California Sheriff Defies Court Order to Return Seized Ballots

Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco is refusing to return approximately 650,000 ballots seized from a November 2025 special election, despite a California Supreme Court hearing on the matter. The state's Attorney General, Rob Bonta, initiated legal action in March, ordering the sheriff to return the ballots.

Bianco, however, argues that he had a legal obligation to investigate the ballots after receiving a complaint. "I did this, and this was legal," Bianco told reporters outside the courthouse. "I went a different route. They are legal. Both routes are legal. It's just their side doesn't like the route I chose."

Bianco's attorney, Bradley Hertz, stated that the sheriff is holding the ballots as evidence and safeguarding them for the court. The ballots are from a special election where voters decided on Proposition 50, a legislative redistricting measure. According to the California Secretary of State, the proposition passed by over 3.4 million votes.

Bianco has expressed skepticism about the official count, suggesting a discrepancy between machine counts and the physical ballots. "How strange, that now we have evidence that the machines counted something different than the ballots that we have, and an Attorney General runs in to stop that investigation so that we’ll never know," he said.

Attorney General Bonta, joined by the UCLA Voting Rights Project which filed a separate legal challenge, asserted that Bianco's actions violated clear provisions of the California Constitution and government code giving him direct supervisory authority. "He can read, he knows what it says, it makes his violations even more egregious," Bonta stated.

Bianco contested Bonta's interpretation, arguing that the code allows the Attorney General to order a sheriff to perform a duty or to perform it on their behalf, but not to halt an investigation. Fox News Digital has reached out to the UCLA Voting Rights Project, the Riverside County Sheriff's Office, and the California Attorney General's Office for further comment. The Associated Press contributed to this report.