern California county. “She declined the offer because she’s running around the country right now trying to secure the elections,” Clint Curtis, the Shasta County registrar of voters, said in an interview Tuesday. “Shasta County lost out.” Last month, Curtis set off alarm bells across California by telling reporters he planned to hire Peters, a former county clerk in Colorado who was released early from prison this summer amid a pressure campaign by President Trump. Curtis, himself a longtime election denier, told The Times he had planned to hire Peters as a consultant “to assist with supervision of the November election.” Peters’ attorney, Peter Ticktin, said in an interview Tuesday that she had given serious consideration to the job offer but that he had not discussed it with her in recent days. It would “not have been a full-time position,” because she is so busy, he said. Read Article

California county’s election drama worsens as official locks up ballots | Hailey Branson-Potts/Los Angeles Times

Days after the top elections official in Shasta County announced that he planned to hire an election denier who served prison time for tampering with voting machines, county leaders there made an extraordinary plea to state and federal authorities: Please come investigate. A statement released by the county Tuesday afternoon said Clint Curtis, the registrar of voters, had made “frivolous” claims and “unproven statements” about the June primary election, which he administered and certified. “The County condemns the conduct of the Clerk-Registrar of Voters and invites all relevant state and federal agencies to review the allegations he has made and to proactively investigate his official actions and practices as Shasta County’s elections official,” read the statement released by Stewart Buettell, the county’s deputy chief executive. Read Article

California: Tina Peters, pro-Trump election denier, went to prison. Now, Shasta County might hire her | Hailey Branson-Potts/Los Angeles Times

Tina Peters, the former Colorado elections official convicted of tampering with voting machines, was recently released early from prison amid a pressure campaign from President Trump. Now the top elections official in a conservative California county with a long history of voting controversies is seeking to hire her to help run elections there. Clint Curtis, the registrar of voters in Shasta County, said on a local radio show Sunday that he planned to hire Peters as the assistant registrar next month, just weeks ahead of the November election. Peters, the former clerk in Mesa County, Colo., was convicted in 2024 and sentenced to nine years behind bars for breaching her county’s voting machines as part of a scheme to show that the 2020 election was rigged against Trump — a claim that has been repeatedly debunked. Read Article

California: Voter ID backers sue attorney general over ballot description | Dakota Smith/Los Angeles Times

Backers of a November ballot measure that would require Californians to verify their identity when voting sued state officials on Monday, alleging bias in how the ballot’s summary is written. A group led by California Assemblymember Carl DeMaio (R-San Diego) allege in a 10-page lawsuit filed in Sacramento Superior Court that Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta violated election laws that require the “impartial” labeling of a measure’s purpose. The summary language now states that the measure: “Prohibits citizens from voting unless they present government-issued identification. Invalidates mail ballots that do not have last four digits of designated government-issued identification number written on envelope. Prohibits in-person voting without presenting government-issued identification.” Read Article

California: Nearly 150,000 mail ballots rejected in primary despite efforts to count every vote | Michael R. Blood/Associated Press

Nearly 150,000 California voters had their mail-in ballots rejected for the state’s June primary, a spike from recent elections even as the state attempts to make voting easier with the goal of boosting participation and counting every ballot. California has become notorious for its ponderously slow vote counts that can drag on for weeks and sometimes longer, largely the result of multiple changes over the years that were intended to increase turnout but have done little to achieve that. Among the changes: Every voter receives a mail-in ballot that can arrive at an election office seven days late and still be counted, provided the envelope is postmarked by Election Day. Yet even with that generous weeklong window, the primary driver of the higher rejection numbers is late-arriving ballots, according to data compiled by the secretary of state’s office. Voting experts suspect the main problem is postmarks on ballots that came after Election Day, making them ineligible to be counted. The culprit could be U.S. Postal Service changes that might affect the timing of when postmarks are applied. Read Article

California: Trump says he asked US attorney for election probe: ‘Do me a favor’ | Marisa Guerra Echeverria, Blake Jones and Ben Johansen/Politico

