California universal vote-by-mail to continue + Republicans call on Newsom to recuse

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BILL TO END UNIVERSAL VOTE-BY-MAIL FAILS IN COMMITTEE

California won’t be rolling back its election reforms any time soon, after the Assembly Elections Committee voted down AB 13.

The bill, from Assemblyman Bill Essayli, R-Riverside, would have ended universal vote-by-mail in the state, returning to pre-pandemic ballot rules. The bill also would also have reinstated a ban on “ballot harvesting,” the practice of collecting multiple ballots and turning them in en masse, by making it so only family members could handle or turn in someone’s ballot.

Finally, the bill would have made Election Day a state holiday, which Essayli said might give conservative supporters of the bill heartburn but which would expand voter access to the polls.

The assemblyman joked that a good bill leaves both sides a little disappointed.

In his closing remarks, Essayli said that he did not intend for his bill to be partisan.

“I hope we can just lower the temperature a little and have a conversation,” he said.

Essayli then cited a commission created by Presidents Gerald Ford, a Republican, and Jimmy Carter, a Democrat, whose findings expressed concerns about absentee voting.

Assemblyman Isaac Bryan said that commission report is decades old.

“I was 11 when that committee did that analysis. We have come a long way since then, our voting integrity has come a long way since then,” Bryan said.

Bryan, who chairs the committee, praised Essayli’s Election Day holiday provision but took exception to the rest of the bill.

“There are states around this country that are rolling back voting rights with dozens of legislation ... we’re not going to do that in California,” he said.

Bryan said that AB 13 “undoes the righteous work” that has been done over the last several years to make voting more accessible, especially to people of color or who have disabilities.

“We didn’t just do this because of the pandemic. The pandemic forced us to question the features of our democracy that weren’t working as well as they could have been this entire time,” he said.

REPUBLICAN LEGISLATIVE LEADERS CALL ON NEWSOM TO RECUSE ON SVB

As we mentioned yesterday, California Gov. Gavin Newsom has a financial interest in the well-being of the failed Silicon Valley Bank, with three of his businesses listed as clients and his wife’s charity a recipient of a solicited donation from the bank.

On Wednesday, Senate Minority Leader Brian Jones, R-San Diego, and Assembly Republican Leader James Gallagher, R-Yuba City, called on the governor to recuse himself from any further state dealings with the bank.

“As chief executive officer of the State of California, the governor is prohibited from taking administrative or other actions that could benefit his own financial circumstance. Simply putting all your assets in a blind trust a few years ago does not allow Gov. Newsom to intercede in a bailout of a bank that he knew he and his family had extensive dealings with,” the lawmakers said in a joint statement.

They added that there is the potential for conflict of interest, as well as the perception of conflict.

“We think the governor’s actions in the SVB matter crossed the line into both areas,” they said.

The Republicans called on Newsom to step back and let Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis handle the matter going forward, and also to request a Fair Political Practices Commission and/or California Attorney General investigation into whether the law was broken.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

“I don’t like killing bills in the first committee, but if you’re trying to suppress the vote and make it harder for people to participate in our Democracy…I got nothing for you.”

- Assemblyman Isaac G. Bryan, D-Los Angeles, discussing the fate of AB 13, via Twitter.

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