California voting law: Committee still unfilled
Six years after the state mandated a body to assist Native American voters, officials plan to recruit members only after the November 2026 election.
By Nadia Singh ·
The California secretary of state’s office will begin recruiting members for a Native American voting advisory committee after the November 2026 election. A spokesperson for Secretary of State Shirley Weber confirmed in an email that the office has not yet formed the group. This delay marks six years since the state passed the law requiring the committee's existence.
Assembly Bill 2314 was authored by Assemblymember James Ramos and sponsored by former Secretary of State Alex Padilla. The statute mandates that the committee set guidelines for reaching Native American voters. It must also recommend public service announcements at least 45 days before elections. Additionally, the body is tasked with suggesting ways to improve poll worker recruitment and advising on language assistance materials.
The law sets no deadline for the committee’s formation. It also provides no funding and does not require input from tribal governments. Members chosen by the secretary of state must have experience with voting rights or serve as county elections officials. By contrast, the state’s Language Accessibility Advisory Committee is required to meet at least four times a year.
Allison Neswood, a senior staff attorney for the Native American Rights Fund, described the lack of structure as a recipe for neglect. She stated that the committee is likely to end up in the dustbin without those operational requirements. Neswood is Diné and noted that trust between the state and Indigenous communities remains thin.
Calvin Hedrick, director of policy for the California Native Vote Project, said his two-person team covers all of Northern California without state support. He described the workload as stretching the organization really thin. Hedrick, who is Mountain Maidu, noted that his group continues to hear complaints from rural voters about the cost of voting in time and resources.
Barriers persist on the ground despite the state mailing ballots to every active registered voter since 2021. On the Hoopa Valley Indian Reservation, advocates organized a vehicle caravan to transport elders to the only polling site on the reservation. In Shasta County, a monitor reported that a citizen of the Redding Rancheria was initially turned away from the polls on election day.
A 2024 Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review article found that mail voting in Indian Country is plagued by a lack of post offices. Torey Dolan, a law professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, wrote that inadequate postal infrastructure immediately impacts a voter's ability to cast a mail ballot. About 89% of current post offices were established before 1920, according to research cited by Ramos.
