California Supreme Court rules Sheriff Bianco’s Prop. 50 ballot seizure was unlawful, orders ballots returned to Riverside County registrar
SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. (KESQ) SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. (KESQ) The California Supreme Court ruled unanimously Thursday that Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco’s seizure of ballots from the November 2025 Proposition 50 special election was unlawful, and ordered him to return them to the Riverside County Registrar of Voters immediately.
In a second unanimous ruling released at the same time, the court said Attorney General Rob Bonta had the authority to order the sheriff to stop, and that Bianco has no choice but to comply.
“Sheriff Bianco broke the law, violated the law, acted illegally,” Bonta told reporters Thursday. “We acted because we had to.”
The sheriff must halt his investigation while Bonta reviews it, hold onto everything else he seized and hand over his case files to the attorney general.
How the fight over Riverside County’s ballots started
The dispute began in February when a citizens group told the sheriff’s department the numbers didn’t add up. Using handwritten ballot intake logs kept by election workers, the Riverside Election Integrity Team claimed the county counted 45,896 more ballots than it received.
Registrar of Voters Art Tinoco said the real gap was 103 ballots, or 0.016 percent, and blamed human error. The logs were rough field estimates, he said, and the group’s math left out about 6,000 ballots.
By then Bianco already had a search warrant. He got it the day before Tinoco explained all of that to the Board of Supervisors, and sheriff’s personnel were in the room for the presentation. When the department applied for a second warrant two weeks later, it told the judge the registrar “has not given a reason for the discrepancy.”
Deputies hauled away about 1,000 boxes of ballots on Feb. 26. A week later, they started counting them by hand. Bonta ordered the sheriff to stop. Bianco got a third warrant without telling him and seized more. The Supreme Court froze everything in April.
Everyone in the case agrees the discrepancy, even if it were real, couldn’t have changed the outcome. Prop. 50 passed in Riverside County with 56 percent of the vote.
What the court said
State law says voted ballots stay with the county elections official. The court said that rule has no exceptions, not for a criminal investigation and not for a search warrant. Bianco “had no authority to seize the ballots,” Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero wrote.
The second ruling answered a bigger question. The state constitution has given the attorney general “direct supervision” over sheriffs since 1934, but no court had ever said what that means in practice. The justices said it means the attorney general can give a sheriff orders, and the sheriff has to follow them.
Justice Goodwin Liu went further in a separate opinion, writing that county lawyers refused to represent the sheriff and that the seven-month fight could have been avoided if Bianco had asked for their advice and followed it. “It should not have come to this,” Liu wrote.
What happens now
The ballots go back to Riverside County Registrar of Voters office. The rulings aren’t final for 30 days, and Bianco can ask the court to reconsider.
Whether the investigation ever restarts is up to Bonta. He said his office has seen no evidence of any election crime after more than six months, but he did not say Thursday whether he will shut it down for good. Asked if Bianco would face criminal consequences, Bonta pointed to the court’s orders and to a new state law that makes taking ballots a felony going forward.
Bianco has not been charged with any crime. He endorsed Republican Michael Gates, who is challenging Bonta in November and has promised to let the investigation finish. In July, Bianco told News Channel 3 Bonta was “an absolute complete fraud that is abusing the power of his office.”
This story will be update with additional info as it becomes available.
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