Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco’s seizure of more than 650,000 ballots as part of a criminal investigation was unlawful, according to a California Supreme Court opinion issued Thursday, Sept. 24.
Read more As the coding boom fades, computer science grads focus on AI skills in choppy job market
The court also found that California Attorney General Rob Bonta was within his rights under the state constitution to order the sheriff to halt the investigation and order Bianco to comply with Bonta’s directives.
Before the court were two cases. One, filed by Bonta, sought to halt Bianco’s probe. The other, filed by the UCLA Voting Rights Project, demanded the sheriff return the confiscated ballots to the registrar.
The ballots remained in the sheriff’s custody as of Wednesday afternoon, Sept. 23, according to Elizabeth Florer, spokesperson for Riverside County’s elections office.
In April, the Supreme Court paused the investigation pending further legal review. Justices heard oral arguments in Bonta’s case and the UCLA case on Aug. 24.
Appearing before the court, lawyers seeking to halt the probe argued Bianco failed to follow proper procedures — asking the district attorney to convene a grand jury, for example — before seizing the ballots. The sheriff’s lawyers argued the state elections code, which governs the handling of ballots, should not stymie a legitimate law enforcement investigation.
Thursday’s rulings end a saga triggered by a complaint from the Riverside Election Integrity Team, a citizen’s watchdog group.
The group said it found a roughly 45,000-vote gap between the number of ballots cast and the number of ballots received by Riverside County in the November 2025 special election for Proposition 50, a successful statewide ballot measure — sparked by a nationwide redistricting fight — that redrew California’s congressional districts to favor Democrats.
Riverside County Registrar of Voters Art Tinoco said the group misread ballot data and that the actual gap was 103, well within the margin of error set by California’s secretary of state.
While voter fraud in the United States is not unheard of, experts say it’s very rare, easily detectable by safeguards and not close to the level needed to influence election results. Many who question election processes also support President Donald Trump, who falsely claims that fraud cost him the 2020 presidential election.
Nonetheless, sheriff’s investigators, who previously sought election records while investigating alleged voter fraud, obtained search warrants in February and March for more than 656,000 ballots cast by Riverside County voters in the Proposition 50 election.
Read more How USC football’s 2027 recruiting class is performing
At the time, Bianco, who unsuccessfully ran as a Republican in California’s June gubernatorial primary, said he wasn’t disputing the special election’s outcome, but wanted his investigators to count every ballot, to determine whether the 45,000-vote gap existed and if so, what caused it.
Bonta, Secretary of State Shirley Weber and voting rights advocates denounced the ballot seizure, which the attorney general called unprecedented in California history.
Critics said the sheriff’s investigation was baseless and could needlessly undermine public faith in elections. Bonta argued the warrants used to seize the ballots lacked probable cause — a key element of any search warrants — and Weber warned ballots could be irreversibly damaged if handled by untrained investigators.
Bianco rejected critics’concerns — his deputies knew how to count, he quipped — and said he had an obligation to investigate crimes in his county.
The dispute quickly turned personal between Bianco and Bonta, a Democrat whose office is overseeing an ongoing civil rights probe involving conditions in Riverside County jails.
In his lawsuit, Bonta accused Bianco of going rogue and ignoring his lawful directives. The sheriff countered Bonta is an embarrassment to law enforcement.
One of the plaintiffs in the UCLA case is Clarissa Cervantes, a Riverside council member and Democratic Assembly candidate.
Her sister, state Sen. Sabrina Cervantes, D-Riverside, sponsored legislation signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom this year making it a crime to take marked ballots from elections officials.
Democratic candidate for governor Xavier Becerra serves as a senior advisor for the UCLA Voting Rights Project and is an attorney of record in the project’s lawsuit.
Read more US cybersecurity agency releases election infrastructure plan 40 days before midterms
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.