The Brief

Tucked away in the Central Valley, Central California Women's Facility sits off Highway 99 between Fresno and Merced. Farmland surrounds much of the prison, and visitors are rare.

The 640-acre facility is the largest women’s prison in California, and holds more than 2,000 women, nonbinary and transgender people. In total, women make up just 4% of the state's prison population.

For these reasons and more, the prison in Chowchilla seems an unlikely place to have its own newspaper. But last year, an organization for prison journalism helped open up a media center and started training journalists there.

Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla is California's largest prison. More than 2,000 women, nonbinary and transgender people are incarcerated there.

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Libby Rainey

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LAist

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In September, they put out their first issue of The Paper Trail, an in-house newspaper written and edited by incarcerated people. Its supporters say it's the first effort of its kind at a women's prison in the U.S.

" It's been amazing to be a part of something starting here for women that inspired a lot of women," said Megan Hogg, a writer for the paper who has been incarcerated at CCWF for 12 years. "The first issue that came out, people were like 'Oh, wow, we have a newspaper.' You cannot find a copy now. People are like, 'Can I look at yours?'"

I visited the prison in December. It was so huge that my escort told me corrections officers use tricycles to get around. It took us more than a half hour to walk from the prison's front gates into the media center. Along the route were long, sparse yards, check points and a cafeteria.

The prison grounds were mostly quiet on the Friday morning of my visit, but the newsroom was abuzz. A handful of staff members sat in front of desktop computers while others gathered around a table to discuss story ideas and works-in-progress.

Behind them, writing on a whiteboard declared: "Journalism: providing information to people so they can make informed decisions in their lives."

Leaders of The Paper Trail talk about editorial goals with advisor Jesse Vasquez.

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Libby Rainey

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Ice, lizards & unexpected stories

The Paper Trail has the look of a local paper, and in some ways its content mirrors that style, with coverage of community events like an in-prison farmer's market and pickleball games.

Other stories illustrate the oddities and surprises of prison life. A recent piece by Hogg compared lizards to Fendi bags — because it's become popular to capture and keep them as pets. Another incarcerated reporter, Brenda Bowers, wrote a story about ice and how most people can't get ahold of it at the prison.

"It's something that people probably wouldn't think about, because they get it so freely out there, but in here, you gotta pay for it, or bargain and wheel and deal," she said.

The paper also includes tips and guides to life inside. A recent issue featured two pieces on experiencing menopause behind bars.

"Although CCWF is a women’s facility, there is a never-ending need for sanitary products," Delina Williams wrote in one of them. "It adds an extra layer of stress for women trying to care for their very private needs, not to mention the overall difficulty of striving for 'normalcy' within the razor wires."

The paper is distributed in print, on tablets available inside the facility, and online. It's funded by the nonprofit The Pollen Initiative. That group's executive director Jesse Vasquez drives from Oakland twice a week to work with the paper’s staff.

Vasquez was himself formerly incarcerated at San Quentin State Prison, where he served as the editor of a newspaper there called The San Quentin News. (Full disclosure: I volunteered for that paper several years ago.)

"The men have always gotten the majority of attention by the fact that there are far more men. Most of the programming, most of the services revolve around the majority of people they're going to serve," Vasquez said. "So in this endeavor with The Paper Trail, I've noticed that they have a sense of empowerment."

The Paper Trail is the first newspaper out of women's prison in the country.

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Libby Rainey

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Reporting from the inside

The Paper Trail launched during a time of change for women's prisons in California. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of women in California prisons fell 31%, according to the Public Policy Institute of California. CCWF also began housing transgender women in recent years. One of The Paper Trail's earliest articles was about the facility's first ever LGBTQIA+ Pride Walk.

It also started during a period of scandals at CCWF. In July, a woman died at the prison during a heatwave. In January, a former correctional officer, Gregory Rodriguez, was found guilty of 64 counts of sexual abuse and battery against multiple incarcerated women, including rape.

Editor-in-chief Amber Bray said in December that she’s interviewing people about their experiences with Rodriguez for the paper’s first story looking into the abuse.

" What I would like for us to do is use the opportunity to say, 'Yeah, this is what happened to some people here, and it's sad, and it's unfortunate. But we're not defined by it,'" she said.

Bray has access that would be impossible for an outside journalist to get.

In journalism classes, she said, they were told “don't limit your thinking on what you can cover. If you see that there's a problem, well then go and learn about the problem, pitch the story, and, you know, see where it goes."

Bray will face a different dynamic when the story is ready to publish: The Paper Trail is subject to review by officials with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

" They're not able to do hard-hitting, investigative journalism from within a prison. I mean, it's just common sense,” said William Drummond, a journalism professor at UC Berkeley and an advisor to the San Quentin News, which goes through the same review process. “If you do that, and embarrass the warden and the staff, you aren't going to be in business long."

Prison newspapers in California are growing

Prison newspapers are rare, but not new, in California. The San Quentin News dates back to at least 1940, and was re-launched in 2008. That project has since won awards and been the subject of news coverage itself. Mule Creek State Prison near Sacramento has a newspaper, as does Pelican Bay State Prison in Northern California. The Paper Trail at CCWF is the fourth, and latest, prison newspaper in the state.

