“We’ve seen an incident in my own home county of Riverside where ballots were seized and the chain of custody was broken,” state Sen. Sabrina Cervantes, one of the bill’s authors, said in a statement. “That’s against the law. SB-73 puts in protections to ensure that ballots will be secure and that voters have confidence in our election system that their voices will be heard at the ballot box.”
Newsom also called out a “pattern of actions” by the Trump Administration and the President’s allies, including attempts to “access the voting rolls of our state,” as well as Trump’s efforts to “vandalize trust as it relates to vote by mail and so many other categories,” his aggressive push for Congress to pass new voter-identification requirements, and the partisan redistricting battle he sparked by pushing Republican-led states to redraw the maps to bolster the party’s electoral chances.
The Trump Administration has made a concerted effort to access voter data from around the country since the President, who has repeatedly spread false claims about voter fraud and election interference, returned to office last year. A Brennan Center study, last updated this week, found that the Justice Department has demanded that almost every state and Washington, D.C., hand over election records and data, including voter lists from previous elections and voting equipment. The government has doubled down on those efforts by suing 30 states and D.C. for not complying. Several suits have since been dismissed, while several states have provided or said they would hand over the demanded data.
