Gov. Gavin Newsom last week signed Senate Bill 73 (SB 73) into law in an effort to strengthen ballot security protections and give elections officials additional tools to respond to election interference.
“SB 73 helps to ensure that California elections remain secure, transparent and administered according to the rule of law,” Assemblymember Gail Pellerin (D-Santa Cruz), one of the bill’s co-authors, said at the signing. “Our democracy depends not only on the right to vote, but on the public’’ confidence that every lawful vote will be protected and counted fairly.”
The bill, authored by Sen. Sabrina Cervantes (D-Riverside) and Sen. Tom Umberg (D-Santa Ana), went into effect immediately.
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The new law prohibits the unauthorized access to voting systems, machines or voter data without a court order, requires the California Department of Justice to issue guidance to local elections officials when faced with requests by law enforcement to access areas where ballots are cast, processed or handled, protects the chain of custody of voted ballots by making it a felony to take ballots from a county registrar and restricts peace officers from interfering with the administration of elections.
Cervantes, in an interview with The Riverside Record, said her goal was to address election security concerns in light of investigations happening both across the country and in Riverside County.
“We saw a real need to strengthen and enforce protections to ensure ballots remain secure and that voters have the confidence that their voices will be heard through the ballot box,” she said. “We felt that this was an urgent matter ahead of the midterms, and we wanted to get this done before the primary election to make sure that we stood up for election integrity in the state of California, and hope that other states would follow suit.”
Earlier this year, Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco seized more than 600,000 voted ballots from the Riverside County Registrar of Voters (ROV) as part of an investigation into alleged election fraud. The Record first reported the investigation.
Bianco, who is running for governor as a Republican, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
He has defended the investigation which has faced a number of legal challenges and is currently paused pending a decision from the California Supreme Court.
One of those suits was filed by the UCLA Voting Rights Project, for which Democrat gubernatorial candidate Xavier Becerra serves as a voting rights advisor, on behalf of four Riverside County residents, including Riverside Councilmember Clarissa Cervantes who is running for Assembly District 58 and is the sister of Sen. Cervantes.
Sen. Cervantes said her sister’s legal case against Bianco’s ballot seizure was “a different matter at hand,” and completely separate from SB 73.
“We needed to move legislatively in order to protect voters’ rights and to ensure no interference and to create serious consequences for violating existing law,” she said.
Both Cervantes and Newsom said it would be hard to say whether this new law would have prevented Bianco from seizing the ballots, but agreed that it would have made it more difficult to accomplish.
“There are aspects and component parts that certainly would make it more difficult, and wouldn’t require, necessarily, the clarification of the state Supreme Court that ultimately ended the abuse in Riverside County with those 650,000 ballots,” Newsom said at the signing, noting that the new law provided additional clarity necessary to address concerns with election security.
In a statement posted to social media, California Secretary of State Shirley Weber, who is also on the June 2 ballot, called the bill a “critical step” to protect the integrity of elections in the state.
“SB 73 reinforces that foundation by drawing a firm line against federal overreach and against individuals seeking to interfere with, or undermine, our democratic processes,” she said. “It strengthens our ability to protect voters from intimidation and manipulation, while ensuring that every eligible Californian can cast a ballot safely, freely, and with confidence that it will be counted.”
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