Newsom Signs Bills to Protect Ballots Against Federal Interference

In the weeks before a midterm election, California's governor signed legislation making ballot and election record interference a criminal offense — a quiet but pointed assertion that a state may draw its own lines when it believes the center is not holding. The bills do not name enemies or cite specific federal acts; they simply raise a legal wall around the machinery of democratic participation. It is a familiar American drama: the tension between federal authority and state sovereignty, now playing out on the terrain of the ballot box.