President Donald Trump acknowledged having called federal prosecutors in California to probe the state’s primary election results, claiming without evidence on Tuesday that his intervention resulted in Republican Steve Hilton advancing to the runoff in the gubernatorial race. His remarks, at a rally in Pennsylvania, came weeks after California primary results first cemented Democrat Xavier Becerra as the front-runner advancing to the November ballot, with results for the Trump-endorsed Hilton arriving days later. “I called up the very powerful, very good U.S. attorney in California. I said, ‘Do me a favor. Take a look,’” the president said. Trump took credit for Hilton’s victory, claiming the former Fox News host only advanced after the attorney made a call to an unspecified person. “About an hour after the call, ladies and gentleman, Mr. Hilton has won,” Trump said. “Had I not made that call, Steve Hilton would be watching the election from home.” Read Article

California’s slow vote count stirs frustration, but changes would be hard | Grace Toohey/Los Angeles Times

Over the last decade, California became a national leader in voter accessibility and security, expanding options for when and how ballots can be cast while also strengthening election safeguards. But those reforms came at a cost: speed. And in a political climate where unsupported conspiracies about election fraud can run rampant on social media — pushed, at times, by top political leaders — some fear the slow vote count is becoming a liability. Election outcomes in recent years have become more drawn out in California, most recently taking about a week to determine the gubernatorial and Los Angeles mayoral candidates advancing to November’s runoff after hotly contested primaries. And in prior years, it’s taken even longer to determine tight U.S. House or state Senate seats. That trade-off — election accessibility and security over quick results — has long been defended as a byproduct of California’s desire to make it as easy as possible to cast a ballot while ensuring accuracy and integrity, something backers say remains vital to a thriving democracy. Read Article

California: Shasta County will not fight state over controversial Measure B or provide defense for Registrar of Voters Clint Curtis | David Benda/Redding Record Searchlight

Like it did for an earlier legal challenge to the controversial local election measure that would require voter ID, Shasta County will not defend against a lawsuit that California officials launched over the June 2 passage of Measure B. Coming out of closed session on Tuesday, June 16, Supervisor Matt Plummer announced the decision. “The board has voted 4-0 to provide no defense for the county or Registrar of Voters Clint Curtis,” the District 4 supervisor said. On Friday, June 12, California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced the lawsuit, calling Measure B an "illegal election overhaul, including ending mail voting and requiring hand counting of ballots.” It would also require voter ID. The state's lawsuit contends that Measure B exceeds Shasta County's authority as a charter county, and even if the county had such authority, the measure is preempted by state law. Read Article

California clashes with Trump DOJ over election fraud probe | Lindsey Holden/Politico

Tensions between the Trump administration and California Democratic leaders escalated as primary ballot-counting continued Friday, after a federal prosecutor said, without evidence, that he’s investigating unspecified allegations of voter fraud. First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli said in an X post that his office “has multiple election fraud investigations underway” in coordination with the FBI. And Department of Justice spokesperson Kyle Perez confirmed an assistant U.S. attorney was present at a Los Angeles ballot processing center on Friday. “He was sent there by our office to observe the vote counting process,” Perez said in an email. Perez did not respond to a question about the specific fraud allegations Essayli’s office said it is investigating. In response, California Attorney General Rob Bonta said in an X post on Friday his office “has a presence on the ground right now, is monitoring the situation closely, and stands ready to protect voters and ensure California’s election laws are followed.” Read Article

California’s slow ballot count makes it a target for critics. It doesn’t mean elections are rigged | Nicholas Riccardi/Associated Press

Days after the state's primary, California voters are in a familiar position -- waiting to find out which candidates will go on to the general election in their most high-profile races, for governor and Los Angeles mayor. It's not surprising those have yet to be resolved, along with several closely contested congressional races, because the state routinely takes days, or even weeks, to fully tally races. Nor is it unusual for President Donald Trump to complain about the pace of the count and allege fraud, as he did Thursday. It's something he's done repeatedly in the past. Trump's posts prompted a response from Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, whose press office posted a clip of a CNN video explaining how the nation's most populous state prioritizes accuracy and accessibility over speed, drawing out the count. Read Article

California tries to block Trump involvement in election procedures | Laurel Rosenhall/The New York Times

Six days before the California primary, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation on Wednesday intended to safeguard elections after federal officials and local sheriffs took unusual steps in the last year to seize ballots from election offices.The new law, which takes effect immediately, would not stop officials who have a warrant. But Newsom described it as a way “to address the legitimate anxiety” over election security amid attempts by the Trump administration and the president’s allies to tamper with results and sow doubt in the mechanics of democracy.The governor, a Democrat whose popularity has soared as he’s taken a more combative stance against President Donald Trump, listed various actions taken by Trump to explain the need for the bill. Read Article

