Election protections bill signed into law days before primary

“Just six days out from the election, we thought this was a timely bill,” Newsom said during a press conference held in Sacramento on Thursday. “I just want to express gratitude to our two senators and assemblywoman for their outstanding work to address the anxiety that has been expressed almost universally about what’s going on with fair and free elections.”

Senate Bill 73, which was authored by Sen. Sabrina Cervantes, D-Riverside, and Sen. Tom Umberg, D-Santa Ana, provides guidance to county elections officials and election site managers about how to handle requests from law enforcement agencies to access election areas and ballots. It also prevents law enforcement officers from interfering with the work of election workers, prevents election observers from challenging a signature on a vote-by-mail ballot and keeps law enforcement from taking or modifying ballots and voting technology, according to a legislative analysis.

“Right now, California is standing with courage, standing with urgency, to protect voters’ rights to cast a ballot free from intimidation or interference,” Cervantes said during the Thursday press conference. “We’ve seen an incident in my own home county of Riverside where ballots were seized and the chain of custody was broken. That is against the law.”

According to the bill analysis, a group in Southern California's Riverside County raised alarm earlier this year over a discrepancy in the number of ballots cast in the November 2025 special election. A difference of nearly 46,000 ballots was disputed between numbers reported by the Riverside County Registrar of Voters from the actual number cast. The Riverside County Sheriff’s Office obtained a warrant from the Riverside Superior Court to seize 1,000 boxes of ballots and ballot materials. In April, the California Supreme Court ordered the sheriff’s office to halt its investigation.

“When the sheriff in Riverside seized the 650,000 ballots from the elections official, I was horrified,” Assemblymember Gail Pellerin, D-Santa Cruz and chair of the Assembly Elections Committee, said at the press conference. “Breaking that chain of custody breaks the trust that voters have in our elections. Election workers should never fear political intimidation for simply doing their job.”

The sheriff is Chad Bianco, a Republican candidate for governor.

The new law comes months after President Donald Trump sent federal officials to monitor California’s special mid-decade redistricting election in November 2-25, in which voters approved overwhelmingly for newly drawn congressional districts that gave Democrats the chance to pick up five new seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.

The Center Square previously reported that state legislators didn’t think the presence of those monitors would have much effect. Pellerin told The Center Square in November that she found the federal government’s actions in sending election monitors to California puzzling, but added she felt they would ultimately find that elections are operated smoothly in the state.

Pellerin, Cervantes and Umberg did not respond to The Center Square’s requests for comment on Friday. Newsom’s office sent along a press release and web link to the Thursday press conference on Friday morning, and Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, chair of the Senate Elections and Constitutional Amendments Committee, declined to comment for this story. Organizations that supported the bill, including the League of Women Voters California, did not respond to The Center Square before press time on Friday. Republican lawmakers in California also did not respond to The Center Square.