A group that proposes separating California into two states—one that includes the Bay Area and portions of the Los Angeles and the Sacramento areas and one that includes all the rest—wants to review ballots from the 2024 presidential election and the 2025 Proposition 50 election for fraud.
The Bay Area generates an estimated 40 percent of the state’s revenue with Los Angeles also contributing a significant chunk. Good luck to The Great State of New California. Question: Can San Luis Obispo secede back into California? Sounds like it’ll be flying high on the state’s wealthiest while this great new state won’t be all that great. Someone didn’t do the math very well.
The math wizards who are part of this New California State movement are insistent that fraud is running rampant in this state’s elections. How else would California voters have rejected Trump for president? It’s not like California is full of liberal voters or anything. Oh wait. It is.
New California sent letters to sheriff’s and clerk-recorder’s offices in all 58 counties, taking inspiration from none other than that one sheriff running for governor who made national news for seizing 650,000 ballots in Riverside County without a shred of credible evidence of fraud. And apparently, he also thought it was a crazy thing to do but did it anyway. Because politics? Thanks, Chad Bianco.
For SLO County Clerk-Recorder Elaina Cano, it’s a first. She called it “unique,” which is kind of like being Southern and saying “bless your heart.”
The March 23 letter that New California State founder Robert Paul Preston sent to both her office and SLO County Sheriff Ian Parkinson’s office requested investigation of “alleged irregularities.” Members of Preston’s organization gave him “confidential ‘whistleblower’ information” about “voting irregularities” in the two elections, he wrote.
A whistleblower! Well, what are the allegations? He couldn’t say, he told New Times. It’s a secret, ya’ll!
But he wants to double check the numbers, because the math might not math, you know?
“Chad Bianco gave everybody probable cause when he found the discrepancy and he started counting the ballots,” Preston said.
What “discrepancy”? I haven’t heard about this. More super-secret whistleblower information, I suppose.
“Citizens need to have answers, and the government’s supposed to give us those answers, not stonewall us,” he said.
But the answers were the election results, right? Preston’s group just doesn’t like those results. Is that the evidence he’s yammering on about?
Some folks were concerned about how Parkinson might react to the request—could he be Bianco 2.0? And concerned folks even put out some misinformation about this whole saga, accusing the sheriff of sending a ballots demand letter to Cano. Well, I’ll be. A politicized conversation where people jump to the wrong conclusions and then spread it all over town?
That never happened, Cano said. In fact, the SLO County Sheriff’s Office said it didn’t receive evidence indicating that a crime was committed.
“If credible information or evidence of a potential criminal violation is presented, the Sheriff’s Office would review it to determine whether it falls within our jurisdiction,” sheriff’s spokesperson Tony Cipolla said.
So, you’re saying there’s a chance?!
South County has its own political conspiracies. “Dark money” abounds in support of 4th District SLO County Jimmy Paulding, apparently, and now the South County Coalition is in trouble with the District Attorney’s Office for basically filing its paperwork wrong.
In an effort to fix what was supposedly wrong, the coalition responded to DA Dan Dow’s warning that it should change what kind of organization it’s registered as by trying to show that it was, in fact, what it said it was. As a “general purpose committee,” it said it was doing more than raising money in support of Paulding and listed off all the candidates it was supportive of.
“Our committee is one month into its existence, and it was formed to support multiple candidates for both the 2026 primary and general elections and beyond,” Coalition Treasurer Dorothy Hines said.
But that got the coalition into more hot water, it seems, because that list included someone running for federal office. The support that the coalition has for incumbent U.S. 24th District Rep. Salud Carbajal to retain his seat isn’t covered by the state’s paperwork, Dow said.
“The use of a single California committee to receive contributions and then pay for communications allocated in part to a federal candidate raises a significant issue as to whether federal election activity is being financed through an account and reporting structure not lawfully organized for that purpose,” Dow wrote back in response.
Uh oh! Are the people who formed this committee stupid or devious?
The research side of this “dark money” organization was underfunded, obviously.
Paulding claims he has no affiliation with the South County Coalition, of course. His opponent, Adam Verdin, tried to use this whole fiasco to benefit his campaign, of course, by sending out an email blast about “dark money.” But, he insists, the law is what counts.
“I would much prefer that they, the organization, that PAC, just correct themselves and follow the law,” Verdin said.
Verdin himself did follow the law regarding a different little 4th District race money conspiracy. His campaign returned those large “developer” donations earmarked for the November general election. ∆
The Shredder is a legal beagle. Send dossiers to shredder@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in April 30 – May 7, 2026.
Seceding from the Union is actually a good idea. California is the 4th largest economy in the world, what benefit do we receive from the scum in Washington other than a tax bill we are expected to pay in their unsound and depreciating currency? If it wasn’t for the tax receipts we send to Washington, the whole union would collapse. Were we consulted when Trump decided to attack Iran? No. Now our gas prices are going through the roof. It’s high time we think about leaving the Union. If the other states won’t ratify it (they won’t), then let’s just fight for our freedom.
Just what we need, a conspiracy nut who runs “Agenda21Radio” wants rural counties to secede, opening the door to corporate exploitation of our natural resources. I’d love to retire on the shores of Yosemite when they dam the Merced River, but I fear the view would only be of clear cut hillsides and oil wells.