The California Supreme Court on Monday heard oral arguments regarding Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco’s seizure of approximately 650,000 ballots from a November 2025 special election on redistricting. The measure in question passed in the county by roughly 80,000 votes.
Bianco seized 1,000 boxes of election materials in March to investigate a complaint from a local citizens group that the vote count was inaccurate, though not by an amount that would have changed the outcome. Local election officials had previously stated the complaint was unfounded. Bianco was running for governor at the time of the seizure.
Democratic Attorney General Rob Bonta initiated a legal challenge in March, asserting that the sheriff lacks authority over election materials and suggesting the seizure was intended to undermine confidence in elections. Bonta ordered Bianco to return the ballots, but the sheriff did not comply. The University of California, Los Angeles Voting Rights Project also filed a lawsuit against 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, argued before the court that established mechanisms exist for contesting election results, and Bianco did not follow them. Bianco had begun recounting the vote using sheriff's officials, overseen by a court-appointed special master, but suspended the effort days later, citing legal challenges from the state attorney general and a voting rights group. However, the ballots have not been returned.
"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 told the court.
Bradley Hertz, representing Bianco, contended that the sheriff had a legal obligation to investigate the complaint and followed penal code procedures, including issuing search warrants in February. Hertz stated that Bianco has not returned the ballots to the registrar of voters because they are considered "evidence."
"The sheriff is holding that evidence, safeguarding it as a custodian for the court," Hertz said. He added that Bianco did not follow Bonta’s order to return the ballots because a legal dispute was already underway.
At the time of the ballot seizure, Bianco was a candidate in the June gubernatorial primary. He did not advance to the general election and has since announced plans to seek reelection as sheriff in 2028. Xavier Becerra, a Democrat running for governor, is a party to the UCLA lawsuit seeking to halt Bianco's actions.
The seizure occurred amid ongoing disputes over election integrity, including repeated challenges to the 2020 election results by former President Donald Trump and documented instances of election offices in other states, such as Georgia, having their ballots and documents seized.