San Luis Obispo County rebuffed demands from a secessionistgroup that wants all county clerk-recorder’s offices and sheriffs in California to retain and investigate records related to the 2024 general election and the Proposition 50 special election.
“This is a unique request, as I have not received anything similar from this group or others during my time in office,” SLO County Clerk-Recorder Elaina Cano said.
In a March 23 letter, New California State Movement founder Robert Paul Preston wrote to Cano and SLO County Sheriff Ian Parkinson that members of his organization gave him “confidential ‘whistleblower’ information” about alleged “‘voting irregularities’” in the two elections in the area.
“We request the investigation of those alleged irregularities at any level be investigated by the proper sworn law enforcement officers who will then issue a public report that the process, procedures, and vote tallies were either accurate or not accurate,” Preston wrote.
New California State wants to break off from the existing state, leaving behind the most densely populated areas like Los Angeles, Sacramento, Alameda, and Santa Clara counties. According to the group’s website, those counties’ large urban areas throw off the rural population density of its desired state.
Preston told New Times that his group is neutral on party affiliation even though many members do associate themselves with certain parties and ideologies.
New California State isn’t a stranger to SLO County. The group’s local chair, Linda Quinlan, publicly criticized Public Health Director Penny Borenstein and her 2023 mandate ordering health care workers to get updated COVID-19 and influenza vaccines.
In 2021, the group served former County Clerk-Recorder Tommy Gong numerous “declarations of grievance” about the 2020 presidential election, which the local Republican Party also questioned Gong about.
Preston said the group doesn’t endorse political candidates. Membership has fluctuated between 50,000 and 200,000 depending on the number of people moving out of California, Preston said. He declined to mention how many New California State members are from SLO County.
A representative living in each of the 58 counties hand-delivered copies of the group’s demand letter to their respective county clerk-recorder’s and sheriff’s offices. Preston added that three counties agreed to their demands but said investigations are underway and he had promised he wouldn’t name those counties.
The inspiration behind the letters? Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco’s seizure of hundreds of thousands of ballots from the Proposition 50 election to investigate potential voter fraud.
Bianco’s office was in contact with a citizens group that claimed 46,000 more ballots were certified than cast. Riverside County Superior Court Judge Jay Kiel–endorsed by Bianco when the judge ran for the bench—signed the search warrants, allowing the sheriff to take 650,000 ballots.
Following Attorney General Rob Bonta’s petition to stop the investigation, the California Supreme Court stepped in to review the legal pushback and ordered Bianco to pause.
Bianco is one of the Republican candidates gunning for the California gubernatorial seat. He’s endorsed by SLO County Sheriff Ian Parkinson and almost every other sheriff in the state. Bianco also won the backing of three district attorneys, including that of SLO County DA Dan Dow.
“Chad Bianco gave everybody probable cause when he found the discrepancy and he started counting the ballots,” New California State’s Preston said. “Our attorney [Robert Thomas] is a former prosecutor, he knows how this works. He recommended to me, as my attorney, that we should send out these letters, to tell the sheriffs and everybody to hold onto these ballots and not destroy them.”
United States Code 20701 requires election offices to retain and preserve all records and documents related to presidential primary and general elections for 22 months. Documents for statewide special elections must be retained for six months.
The 22-month retention window for the 2024 general election closes on Sept. 5, 2026. The preservation period for the Proposition 50 election will end on May 4, 2026. California Elections Code also dictates that all rosters and voter lists can be preserved until five years after the date of an election, after which they can be expunged.
New California State wants all county clerk-recorders not to destroy records of the two elections. Its letter asked clerk-recorders and sheriffs to turn over actual ballots, all paper tabulations and results, and records of “non-county employees who had supervised or unsupervised access to any voting machine from the day before receipt of any ballots to the day after the receipt of the last ballot in the 2024 election.”
Preston’s letter also asked for all communications with the California Secretary of State’s Office about the two elections.
“We would definitely want to see reconciliation between the secretary of state’s numbers and what they certified versus the numbers that were certified in San Luis Obispo,” he said. “Citizens need to have answers, and the government’s supposed to give us those answers, not stonewall us.”
The group’s investigation request of SLO County Sheriff Parkinson worries many locals. Concerns about the letter being used as a legal basis to obtain warrants to seize voter records prompted Cano to release a video addressing misinformation.
“Importantly, the request did not include any specific evidence or allegations,” Cano said in the April 6 video. “At this time, there has been no release of voter records, and no action has been taken outside established legal processes.”
She added that state and federal regulations govern access to sensitive information. The county clerk-recorder said her team coordinates with the Secretary of State’s Office and abides by election law.
Cano told New Times that all paper materials are eventually shredded at a county warehouse, while electronic purging happens at her office—making room for upcoming elections.
Secretary of State Shirley Weber issued a memo on April 10 in response to questions about the retention of election documents. She wrote that New California State’s demands don’t provide any legal basis to preserve or unseal election records beyond what’s authorized by state or federal law.
“Further, the demands do not provide any statutory authority or basis for indefinite records preservation or any investigative action,” Weber wrote. “Likewise, demands or requests to retain a specified list of documents cannot be construed as a Public Records Act request, which may otherwise necessitate a required response asserting privileges, exemptions, or otherwise.”
SLO County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Tony Cipolla told New Times that the sheriff didn’t receive evidence indicating a crime was committed related to the 2024 or 2025 elections in the region.
“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,” Cipolla said. “Depending on the nature of the allegation, cases involving election-related matters may also be reviewed or investigated by the District Attorney’s Office, including its Public Integrity Unit.”
The Santa Barbara County Elections Division and Sheriff’s Office referred to the secretary of state’s memo when New Times reached out with questions, according to county spokesperson Kelsey Buttitta and Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Raquel Zick.
Now, New California State is deliberating its next course of action toward counties that didn’t agree to the demands in its letter.
“We are ready, willing, and able to take what legal action necessary to make sure that the public [gets] … the answers,” Preston said. ∆
Reach Staff Writer Bulbul Rajagopal at brajagopal@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in April 30 – May 7, 2026.