SACRAMENTO – California Democrats are attempting to fight efforts by Republicans to restrict voting by introducing a big update to the California Voting Rights Act Wednesday meant to expand voter access.
The bills by state Sen. Sabrina Cervantes, D-Riverside, would make it easier for people to sue over voter suppression and mimic the federal Voting Rights Act’s preclearance system, effectively abolished by the Supreme Court in 2013, for communities with a history of voting discrimination. The bills would also expand requirements for counties to provide ballots and voting information in foreign languages.
“Our democracy has been under attack with the Supreme Court and President Trump and his administration, along with his allies in Congress, who actively are working on suppressing and diluting our votes,” Cervantes said. “We want to give voters a direct means of fighting back.”
Cervantes cited actions by President Donald Trump, who has been pushing legislation to enact steep barriers to voting across the country, as an impetus for the bills. She also pointed to an investigation by Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, a Republican candidate for governor, who seized more than 650,000 ballots from last November’s election as part of a probe into alleged voter fraud.
Bianco’s investigation has been harshly criticized by Democrats as unfounded and politically motivated to raise Bianco’s profile as he runs for governor. Cervantes called it “a clear effort to undermine election integrity.”
Bianco has disputed those characterizations.
“The only reason Democrats believe that politics is involved is because that is their entire life,” he told the Chronicle on Tuesday. “This is about investigations into elections fraud and elections irregularities.”
Cervantes’ bill would replicate the preclearance system that existed under the Voting Rights Act of 1965, before the Supreme Court invalidated the system. It would require California communities with a history of voter discrimination to seek approval before implementing new voting laws. The criteria for discrimination would include making it harder for minority groups to vote and diluting the voting power of minority groups.
Cervantes’ bills would be the first major update to the California Voting Rights Act since it passed in 2002. The original law aimed to increase minority representation by pressuring local governments to switch from at-large elections to district elections, meaning voters cast ballots for representatives for a small area where they live rather than for candidates to represent an entire city or school district.
A 2023 investigation by the Chronicle found that the current version of the California Voting Rights Act has achieved mixed results. In some cases, pressuring school districts and local governments to adopt district-based elections has increased the number of people of color on those boards or councils. But the law also ushered in a flood of lawsuits that have forced local governments to fork over millions of taxpayer dollars to pay attorneys and redo their election systems. In some cases, the changes did little to increase minority representation, the investigation found, and sometimes made it easier for people opposed to building new housing to be elected.
Cervantes is introducing her proposed updates to the law as Congress is weighing a major elections overhaul bill called the SAVE America Act that Trump has championed. The sweeping proposal would restrict automatic registration and mail voting – cornerstones of California’s election system. The measure would also force voters to present documents like a birth certificate or passport when registering to vote, which many American citizens do not possess.
Though the president has vowed to enact the measure, it has run into significant opposition and roadblocks, dimming its prospects.
At the state level, a Republican Assembly member is attempting to qualify a measure that would impose voter identification requirements in California elections. California voters already must provide identification documents when registering to vote, but not when they cast their ballot. The proposal would require voters to provide identification when they vote, including part of their Social Security number or another form of ID when voting by mail. Proponents are in the process of qualifying the measure for the ballot.
Both efforts have drawn harsh criticism from Democrats, who say they would make it harder for many American citizens to vote.
Cervantes said that if either the SAVE Act or the California voter ID law pass, she would consider making amendments or introducing new legislation in response.
To become law, the bills Cervantes introduced Wednesday must pass both houses of the Legislature and be signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom.
This article originally published at California bill would crack down on communities that suppress voting.