Newsom signs ballot-seizure ban after Bianco took 600,000 Riverside ballots

CalMatters: Governor Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill 73 on Wednesday, banning law enforcement from interfering with California elections. The law takes effect immediately — just in time for the June 2 primary. It criminalizes the act of taking cast ballots from a local election official's custody, and prohibits any individual from allowing law enforcement to access, disrupt, modify, or take voting technology without a court order. CalMatters reporter Maya C. Miller writes that the law also gives the attorney general and secretary of state authority to override a county registrar in some circumstances — for example, if the registrar permitted armed personnel to stage near polling places.

The Riverside connection drove the urgency. Earlier this year, Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco — now a gubernatorial candidate — seized more than 600,000 ballots from his own county's registrar, claiming he was checking for proof of fraudulent voting. No evidence of improper voting was found. Under the new law, Riverside County Registrar Art Tinoco would have violated the statute by surrendering the ballots to the sheriff's department, despite the search warrant the deputies presented. Assemblymember Gail Pellerin, a coauthor and former Santa Cruz County registrar, called Bianco's seizure exactly the kind of misuse of law enforcement powers the law was written to prevent. Kim Alexander, president of the California Voter Foundation, called the original seizure "unprecedented" — something that had "never happened anywhere in the country before."