With primary midterm elections fast approaching, Republicans are gearing up to challenge Californians’ voting rights at both the local and federal levels.
Since February 9, Riverside County sheriff and Republican gubernatorial candidate Chad Bianco has seized ballots from the November 2025 special election in which Proposition 50 passed, initiated a recount, and opened a criminal investigation into the election.
Bianco acquired three warrants, with courts permitting him to seize and investigate over 600,000 ballots from the Riverside County registrar of voters in last November’s election.
According to California attorney general Rob Bonta, who submitted a court filing to challenge Bianco’s actions, this is the first time in state history that a sheriff has seized a large number of ballots for the purpose of a criminal investigation.
Bianco’s attempt to investigate purported voter fraud mirrors a nationwide trend of questioning the validity of mail-in voting. In February, the FBI seized ballots from the 2020 election in Fulton County, Georgia. Currently, the Supreme Court is considering the constitutionality of a Mississippi law that allows for the counting of mail-in ballots postmarked by election day but received up to five days later. Allowing for this grace period is necessary for a full count of ballots from voters who made a choice by Election Day. California is one of 13 states with similar grace periods that would likely be reevaluated if the Supreme Court takes issue with the Mississippi law.
These attacks have been spurred by President Donald Trump, who has continued to make allegations that mail-in voting contributed to fraud in the 2020 presidential election. Trump is currently pressing Congress to limit mail-in voting — even though he himself recently voted by mail.
On March 31, Trump signed an executive order to control voter rolls and limit mail-in voting in California. Democrats have filed lawsuits in response on the grounds that Trump does not have the authority to issue such an order. Democrats are more likely than Republicans to vote by mail, with approximately 1 in 4 Democrats opting for this method of voting compared to 1 in 5 Republicans.
Trump has also made baseless accusations that undocumented immigrants in Los Angeles are voting en masse for Democratic candidates. This claim, tied to the “great replacement” conspiracy theory that white people are being intentionally replaced by people of color for electoral gains, has been dismissed as false by Los Angeles county election officials.
Voter fraud is much less pervasive than Bianco and Trump’s rhetoric would have it seem. In fact, the rarity of voter fraud has been affirmed by Bianco himself, who has been examining the validity of elections since 2022 and admitted that he has “not found any mass fraud” in Riverside County elections.
Nonetheless, if left unchecked, these threats to voting rights will undermine the 2026 midterm elections in California. It is therefore imperative that California takes action to protect voting rights at the state level against federal attacks.
In recent years, the Supreme Court has rolled back parts of the Voting Rights Act, which protects minority voters. Most recently, in April, the court’s ruling on Louisiana v. Callais narrowed the enforcement of Section 2, which outlaws discrimination in voting on the basis of race.
Louisiana v. Callais challenged Louisiana’s 2024 Congressional map, which created a second majority-Black district required by the Voting Rights Act. Plaintiffs argued that the district violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th and 15th amendments. The Supreme Court’s ruling sets a new precedent for how state legislators must balance constitutional and Voting Rights Act protections, as well as the scope of enforcement for the Voting Rights Act across the country.
On April 22, California’s senate passed a Voting Rights Act, which updates the state’s original act of 2001. The act’s provisions include prohibiting voter suppression and ensuring access to voting opportunities, pushing against district maps that weaken the voting power of communities of color, and allowing voters to go to the state court system to enforce voting rights amid federal attacks.
A statewide Voting Rights Act will help enshrine more rights for minority voters — but California shouldn’t stop there. State legislators ought to pass laws protecting early voting, banning burdensome and excessive requirements on voters to prove their citizenship and show IDs, and draw districts that allow minority voters to elect representatives of their choice.
More broadly, California can increase transparency and accessibility to ballots by listing the top three financial backers supporting and opposing ballot measures in voting guides and expanding access to translation and interpretation services for people whose primary language is one other than English.
California is at a crossroads — lawmakers can either continue to sit back as the federal government continues to encroach upon our state rights, or they can take action. If they choose the latter, that action must be sure and swift. The fate of Californians’ voting rights, and the preservation of our democracy, hangs in the balance.
Featured Image Source: Los Angeles Times