The California Supreme Court ruled unanimously Thursday that Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco broke state law when he seized roughly 650,000 ballots from last year's special redistricting election, ordering him to hand them back immediately.
Bianco, a Republican with ties to the Oath Keepers paramilitary, used search warrants last fall to seize about 1,000 boxes from the county's vote on Proposition 50, the redistricting referendum, after conservative activists pushed unfounded claims that Riverside tallied tens of thousands more ballots than were actually cast. County officials later traced the confusion to informal handwritten tracking sheets, finding the real discrepancy between official records and the final tally was minuscule, just over a hundred ballots.
Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero, writing for the court, found Bianco's seizure directly violated the state's election code, which shields voted ballots from ever leaving election officials' custody, regardless of any ongoing law enforcement inquiry. She ordered him to immediately hand the ballots back to the county's registrar.
"The Elections Code contemplates that voted ballots remain in the continuous custody and control of elections officials from the moment the voter deposits them until the moment they are destroyed," Guerrero wrote.
In a companion case brought by California Attorney General Rob Bonta, the justices also unanimously rejected Bianco's argument that the state's top law enforcement official has no power to issue binding orders to county sheriffs. During oral arguments in August, justices repeatedly pushed on how far Bianco's legal theory could stretch, including whether it would let sheriffs seize mail ballots before Election Day even arrived, with one justice calling the implications "bizarre." When asked whether the attorney general could stop a sheriff who openly admitted targeting a political rival out of "payback," Bianco's own attorney conceded no.
The court didn't stop at the substance of the ruling. In a footnote, the justices called out Bianco's legal team for citing inaccurate material apparently generated by an AI tool in an earlier filing, and took the additional step of flagging the conduct to California's attorney licensing body for possible ethics review.
The rulings deal a significant blow to efforts by local officials to use unsubstantiated fraud claims as justification for seizing election materials outside standard procedures, reinforcing California's authority to step in whenever a local official tries to take unilateral control over ballots.
Bianco ran for governor earlier this year, but failed to place in the top two vote-getters advancing to the general election.