There are also a handful of newsletters produced and distributed at state prisons including at California Institution for Women in Southern California, according to Vasquez. The advocacy organization California Coalition for Women Prisoners has a long-running newsletter called The Fire Inside.

Coverage in collaboration with news organizations outside prison walls have grown in recent years, too, with podcasts such as Ear Hustle out of San Quentin and Bay Area radio station KALW's show Uncuffed. Those programs work with incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people to tell their stories, and both recently expanded to California Institution for Women in Chino.

Drummond said the reason prison media projects are expanding is simple: it's an opportunity for incarcerated people to tell their own stories.

" When they get involved in a newspaper, they discover something. And that is, in a very basic sense, you get a following. You get to say stuff people then react to," he said. "It means you're affirming yourself and your identity. And I've seen this happen dozens of times."

For Megan Hogg at CCWF, this meant being seen as someone who’s more than the crime that landed her in prison.

"We're still mothers, we're still sisters, we're still daughters," Hogg said. "We will never deny, yes, I did something horrible, and yes, someone was harmed by it in unimaginable ways. However…we don't want to be defined only by that."

For Delina Williams, the newspaper represents a step forward for all women who are affected by the criminal justice system.

" The opening of this media center starts a whole new era of women being able to speak their truths," she said.

More writers being trained

A new cohort of incarcerated people at CCWF are now training to join and contribute to The Paper Trail, Vasquez said. As the paper grows, he said its challenge is two-fold: writing "news you can use" for people inside California's prisons, and getting their voices heard by those on the outside.

While chasing those bigger goals, the new journalists are in a day-to-day grind that is all too familiar to any working writer: pitching stories, getting edited and trying their best to reflect and communicate the world around them.

"Writing is not easy," said the paper's features editor Sagal Sadiq. "But when the perfect sentence is down on paper, it's like, yes, it's beautiful. [There's] nothing like it."

On a tour of Orange County’s voting headquarters on Wednesday, Registrar Bob Page demonstrated the careful, multi-step process through which voters’ ballots are validated and counted.

As the federal government raises the specter of unsubstantiated voter fraud, Page’s message was clear: “ I want voters to know that we're doing everything we can to make sure they can vote safely and securely."

More than 380,000 Orange County ballots have been returned as of Oct. 27, Page said. That’s about 80,000 more ballots than was received around the same time in 2022, the last mid-term elections.

Orange County Registrar of Voters Bob Page addresses the media and other members of the public in attendance as part of a tour of the voting operations on Wednesday, less than one week before Election Day.

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Kavish Harjai

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LAist.com

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The journey of a ballot in Orange County

Collecting, and counting, all those ballots takes time. Page explained that two-person teams are dispatched to collect dropped-off ballots every day during election season.

The ballot drop-off boxes in Orange County are made of steel, weigh more than 1,000 pounds and are bolted to the concrete, Page said.

The ballot retrieval duos are required to follow a strict process to ensure the chain of custody remains secure, including taking photos showing they’ve picked up the ballots, properly locked the retrieval door and that the internal fire suppression canister is intact.

The locations of the two-person teams are GPS-tracked by separate teams, which also review the photo evidence before giving the ballot retrieval duos the green light to go to their next stops.

An overhead camera shows the process that occurs after the signatures on a ballot have been verified and the ballot is then ready to be counted.

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Kavish Harjai

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LAist.com

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Signature verification

Once a ballot reaches the Registrar of Voters’ office, the next step is ensuring the signature on the envelope matches the voter's signatures in their registration file.

“If we do challenge [a signature], we’re required under state law to send a first-class letter notice to that voter,” Page said, adding that state statute affords voters until the day before Thanksgiving this year to correct errant signatures.

Page said three election workers must agree that enough of a discrepancy exists before the decision to challenge a signature is made.

Around 1.9% of the nearly 718,000 vote-by-mail ballots returned in the June primary election in Orange County were rejected, largely due to signature mismatch or because they weren’t received in time, according to the California Secretary of State.

Verified ballots are then separated from their envelopes and sorted before they’re prepared to be scanned and, finally, counted. The equipment used to tally votes isn’t connected to the internet, and access to the room the equipment is housed in is limited, according to Page.

Threats from the federal government

On Wednesday evening, a federal judge denied an emergency request from the Department of Justice to segregate 20,000 ballots across California that the federal government said were sent to “likely” noncitizens.

More than 1,750 of those people identified were in Orange County, according to a letter Bill Essayli, top federal prosecutor for the Central District of California, delivered to the county registrar’s office Monday.

The Department of Justice said it will appeal the ruling from U.S. District Court Judge David Carter, who, in his decision, said the federal government’s attempted move could “wreak havoc and disrupt the election that is already underway.”

California Attorney Gen. Rob Bonta called the ruling an “important victory,” but warned “the fight is not over.”

On Wednesday, before the ruling came down, Bonta released resources about election integrity in the state, including guidance for local election officials if law enforcement attempts to “access election sites where ballots are cast, processed, or counted.”

