California

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

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