California Tightens Election Rules Before November
California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a package of bills aimed at bolstering election security on Sept. 19 ahead of the November elections. The Guardian
Newsom signed AB 1664. The law requires elections officials to immediately notify the attorney general and secretary of state. Yahoo News The Governor's Office listed the measure in a Sept. 19 release titled "What they are saying: California leaders praise Governor Newsom's democracy defending action ahead of November elections."
What the new laws do
SB 3 (Cervantes) addresses mail-ballot processing. It made changes to the signature curing process for vote-by-mail, the steps for checking and fixing a missing or mismatched signature, like an ID check for a ballot. Office of the Governor It also requires that public vote counts are updated more regularly.
Other bills in the package adjust access, disclosure and custody rules. One bill extends hours for mail-in voting drop-off locations. One bill imposes penalties for failure to disclose paid political content involving social media influencers. One bill makes it a felony to seize ballots or election records.
How California votes
California administers elections under universal vote-by-mail. Since 2019, the state has expanded voter access through universal vote-by-mail. AB 37 made permanent the measure to send a vote-by-mail ballot to every active registered voter. Office of the Governor
Why lawmakers acted
Custody and federal mail-ballot proposals form the immediate backdrop documented in recent reporting. Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco took possession of over 650,000 ballots from a 2025 redistricting special election. The Trump administration's proposed vote-by-mail changes included a mandate for states to submit lists of approved mail-ballot voters to the U.S. Postal Service. The U.S. Supreme Court blocked the Trump administration's proposed changes to vote-by-mail.
The broader context here is jurisdiction over administration. California is codifying reporting lines, curing standards, canvass-update cadence and criminal penalties for interference with ballots and records, while keeping universal mail-ballot distribution and extended drop-off availability in place. For election administrators, the operational questions are chain of custody, notification obligations to state law-enforcement and election officials, curing timelines, and public-reporting frequency during the canvass. For campaigns and vendors, the disclosure rule for paid influencer content adds a compliance layer to political communication. The interaction with federal postal and voter-list proposals, now blocked by the Court, leaves state statutes as the controlling framework for November in California, with enforcement practice and litigation risk concentrated on custody disputes and administrative compliance.