California’s overseas voters face new barriers after Trump administration cut key program | Sara DiNatale/San Francisco Chronicle

It’s never been easy to cast an absentee ballot from inside a military submarine. But now that the Trump administration has eliminated a crucial mechanism to return absentee ballots, overseas voting requires even more of a herculean effort. It’s an archaic reality: California’s absentee voter laws rely heavily on fax machines and the U.S. Postal Service. For military members in far-flung deployments or at sea, where the Postal Service is unreliable to nonexistent, the Department of Defense’s free email-to-fax service was a lifeline to democracy for the last 36 years. The Department of Defense in August announced, without explanation, it was cutting the fax service as the administration axed federal programs it said constituted wasteful spending. The voters who used the program are now facing their first election cycle without it. “We’re thinking of the military voters who will no longer be able to cast their ballots in time,” said Sen. Sabrina Cervantes, D-Riverside, who is attempting to reform state absentee voting law in the Legislature. “We want to make sure we aren’t abandoning Californians who are deployed abroad or serving overseas.” Read Article

Why California Wants Faster Election Results | Guy Marzorati/KQED

Gov. Gavin Newsom sent a letter to election officials in California’s 58 counties this week with a simple request: count votes faster. Newsom and state lawmakers have spent years building a vote-by-mail system that maximizes convenience and accessibility for California voters. The tradeoff: a longer vote count that President Donald Trump and Republicans have seized on to spread false claims of voter fraud. “We must acknowledge that the longer the voting count takes, the more mis- and disinformation spreads,” Newsom wrote. “That means we must do all that we can to tabulate votes quickly and accurately. Time is of the essence in preventing election lies from taking hold.” More than 80% of California voters cast ballots by mail in the November 2024 election. Unlike in-person voting, where verification happens upfront, mail-in ballots often arrive in bulk just before or after Election Day. This surge creates a backlog of ballots that must be inspected and have their signatures verified before they can be counted. Read Article

California election officials face false choice: count votes quickly or count them right | Maya C. Miller/CalMatters

Political persecution, threats of violence and the seizure of sensitive documents might sound like a plot line for a heist or thriller movie. For California election officials tasked with enabling participatory democracy, these are now everyday realities — from Riverside County, where Sheriff Chad Bianco seized more than 650,000 ballots from his own county’s registrar of voters, to Shasta County, where threats of violence forced the longtime registrar to retire early. The integrity of the state’s voting systems will be under intense scrutiny this year with control of the U.S. House on the line, as Californians could play a decisive role in which party wins the majority. Yet while timely and decisive results are more crucial than ever, California is famous for its ploddingly slow vote count. That lengthy wait has increasingly sown distrust in the accuracy of California’s results, especially among Republicans, and particularly in races where a candidate leading on election day falls behind as more ballots are processed in subsequent days. Read Article

California: Volunteer dismissed from poll training after pushing back on political commentary by Shasta election official Clint Curtis | Annelise Pierce/Shasta Scout

Two women say they were told to leave a poll worker training session Thursday after expressing discontent with political commentary made by Shasta’s chief election official. A third poll worker made it through her training earlier in the week but was left with significant concerns. Shasta County community member Joyce Lively was present at a poll worker training on Thursday when Curtis brought the Riverside topic up about ten minutes into the session. She said he mentioned the matter in passing as he discussed poll worker positions, saying a particular position could be the one to prevent an event like the alleged 45,000 ballot discrepancy in Riverside County. Lively said it bothered her that Shasta’s election official was treating an unproven claim made by activists as fact, especially in a space that’s supposed to be nonpartisan. “I put up my hand and I said I would appreciate it if you wouldn’t bring politics into the training situation,” Lively said afterwards. Curtis responded by calling the ballot discrepancy a “statement of fact,” Lively said. She said she pushed back firmly but politely, telling him the allegation was a matter of opinion and something she felt didn’t belong in a poll worker training, “He looked at me and smiled and said ‘you’re dismissed’,” Lively recounted. “I asked him if he was serious and he said yes he was.”Read Article

A California sheriff seized ballots, testing the limits of local power over elections | Jessica Huseman/Votebeat