Page said he’s fielded more questions from the public this year about the potential for law enforcement to interfere in the election. He said he will have open lines of communication with partners with the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services and  Orange County Intelligence Assessment Center should the threat arise.

What’s on your ballot?

Our LAist Voter Game Plan is here to help guide you through the Nov. 3 election with guides to races across Los Angeles and Orange counties — and that long list of state propositions — to help you cast a ballot that’s in line with your own personal beliefs and values.

But the one thing we don’t do? We don’t tell you how to vote. That part is left up to you.

You can find it all at LAist.com/Vote.

The U.S. Justice Department has issued subpoenas to California officials in an escalation of its scrutiny of local election administration.

The Associated Press obtained copies of three subpoenas sent Oct. 21 to employees of the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder, ordering them to appear in court on Nov. 4, the day after the election. The documents request any records, documents and communications related to letters sent in July and October by federal officials to state election officials outlining allegations of noncitizens on the state’s voter rolls. The subpoenas also seek information relating to the office’s “methods for screening for unlawful voting by aliens” and anything about efforts to prevent noncitizen votes from being counted.

The subpoenas were being issued by all four U.S. attorneys in California, according to a person familiar with the matter who insisted on anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation.

Dean Logan, the Los Angeles County registrar, said, “threats and intimidated have no place in elections.”

Subpoenas come amid ongoing court battle

The Trump administration has sued to force California to set aside up to 20,000 ballots it suspects went to noncitizens and not count them until citizenship can be verified. A district court judge on Tuesday rejected that request, then on Thursday appointed a special master to evaluate the administration’s claims.

U.S. District Judge David O. Carter did not specify the exact scope of special master Daniel B. Garrie’s responsibilities, but said he would be tasked with “developing the factual record” for the court.

In a Tuesday court hearing, Carter said he wanted to vet the federal government’s list of over 20,000 alleged noncitizen voters since there has been extensive debate over its reliability and both sides have agreed that it includes an unspecified number of citizens.

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Carter also said at the hearing that a special master could investigate California’s claims that it cannot logistically separate the ballots in time for the county election certification deadline on Dec. 3. The federal government has contested that assertion.

It is not clear what would happen if a special master did find a substantial number of noncitizen voters on the federal government’s list or whether it would affect the certification of California’s election results. The 20,000 people on the DOJ’s list constitute only a small fraction of California’s 23 million voters.

Trump administration appeals to higher court

Meanwhile, the Trump administration asked a federal appeals court to quickly weigh in.

The Justice Department said in a late Wednesday filing that it’s essential the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals issue a ruling as soon as possible due to “irreversible ballot processing occurring on an ongoing basis.”

Carter’s decision was the latest legal setback for President Donald Trump in his efforts to expand federal control over state-run elections in the midterms that will decide control of Congress for the rest of his term. The Justice Department has made similar demands in other states, including Washington. Noncitizen voting has been a central focus of Trump’s political messaging for years, although available data indicates it is exceedingly rare.

Trump blasted Carter’s ruling against the federal government on Thursday morning before heading to a campaign rally in South Carolina.

“California is very corrupt. The elections are extremely corrupt. The judge should not have done that but we’ll appeal that, of course,” he told reporters. Trump added without evidence that there are “hundreds of thousands” and then amended it to “millions, in my opinion” of “bad ballots” in California.

Carter, an appointee of Democratic President Bill Clinton, argued that the Justice Department’s demands were a clear violation of the National Voter Registration Act, which prohibits changes to voter rolls or election procedure within 90 days of an election.

A number of US citizens were included in the Justice Department’s list of names

Both sides agree that an unspecified number of citizens were inadvertently included. Carter argued that separating the ballots at this point would risk disenfranchising citizens and “wreak havoc” on the election certification process.

Over 500,000 votes have already been processed in Los Angeles County alone, according to court filings. The system also protects voter privacy: Once a vote is processed, it cannot be traced back to the person who cast it.

Carter is to rule on the government’s renewed request for a preliminary injunction, which would bar the state from counting the ballots until the litigation is resolved. He said he will do so after a Nov. 13 evidentiary hearing with input from the special master.

He said that if the federal government suspected noncitizens were voting, it could continue to prosecute those cases criminally. Federal authorities have charged over two dozen foreign nationals in California as part of a statewide sweep targeting people officials allege have illegally registered or voted in U.S. elections.

Appeals panel judges have said they wouldn’t support setting aside ballots this close to midterms

The appeal will be the second time that the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals will consider the case.

The first time was just last week when the Justice Department argued before an appeals court panel that a fast ruling on its request was needed to stop any counting of the ballots.

Although the panel ruled it was premature for an appeals court to get involved before a lower-court ruling, two of the three judges wrote separate concurrences making it clear they wouldn’t support setting aside ballots at this late date. They questioned the accuracy of the federal government’s list of alleged noncitizen voters and argued that to set aside votes risks disenfranchising citizens.

One judge dissented, arguing that federal law bars noncitizens from voting and requires California to vet the potentially illegal ballots before counting them. The failure to do so, he wrote, would cause irreparable harm to the election.