Significant legislation relating to elections that were signed into law included: SB 484 (Lowenthal) providing any recall or special election held in the City of Lynwood, during the 2007 and 2009 calendar year, to be administered by the Los Angles County Registrar-Recorder rather than the City Clerk; SB 768 (Corbett) protecting voters privacy and helping protect them from becoming victims of identity theft; SB 854 (Ridley-Thomas) enhancing voter registration applications at public colleges and universities; AB 119 (Price) providing that the state reimburse the costs of a special election to fill a vacant office in the State Legislature or to fill a vacancy in the office of the United States Senate or Representative in Congress; AB 223 (Runner) allowing a person who is called for military service, after the deadline for applying for an absentee ballot, to return his/her ballot by facsimile transmission; AB 288 (Price) allowing a court to require any person convicted of voter intimidation to pay a fine, with the fine revenues used to pay for voter education campaigns to respond to that act of voter intimidation; AB 404 (Ruskin) providing that an advertisement supporting or opposing a candidate that is paid for by an independent expenditure must include a statement that the expenditure was not authorized by a candidate or a committee controlled by a candidate; AB 452 (Arambula) changing the current voter notification card to also notify voters of any change in their personal party affiliation upon re-registration and allowing that there are specific procedures to address complaints related to voter registration; AB 473 (Adams) reducing the number of copies of campaign statements that committees must file; AB 603 (Price) extending a program that allows victims of domestic violence and stalking and reproductive health care service providers, employees, volunteers, and patients to have their voter registration information made confidential to 2013; AB 917 (Salas) specifying that the state law governing the use of direct recording electronic voting by making sure that paper ballots are available at the polls as backup in case a direct recording electronic voting system fails; AB 1090 (Spitzer) requiring a candidate to file a ballot designation worksheet with information supporting the use of the candidate's desired ballot designation; AB 1287 (Jeffries) providing that when a county emergency or disaster is declared, elections officials are required to provide notice of satellite locations not later than 48 hours prior to voting at satellite locations; AB 1430 (Garrick) prohibiting local governments from adopting campaign finance ordinances that restrict communications between an organization and its members unless state law similarly restricts such communications, or by regulations by the Fair Political Practices Commission; and AB 1441 (Garrick) allowing candidates for local elective office and local elected officials to establish legal defense funds.
Vetoed significant elections legislation included: SB 382 (Oropeza) allowing individuals who become citizens after the voter registration deadline to register and vote until the close of the polls on Election Day; SB 408 (Oropeza) prohibiting a person from circulating a state initiative or referendum petition unless that person is a voter or was qualified to register to vote in the state at the time of the most recent established election date; SB 439 (Calderon) providing that, in the event of a manual recount, provisions of law governing the counting of write-in votes shall be liberally construed to ensure that each ballot is counted if the intent of the voter can be determined, regardless of whether the voting instructions have been literally complied with; SB 924 (Perata) allowing on the February 5, 2008 ballot an advisory question concerning the war in Iraq; AB 18 (Blakeslee) enacting the Warren Mattingly Signature Stamp Act permitting a disabled person who is unable to provide a handwritten signature to use a signature stamp for situations when the Elections Code requires a signature; AB 44 (Mendoza) requiring all voter registration cards to contain a box that a registrant can check to become a permanent absentee voter, and requiring ballots that are sent to absentee voters be accompanied by a sample ballot or a voter's pamphlet that contains candidates' statements; AB 122 (Solorio) requiring elections officials to provide a copy of the provisions of law prohibiting voter intimidation and voter fraud, and the penalties for violating those provisions, to an individual at the time they are issued their declaration of candidacy or nomination paper; AB 183 (Coto) requiring every school district call at least one high school to publish annually specified voter registration efforts; AB 466 (Hancock) ensuring that students could volunteer at the polls on Election Day without depriving their schools of their average daily attendance money; AB 614 (Eng) requiring counties to report to the Secretary of State on their compliance with various state and federal laws related to providing voters with language assistance; AB 773 (Blakeslee) allowing an absentee voter to return his/her ballot to any member of a precinct board at any polling place within the state, not just one within the jurisdiction of the elections official who issued the ballot; AB 1151 (Lieu) requiring elections officials to establish procedures to track and confirm the receipt of affidavits of registration; AB 1167 (Nava) requiring the county elections officials to negotiate with the United States Postal Service to ensure that all absentee ballots will be delivered to the elections official regardless of whether sufficient postage is provided; and AB 1294 (Mullin) permitting any city or county to conduct a local election using ranked voting.