Over the past few weeks, Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco — who is also a Republican candidate for governor of California — has taken the unusual step of seizing ballots from a recent election, launching his own recount, and opening a criminal investigation into how the election was run. The premise of Bianco’s investigation is sharply disputed. Bianco has pointed to the claims of a conservative citizens’ activist group that says it found an apparent discrepancy of tens of thousands of ballots — a figure election officials and independent experts say stems from a misreading of preliminary vote data, not an actual gap between ballots cast and ballots counted. California’s attorney general moved to stop the investigation, which is now on pause. Bianco seized more ballots, anyway, and says the effort to stop his recount is “politically motivated.” Courts this week ordered the unsealing of the warrants used to justify the seizures, which showed a yearslong relationship between Bianco’s office and the conservative activist group. On Wednesday, the California Supreme Court also ordered a halt to Bianco’s investigation. Read Article

California Supreme Court halts GOP sheriff’s voter fraud investigation | Jane C. Timm/NBC

The California Supreme Court on Wednesday ordered Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco to pause his investigation into alleged fraud in last year's special election. "To permit further consideration of this petition for review, real parties, their agents, employees, and anyone acting on their behalf are hereby ordered to pause the investigation into the November 2025 special election and preserve all seized items," the court wrote, while agreeing to review the case itself. Bianco, a Republican who is running for governor in California, seized more than 650,000 ballots from election officials last month, saying he was investigating potential fraud in the special election. The sheriff said at the time that a group of citizens said they believed they’d found irregularities after they conducted their own “audit” of the results in Riverside County. Read Article

California: Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco suspends election fraud probe | Grace Toohey/Los Angeles Times

Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, a leading Republican candidate for governor, said Monday that he had paused his controversial investigation into unsubstantiated claims of election fraud, a probe that was facing mounting legal challenges and ethical concerns. It was a major reversal for the outspoken Trump supporter, who had defended the investigation — and broadened its scope — just last week. Bianco’s employees have seized more than 650,000 ballots cast in Riverside County during November’s election. Bianco’s attorney, Robert Tyler, said the sheriff had decided to wait for the courts to weigh in on the case before proceeding with the investigation or potentially terminating it, as California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta has requested. Tyler said they were not conceding “that the attorney general has the ability to step in and stop a lawful investigation,” but said the case had brought up complex legal issues, such as competing authority between the executive and legal branches, that need to be addressed. Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco suspends election fraud probe - Los Angeles Times

California GOP sheriff who’s running for governor seizes ballots from 2025 election | Jane C. Timm/NBC

A Republican sheriff in California who's running for governor seized more than 650,000 ballots from election officials last week, saying he is investigating potential fraud in last year's election. Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco said a group of citizens conducted their own “audit” of California's 2025 special election results in the county, and he claimed that the election workers’ tally of ballots received was 45,000 fewer than the number of votes certified to the state. Riverside County considered one ballot question in the November special election: whether to approve a new Democratic-drawn congressional map. Voters statewide and in the county ultimately passed the measure, putting Democrats in position to gain up to five House seats in this year's midterm elections. Read Article

California Senator Padilla preps for Trump trying to control elections via emergency order | Kevin Rector/Los Angeles Times

Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA) is preparing for President Trump to declare a national emergency in order to seize control of this year’s midterm elections from the states, including by bracing his Senate colleagues for a vote in which they would be forced to either co-sign on the power grab or resist it. In the wake of reporting last week that conservative activists with connections to the White House were circulating such an order, Padilla sent a letter to his Senate colleagues Friday stating that any such order would be “wildly illegal and unconstitutional,” and would no doubt face “extremely strict scrutiny” in the courts. “Nevertheless, if the President does escalate his unprecedented assault on our democracy by declaring an election-related emergency, I will swiftly introduce a privileged resolution [and] force a vote in the Senate to terminate the fake emergency,” wrote Padilla, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration. Read Article

California: US Supreme Court rejects GOP challenge to new election map | David G. Savage/Los Angeles Times

The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that California this fall may use its new election map, which is expected to send five more Democrats to Congress. With no dissents, the justices rejected emergency appeals from California Republicans and President Trump’s lawyers, who claimed the map was a racial gerrymander to benefit Latinos, not a partisan effort to bolster Democrats. “Donald Trump said he was ‘entitled’ to five more congressional seats in Texas. He started this redistricting war. He lost, and he’ll lose again in November,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said in response to the court’s decision. Trump’s lawyers supported the California Republicans and filed a Supreme Court brief asserting that “California’s recent redistricting is tainted by an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.” But the court turned down the appeal in a one-line order with no explanation. Read Article

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