California Supreme Court hears arguments over sheriff's seizure of ballots

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The California Supreme Court is weighing whether a Southern California sheriff who seized election ballots must return them to county election officials.

The high court heard oral arguments Monday regarding Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco’s seizure of approximately 650,000 ballots from a November 2025 special election on redistricting. The measure passed in the county by roughly 80,000 votes.

Bianco in March seized 1,000 boxes of election materials to investigate a complaint from a local citizens group that the count was off — though not by an amount that would've changed the outcome. Local election officials had previously said the complaint was unfounded. Bianco was running for governor at the time.

Democratic Attorney General Rob Bonta immediately launched a legal challenge in March, arguing the sheriff has no authority over election materials and warning the seizure was designed to sow distrust in elections. He ordered Bianco to return the ballots, but Bianco did not. The University of California, Los Angeles Voting Rights Project also sued the sheriff on behalf of several Riverside County voters. The state Supreme Court heard arguments in both cases.

Chad Dunn, legal director and co-founder of the UCLA Voting Rights Project, told the court there are mechanisms to contest election results, and Bianco failed to follow them.

Bianco began recounting the vote using sheriff’s officials under the supervision of a special master appointed by a court but suspended it days later, citing mounting legal challenges from the state attorney general and a voting rights group. But he has not returned the ballots.

“Nowhere else in election law, in this state, in any other that I’m familiar with, does anybody get to handle ballots on their own in the back room with their deputies,” Dunn said.

Bradley Hertz, who represented Bianco, argued the sheriff had a legal duty to open an investigation after receiving a complaint and he followed the penal code to carry out that investigation, first issuing search warrants in February.

Hertz said Bianco has not returned the ballots to the registrar of voters because those ballots are “evidence.”

“The sheriff is holding that evidence, safeguarding it as a custodian for the court,” Hertz said.

He said Bianco didn’t follow Bonta’s order to return the ballots because a legal fight was already playing out.

At the time of the ballots’ seizure, Bianco was one of two prominent Republicans running for governor in a crowded June primary. He did not advance to the general election and later announced plans to run for reelection as sheriff in 2028.

Xavier Becerra, a former state attorney general and Democrat running for governor, is part of the UCLA lawsuit to halt Bianco's efforts.

The ballot investigation came as President Donald Trump has repeatedly disputed the results of the 2020 election, citing unsubstantiated instances of fraud. His administration recently seized ballots and other documents from an election office in Georgia. Some Republicans have mirrored Trump’s rhetoric on voting in their states.