California Supreme Court Rules Sheriff Chad Bianco's Seizure of 650,000 Ballots Was Unlawful

The California Supreme Court ruled unanimously on Thursday, September 24, that Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco broke state election law when he seized roughly 650,000 ballots earlier this year from the county's Proposition 50 special election. Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero wrote the seizure was unlawful and that the Elections Code already has procedures for investigating fraud claims 'without exposing them to alteration or tampering,' which Bianco's office ignored.

The court issued two rulings. One ordered Bianco to immediately return all ballots to Riverside County's election officials and 'refrain from further handling of the ballots except as necessary to comply with this order.' The second held that Bianco separately broke the law by defying Attorney General Rob Bonta's directive to hold off on executing the search warrant he used to seize the ballots in March.

Proposition 50 was a November 2025 special election measure that redrew California's congressional map, eliminating several Republican-leaning districts in what supporters described as a response to Texas Republicans' own mid-decade redistricting push. Voters statewide approved it easily, and it passed in Riverside County by roughly 80,000 votes, according to The Guardian.

What Bianco Claimed, and What Officials Say Actually Happened

Bianco, a Republican who ran and lost in this year's gubernatorial primary, said his office was responding to a complaint from a local citizen group alleging a discrepancy of about 45,800 votes between the reported county total and the number certified to California's Secretary of State. He called the investigation a 'fact-finding mission,' per CBS News.

County election officials pushed back hard on that number. Art Tinoco, the Riverside County registrar of voters, and Attorney General Bonta both said the actual gap between the county's machine count and the final certified total was about 100 votes, not 45,800. If Bianco's original number had held up, it would have represented a serious statistical anomaly worth scrutiny. Every source in this record, including election officials on the ground, says it did not hold up.

Bianco's underlying legal argument was that a search warrant signed by a judge gave his office independent authority to investigate a potential crime, and that the state's chief law enforcement officer could not order a sheriff to stand down mid-investigation. The court rejected that theory outright. Guerrero wrote that allowing law enforcement 'unfettered access to ballots, or the ability to handle and count them in secret, based on unregulated protocols, itself creates a substantial risk to election integrity.' The justices noted a criminal prosecution requires specific triggering events and must be initiated by a public prosecutor, none of which had happened here.

Bianco paused his investigation in late March, saying it was 'because of the politically motivated lawsuits and court filings,' according to the Los Angeles Times. The state Supreme Court formally ordered him to halt in April, and Thursday's rulings made that final. Bianco did not respond to requests for comment from CBS News or the LA Times.

The Broader Fight Over Ballot Custody

The lawsuits that produced Thursday's rulings came from two directions: one from Bonta's office, and one led by UCLA's Voting Rights Project on behalf of Riverside County voters, backed by a letter brief from the Campaign Legal Center on behalf of Common Cause and the League of Women Voters of California. Chad Dunn of the UCLA Voting Rights Project told the LA Times the legal theory behind Bianco's seizure, that a sheriff can commandeer election materials and answer to no one, was 'bound to be repeated again' if courts didn't shut it down.

Bonta framed the ruling as a broader warning. 'Whether it's a sheriff in Riverside or the President of the United States, we won't let anyone take away Californians' voice in our democracy,' he said at a news conference, according to CalMatters. Governor Gavin Newsom, who signed a 13-bill election protection package last week aimed at preventing similar seizures, called the ruling proof California will 'defend democracy using every branch of government.'

The sourcing here skews heavily toward officials and advocacy groups who opposed Bianco, and none of the coverage includes an on-record statement from Bianco defending the seizure after the ruling. His defenders would note he was acting on a citizen complaint and a judge-approved warrant, not manufacturing a claim out of thin air, and that sheriffs do have general authority to investigate suspected crimes. But the specific number he cited as evidence of fraud does not match what county election officials measured, and the court found the mechanism he used, physically seizing ballots outside the Elections Code's own audit and recount procedures, was flatly illegal regardless of how the underlying claim panned out.

Bianco has separately voiced sympathy for President Trump's unsubstantiated 2020 election fraud claims, telling the Ben Maynard Program podcast in October 2025 that 'we absolutely know there was fraud' in mail-in voting. CalMatters and The Guardian both tie this case to a wider national pattern, noting the Trump administration directed federal agents to seize 2020 election records from officials in Georgia and Arizona, two states Trump lost.

With early voting for California's November 3 midterms approaching, the immediate next step is straightforward: Bianco must hand the ballots back to Riverside County's Registrar of Voters. Whether he or any other sheriff tries a similar move again before Election Day remains to be seen, as does whether Newsom's newly signed ballot-protection laws are enough to stop it if they do.