{"id":340117,"date":"2026-05-31T10:53:28","date_gmt":"2026-05-31T10:53:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/340117\/"},"modified":"2026-05-31T10:53:28","modified_gmt":"2026-05-31T10:53:28","slug":"california-limits-law-enforcements-access-to-voter-ballots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/340117\/","title":{"rendered":"California limits law enforcement\u2019s access to voter ballots"},"content":{"rendered":"

Citing Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco\u2019s seizure of election ballots last month, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill Wednesday curbing law enforcement\u2019s access to California voter rolls ahead of next week\u2019s gubernatorial primary.<\/a><\/p>\n

Last week, the Legislature passed a bill from Sens. Sabrina Cervantes, D-Riverside, and Tom Umberg, D-Santa Ana, that bans uniformed officers from inspecting election equipment, including ballots, without a court order or cooperation from local elections officials. The law makes any violation a felony punishable by up to three years in jail and a $1,000 fine and refines the attorney general\u2019s guidance for local elections officials\u2019 interactions with law enforcement.<\/p>\n

The emergency law, which took effect immediately with a stroke of the governor\u2019s pen, came after Bianco\u2019s office forcibly took custody of over 650,000 ballots last month. Bianco, backed by a local election deniers\u2019 group, claimed there were irregularities with the vote count in the special election last fall.<\/p>\n

A sympathetic judge signed the warrant allowing him to reinspect the ballots, despite there being no evidence of a crime. The Proposition 50 ballot initiative passed in Riverside County by a wide margin.<\/p>\n

Bianco is running for governor as a Republican to succeed Newsom, who referred to his would-be successor as \u201cthe former member of the Oath Keepers,\u201d referring to the far-right anti-government extremist group of which Bianco was briefly a participant.<\/p>\n

Attorney General Rob Bonta sued to stop Bianco, and the California Supreme Court ordered the sheriff to stop recounting ballots.<\/p>\n

Newsom signed the election safeguarding bill in his office, flanked by Cervantes, Umberg and Assembly sponsor Gail Pellerin, D-Santa Cruz, who was a Santa Cruz County elections clerk for nearly 30 years.<\/p>\n

Newsom cited federal officials\u2019 incursions into battleground states like Georgia as a \u201cpattern\u201d and cited President Donald Trump\u2019s repeated false assertions that he won the 2020 election.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe doesn\u2019t believe in fair and free elections. He believes in competitive authoritarianism,\u201d Newsom said.<\/p>\n

He teased more forthcoming legislation to curb immigration officials\u2019 access to voting booths: \u201cThis is not the final word on election integrity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Related Stories from Sacramento Bee<\/p>\n


\n \"Profile
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

Lia Russell<\/a><\/p>\n

The Sacramento Bee<\/p>\n

Lia Russell covers California\u2019s governor for The Sacramento Bee\u2019s Capitol Bureau. Originally from San Francisco, Lia previously worked for The Baltimore Sun and the Bangor Daily News in Maine.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Citing Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco\u2019s seizure of election ballots last month, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":340118,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[121,123,122],"class_list":["post-340117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sacramento","tag-sacramento","tag-sacramento-headlines","tag-sacramento-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=340117"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340117\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/340118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=340117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=340117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=340117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}