With elections coming up in November, the nonprofit news organization Cal Matters and the University of California, Riverside’s (UCR) School of Public Policy (SPP) collaborated to co-hosted the “Where are Riverside County’s Ballots and How Secure Are Its Elections?” public forum on Sept. 24. Held at the Cheech Museum —-3581 Mission Inn Ave, from 5:30 to 7:30 .p.m, the panel consisted of journalists, professors and researchers who discussed various concerns surrounding voting security and reviewed some of the upcoming ballot measures.
The forum was moderated by Cal Matters Politics Editor Juliet Williams and consisted of two separate panels. The first featured Anat Rubin, a Cal Matters investigative reporter who covered Riverside County Sheriff and former gubernatorial candidate Chad Bianco’s investigation and seizure of over 65,000 ballots. On the morning of Sept. 24, the California Superior Court ruled against Bianco’s seizure of the ballots in two separate cases, which were referenced throughout the discussion.
Williams opened the conversation by inquiring into what had prompted Rubin to begin covering Bianco’s ballot investigations and then having her elaborate on her findings. Rubin described that through her work, she drew connections from Bianco’s continuous push to investigate reports of ballot fraud in spite of a repeated lack of evidence to the Constitutional Sheriffs Movement (CSM).
Having gained traction in 2020 following President Donald Trump’s loss to former President Joe Biden, the CSM is a national political movement which calls on Sheriffs to act as a final authority within their county, a viewpoint which aligned itself with Bianco’s gubernatorial platform.
According to Rubin, Trump’s loss in the 2020 presidential race incited a national spike in mistrust surrounding election security which then transferred through the CSM to residents of Riverside who resonated with these concerns. Rubin further stated, “The claims that she (a resident) was making were echoing the claims that were being made in a lot of other places across the country. Also by President Trump … so it really seemed like this, you know, local movement was connected to this larger picture.”
Following the discussion, Williams opened up the second forum which featured SPP Assistant Professor Jennifer Gaudette and founder and director for the Center for Inclusive Democracy Mindy Romero. Audience members were provided index cards which they could use to write down questions for Gaudette and Romero to respond to.
Williams began by requesting that Gaudette explain the Court’s ruling against Bianco in both cases to which Gaudette interpreted that the rulings demonstrated the court’s affirmation of Bianco’s “inappropriate” conduct. Bianco was required to return all of the seized ballots to the Riverside County Registrar and has been barred from further handling ballots.
The panelists were also asked to list current threats to election security. In response, Gaudette and Romero discussed the spread of misinformation regarding election security due to concerns regarding a lack of understanding of the election process. Romero described that, although the 30-day-counting period exists to further voting accessibility, the verification process is what delays results and that this is used to raise baseless concerns regarding their validity, stating “Now, really fueled obviously by that just extreme rhetoric that we have in our country now, the slow quote on quote vote count is used as evidence … that there is fraud, right, when it actually is the exact opposite.”
Both Gaudette and Romero emphasized a need to combat confusion with education and encouraged attendees to not be discouraged by the discourse, Romero stated “Don’t let your vote be taken from you because of that misinformation.”
After the forums, Cal Matters Director of Partnerships Dan Hu delivered a short information presentation where he reviewed some of the upcoming ballot measures from their voter guide and prompted attendees to discuss them. They also provided each attendee with a zine voter guide to help people navigate the voting process.
Following the event, Gaudette shared that Cal Matters had reached out to the SPP with an invitation to collaborate given the high profile nature of Bianco’s investigation, stating “I think that obviously there’s this really high-profile case of an elected official seizing ballots that happened in Riverside County, and so partnering with the UC Riverside School of Public Policy was a natural fit for them.”
SPP Dean Mark Long further described that participation in the forum allowed the university to address misinformation going into the election season, “I think it was also an opportunity to dispel a lot of myths. And it was also a topical conversation given the discussions of Sheriff Bianco… So both a topical question but also a really important broader question about our election security going into the November elections.”
