SECTION 1.
The Legislature finds and declares as follows:(a) The Legislature has compelling interests in protecting both public safety and individual rights, including the fundamental right to vote. It is the Legislature’s intent and purpose in enacting this act to help preserve the right to vote by securing the safety and freedom of our elections and allowing voters, election workers, and other officials who conduct our elections to play their roles free from threats and
intimidation.
(b) The United States, including California, has a history of discrimination and intimidation in elections. African American voters in California first began petitioning for the right to vote in 1865, two years after the Emancipation Proclamation was issued and the same year that slavery was completely abolished with the ratification of the 13th Amendment. California’s refusal to ratify or enforce the 14th and 15th Amendments eventually prompted the federal government to pass the Enforcement Act of 1870, only after which African American men were allowed to register. Minority voters continued to suffer harassment, physical violence, and obstructionist tactics in the following decades, which included a California poll tax active from 1879 until 1914 and a literacy test active from 1894 until 1970. Passage of Section
11(b) of the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965 offered important protections against voter intimidation and, today, California has enacted several critical voter protection laws.
(c) In recent years, there has been an increase in the number of people carrying firearms in public, a development that has
coincided with the deregulation of gun laws in a majority of states. Guns have been used where people are voting and tabulating ballots to intimidate and harass them.
(d) It is indisputable that division in American politics has reached a fever pitch. At the same time, an increasing share of the American electorate is willing to use violence to advance their political objectives. The Violence Policy Research Center at the University of California, Davis, found that 12.4 million Americans would be somewhat, very, or completely willing to kill a person in a situation in which they believe force or violence is justified to advance an important political objective. More than 47.7 million Americans, including those who do not own guns, think it is somewhat, very, or extremely likely that they will be armed with a gun in the next
few years in a situation in which they think force or violence is justified to advance an important political objective.
(e) In 2022, the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism conducted a poll on the effects of extremist political rhetoric and activities and the proliferation of guns in public spaces. It found that just 41 percent of all respondents feel safe at their polling places and that 32 percent were specifically worried about people carrying weapons at their polling place. That number was even lower for Hispanic respondents (37 percent), Black respondents (28 percent), and those aged 18–25 (26 percent). Voter intimidation, suppression, and harassment were also listed as a “grave concern” for 27 percent of those polled, with higher numbers for groups that have historically experienced harassment and disenfranchisement.
(f) The increases in voting by mail and other changes to voting instigated by the global COVID-19 pandemic provided fodder for
disinformation and conspiracy theories about U.S. elections based on claims of voter fraud and election interference. In the years since, this fraudulent claim has served to radicalize an increasing number of individuals who use the election denial movement as an excuse to openly harass, threaten, and intimidate election workers and voters.
(g) California voters and election workers are amongst those at serious risk of experiencing this type of intimidation and harassment. In Shasta County, elections officials have encountered open hostility and threats from a small but vocal group of activists who claim concern about voter fraud. These activists have physically crowded election workers performing their official duties, inundated elections offices with public records requests, and even visited voter homes while claiming to be
part of an “official taskforce.” Similarly, in Nevada County, the registrar-elect had to take out a restraining order against residents who harassed her, pushed their way into her office, and assaulted a staffer.
(h) The result of this unprecedented level of harassment has been a mass exodus of elections workers across the country. According to a nationwide poll of election workers conducted by the Brennan Center for Justice, 11 percent of current officials say they are very or somewhat likely to leave their positions before November 2024. Over half say they are concerned that threats, harassment, and intimidation will harm retention and recruitment and 30 percent admitted to having personally been abused, harassed, or threatened because of their job as a local elections official. In California alone, 41 percent of the state’s counties now have
a new chief local elections official, and 44 percent of Californians will see the 2024 election administered by someone
different than the official who administered the 2020 election.
(i) The Protecting Elections from Armed Coercion and Extremism Act, or PEACE Act Act, is intended to supplement existing anti-intimidation law under Section 11(b) of the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965, by, among other things, providing specific, explicit protections for election workers and acknowledging that in this era of increased gun violence and election denialism, the presence of guns in proximity to elections is presumptively intimidating. This act should not be construed, however, to suggest that
other anti-intimidation laws do not protect election workers or protect against the use of firearms to intimidate.
(j) California law already prohibits the intimidation of voters and others in the election process and the carrying of firearms where votes are cast and counted. The PEACE Act is not intended to, and should not be construed to, limit or replace those prohibitions. It is instead a supplement to those protections.
(k) Because election administration and voting take place in a number of locations—including, but not limited to, polling places, elections and other government offices, ballot drop boxes, and people’s homes—the term “voting” as defined by this Act is intended to be read expansively to include all forms and methods of voting permitted under federal and state
law.