By admin 
The legality of a Southern California sheriff’s seizure of about 650,000 ballots cast in last year’s redistricting election will be considered by the state Supreme Court on Monday, as oral arguments begin in two cases involving Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco.
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Bianco, a Republican who at the time was running for governor, took control of about 1,000 boxes of ballots from the Riverside County Registrar of Voters in March, after obtaining search warrants from a judge who had been a political ally. The seizure took place amid a furious national debate over states redrawing congressional districts to favor their own majority parties in advance of the 2026 midterm elections.
His actions spurred fierce pushback from Democrats and voting rights advocates, who said the seizure violated laws meant to protect the privacy and integrity of ballots. California Attorney General Rob Bonta, the state’s top law enforcement officer, ordered Bianco to pause his investigation, but the sheriff declined to do so.
“The two cases raise important questions about the respective roles of elected sheriffs, the attorney general, elections officials, and the courts,” said Bradley W. Hertz, an attorney representing Bianco.
The sheriff’s position is that his investigation was legitimate, and backed by a court-ordered search warrant, Hertz said. Laws meant to protect the integrity of elections and ballots must be balanced against equally important laws governing the conduct of criminal cases, he said.
But Bonta and the voters suing Bianco say his investigation was a political stunt. The sheriff’s seizure of the ballots risked the security of the election and broke the law, they said.
“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,” said Sonni Waknin, a senior attorney with the UCLA Voting Rights Project, which is backing one of the lawsuits.
Bianco, who is expected to attend Monday’s hearing in San Francisco, seized ballots cast in Riverside County during last November’s special election to determine whether California should redraw its congressional districts along partisan lines rather than relying on its independent redistricting commission.
Voters — including those in Riverside County — approved the measure, leading to the creation of up to five more Democratic-leaning districts in the heavily Democratic state.
Political stunt or criminal investigation?
Bianco acted after a Riverside County citizens group questioned the integrity of the local election process, despite assurances from the registrar of voters that the group’s concerns were based on a misunderstanding. He declared in a news conference that he would conduct his own recount of the ballots.
The two lawsuits swiftly followed. One, filed by the UCLA Voting Rights Project on behalf of four Riverside County voters, alleged that Bianco had broken state election laws in pursuit of a political stunt. Gubernatorial candidate Xavier Becerra, who has long been an adviser to the UCLA group, is listed as an attorney on the case.
The other was filed by Bonta, who said that Bianco blatantly disregarded his authority as attorney general.
In April, the Supreme Court ordered Bianco to temporarily stop his investigation, but the justices have not yet ruled on the sheriff’s seizure of the ballots or ordered him to return them. A month later, the Legislature passed a law making it a felony to take ballots from a county registrar of voters, and Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, immediately signed it.
In his lawsuit, Bonta referred to Bianco’s efforts to recount the ballots as amateurish and dubious. The attorney general said he asked Bianco to pause his investigation and share the case file with his office because he was concerned about the legal quality of the search warrants and the potential harm that a “poorly supported criminal investigation” might have on public confidence in elections.
“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 said in a brief to the high court.
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No one filed an official complaint requesting a recount or questioning the election within the time period set by California law, the attorney general’s brief said. Bianco’s later claims that there might not have been any misconduct made his case and the grounds for his search warrants shakier, Bonta said.
Even if a criminal investigation was warranted, Bianco should not have taken the ballots, said Waknin. California law requires ballots to remain in the custody of elections officials at all times — and any recount must be held publicly and conducted by trained elections officials, she said.
Riverside County Registrar of Voters Art Tinoco, who is also named as a defendant in the UCLA Voting Rights Project lawsuit, said he explained at a February meeting of the Riverside County Board of Supervisors that claims by a citizens group of a discrepancy in the number of ballots cast were unfounded and based on a misunderstanding.
Tinoco said in his own brief to the court that he supports the group’s aims of returning the ballots to the county, but had not felt that he was able to refuse an order from a judge to hand them over.
“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,” Tinoco’s brief said.
Which takes precedence, the penal code or the elections code?
Bianco, who was eliminated from the gubernatorial race during California’s June primary election, defended his actions in both lawsuits.
“The question is not whether ballots deserve protection; they do,” his lawyers wrote in connection with the UCLA Voting Rights case.
“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.”
Bianco was not trying to perform a formal election recount, which would have required trained officials, but simply to ascertain the precise number of ballots cast, his brief said.
He acknowledged that the Elections Code requires ballots to remain with the registrar of voters, even citing in his brief its wording, that “[i]n no event shall the package or its contents be taken from the custody of the elections official.”
But he said that the high court should also consider the state’s Penal Code, which authorizes the seizure of property used in the commission of a felony.
In a separate brief filed in response to Bonta’s lawsuit, Bianco insisted his investigation was legitimate and based on real concerns about election integrity.
He questioned the authority of Bonta’s order to stop the investigation, saying the attorney general only had the power to do so “if it is in the public’s interest.”
“The California Constitution was written to give the attorney general a sword to punish crime, not a shield to stop lawfully initiated investigations,” Bianco’s brief said.
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