California's highest court began hearing oral arguments over whether Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco broke state law when he seized roughly 650,000 ballots from last year's redistricting special election, a case that could reshape the boundaries between law enforcement and election officials.
Bianco, a Republican who was running for governor at the time, took control of approximately 1,000 boxes of ballots from the Riverside County Registrar of Voters in March after obtaining search warrants from a judge the Sacramento Bee described as a political ally. He announced at a news conference that he would conduct his own recount to determine the precise number of ballots cast in the November 2025 special election.
That election asked California voters whether the state should redraw its congressional districts along partisan lines rather than relying on its independent redistricting commission. Voters approved the measure, creating up to five more Democratic-leaning congressional districts. A citizens group called the Riverside Election Integrity Team later questioned the results, claiming it had found roughly 45,000 excess votes, an allegation the county's own registrar of voters called unfounded.
Riverside County Registrar Art Tinoco told the county Board of Supervisors in February that the citizens group's concerns were based on a misunderstanding. No one filed an official complaint requesting a recount or questioning the election within the time period set by California law, according to Attorney General Rob Bonta's brief to the Supreme Court.
Bianco moved anyway. He obtained warrants and hauled the ballots out of the registrar's office the following month.
Two lawsuits landed almost immediately. The UCLA Voting Rights Project filed suit on behalf of four Riverside County voters, alleging Bianco broke state election laws in pursuit of a political stunt. Bonta, the state's top law enforcement officer, filed a separate action and ordered Bianco to pause his investigation. Bianco declined.
In April, the California Supreme Court stepped in and ordered Bianco to temporarily halt his investigation. The AP reported that Bianco paused the probe as the legal challenges mounted, though the ballots had not been returned to the registrar as of the most recent reporting.
A month after the court's stop order, the California Legislature passed a law making it a felony to take ballots from a county registrar of voters. Governor Gavin Newsom signed it immediately. The Washington Examiner reported that Newsom used a Fourth of July address to announce the proposal, framing it as a defense of election integrity against interference.
California also approved $29 million to modernize ballot counting, $5 million for voter outreach, and $750,000 to combat election misinformation, a spending package that accompanied the new felony law.
The legal arguments now before the justices in San Francisco pit two sections of California law against each other. The state Elections Code says ballots must remain in the custody of elections officials at all times. Bianco's own brief acknowledged that language, quoting the code directly: "[I]n no event shall the package or its contents be taken from the custody of the elections official."
But his lawyers argued the court should also consider the state Penal Code, which authorizes the seizure of property used in the commission of a felony. Bianco's legal team framed the core question this way in their brief to the court:
"The question is not whether ballots deserve protection; they do. The question is whether the elections code clearly strips courts of ordinary warrant authority and requires this court... to order the unconditional return of evidence already seized under court-issued warrants. It does not."
Bradley W. Hertz, Bianco's attorney, said the cases raise fundamental questions about institutional authority. The California Supreme Court has taken on a growing number of election-related disputes in recent terms, and this one tests whether a county sheriff's criminal investigation power can override the statutory chain of custody for voted ballots.
"The two cases raise important questions about the respective roles of elected sheriffs, the attorney general, elections officials, and the courts."
Bonta's brief took the opposite view. He called Bianco's recount efforts amateurish and dubious, and argued that the sheriff's later acknowledgment that there might not have been any misconduct made the grounds for his search warrants even shakier.
Bonta wrote in his Supreme Court brief:
"The Sheriff's misguided investigation threatens to sow distrust and jeopardize public confidence in the upcoming primary and general elections, not just in Riverside County but around the State."
Bonta had asked Bianco to share his case file before filing suit, saying he was concerned about the legal quality of the search warrants and the potential harm a "poorly supported criminal investigation" might have on public confidence in elections. Bianco refused that request, too.
Tinoco, the registrar, occupies an awkward position. He is named as a defendant in the UCLA lawsuit, but his brief says he supports returning the ballots to the county. His argument is simple: when a judge hands you a warrant, you comply.
"When presented with judicial process purporting to authorize the seizure of voted ballots, respondent was not free simply to disregard that process based on his own assessment of the governing law."
That argument highlights an unresolved tension in the case. Even if the Elections Code prohibits removing ballots from a registrar's custody, what happens when a judge issues a warrant ordering exactly that? Bianco's team argued the Constitution gives the attorney general a "sword to punish crime, not a shield to stop lawfully initiated investigations." The court now has to decide which statute controls.
Sonni Waknin, senior attorney for the UCLA Voting Rights Project, said the answer is clear. California law requires any recount to be held publicly and conducted by trained elections officials, not by a sheriff's department operating behind closed doors.
"Every day that ballots are handled outside the view of the public or outside the proscriptions of the legislature it's incredibly harmful for our democracy."
The UCLA Voting Rights Project's petition to the Supreme Court put the stakes bluntly: "Every day that Bianco is permitted to handle election materials, outside the view of the public and in violation of law, California voters suffer irreparable harm."
Bianco was eliminated from the governor's race during California's June primary. Xavier Becerra, a gubernatorial candidate and longtime adviser to the UCLA Voting Rights Project, is listed as an attorney on the UCLA case. The political dimensions of the dispute have not faded with Bianco's exit from the race.
Secretary of State Shirley Weber challenged Bianco's authority early on. Fox News reported Weber said Bianco's office "has taken actions based on allegations that lack credible evidence and risk undermining public confidence in our elections."
Meanwhile, the New York Post reported that a Riverside County voter alleged receiving two ballots with different voter ID numbers ahead of the June primary, a claim the registrar's office said showed no evidence of duplicate registration. Assemblymember Carl DeMaio shared images of the alleged duplicate ballots, adding fuel to a dispute that has consumed California election politics for months.
The California Supreme Court's docket is already crowded with consequential cases this term. But few carry the same combination of election law, criminal procedure, and raw political conflict as Bianco's ballot seizure. The justices' ruling will determine whether a sheriff armed with a warrant can override the election code's chain-of-custody protections, or whether those protections are, as Bianco's critics argue, the last line between orderly elections and chaos.
Several open questions remain. The name of the judge who issued Bianco's warrants and the nature of the described political alliance have not been publicly detailed. The specific case numbers have not been widely reported. And the ballots themselves, all 650,000 of them, packed into roughly 1,000 boxes, still sit outside the registrar's custody.
Courts across the country are increasingly being asked to draw bright lines between competing government powers. In California, the question is whether an elected sheriff can unilaterally seize the physical record of an election on the strength of unverified allegations that the county's own registrar already dismissed.
Bianco's defenders say he was doing what law enforcement is supposed to do: investigate when citizens raise concerns. His opponents say he grabbed 650,000 ballots on a hunch, defied the state's top prosecutor, and turned a settled election into a political spectacle. The California Supreme Court will now decide which version the law supports.
If the answer is that any sheriff with a friendly judge can haul away a county's ballots over the registrar's objections, California's election code is not worth the paper it is printed on. The court should say so plainly.
