They made misleading election claims. Now they’re targeting CA counties

Are election deniers and affiliated groups gathering evidence for a potential Stop the Steal 2.0 campaign in California?

That was the question CalMatters reporters set out to answer earlier this year.

We made requests in a sampling of geographically and politically diverse counties for logs from their elections offices that detail who’s seeking election records and what they’re asking for. 

My story published today details what we learned. The groups gathering records include:

• A national election-denier group with a history of funneling large sums of its donors’ money into its leaders’ pockets.
• A law firm that once admitted to falsely accusing thousands of voters of being non-citizens.
• A self-proclaimed election integrity advocate fundraising off disproven claims that spread across conservative media.

The FBI’s recent visit to Shasta County’s elections office and Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco’s seizure of 650,000 ballots earlier this year underscore that some top law enforcement officials are taking activists’ claims of election fraud seriously — even as experts and election officials say there’s no truth to their accusations.

At the same time, Ginny LaRoe of the First Amendment Coalition said it would be a mistake for lawmakers to respond to the spread of election misinformation by making it harder for the public to obtain records, as they have repeatedly sought to do.

• LaRoe: “I think it would be dangerous for California lawmakers to limit public access to information further in a time when misinformation flourishes. That’s when we need greater transparency and more access to public records.”

Read more.

The University of California is revisiting its 2020 decision eliminating the SATs from its admissions process, after recent outcry from some of its professors advocating for the test’s reinstatement, writes CalMatters’ Mikhail Zinshteyn.

Early this summer, roughly 3,000 current and former UC professors urged the university system to bring back the test, arguing that more of their students show weak math and writing skills, and that the SATs can screen out students who cannot handle the rigors of the UC.

The professors, however, represent just a fraction of the system’s roughly 26,000 faculty. And while freshmen across the UC are showing increasing signs of academic struggle with calculus-based entry-level math, student retention rates and first-year GPAs are not declining — despite warnings from SAT proponents that they would if the UC got rid of the test. 

Nevertheless, UC leaders have asked a task force to report on the system’s use of the test by Feb. 17.

Read more.

On the same day that Gov. Gavin Newsom honored the memory of Native children who were forced to undergo assimilation in federal boarding schools, the governor struck down two bills that would have expanded tribal power, reports CalMatters’ Melanie Henshaw.

One of the bills would have prohibited state agencies from significantly interfering with tribal religious practices on state land, unless the state showed a compelling reason to step in. Agencies would have also had to seek a tribe’s consent before changing a site they know is sacred.

In his Sept. 30 veto message, Newsom wrote that the proposal would have had “far-reaching impacts” on how the state government operates and that the measure’s uncertainty “calls for further discussion and review.”

Bill proponents slammed Newsom’s veto, arguing that the bill was needed to protect sacred sites from state and federal policies.

• Assemblymember Patrick Ahrens, a Cupertino Democrat and co-author of the bill: “The least we can do as a government is allow Native Americans unburdened access to state lands to honor their heritage.”

Read more.