Extremist Sheriff’s Seizure of Ballots on California Redistricting Was Illegal, Court Rules

‘I Would Underscore the Seriousness Of the Violation Here’

Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco’s election meddling scheme was declared unlawful by the California Supreme Court, which just issued unanimous decisions in two cases focused on Bianco’s seizure of 650,000 ballots in California this spring.

I’ll unpack Bianco’s extremist background and ties to the far-right constitutional sheriff’s movement a bit more below, but, crucially, Bianco seized ballots in April that were cast in the state’s 2025 special election — when voters approved Gov. Gavin Newsom’s plan to conduct redistricting mid-cycle. As you’ll recall, Newsom put forward Proposition 50 in an attempt to offset the damage of President Trump’s nationwide gerrymandering crusade.

Prop 50 was placed on the California ballot specifically in response to Texas’ redrawing of its congressional district lines, which is expected to net five seats for Republicans in the U.S. House in the midterms. Newsom was one of several Democratic officials across the U.S. who worked to combat Trump’s gerrymandering blitz, a bullying campaign Trump launched last summer in an attempt to pressure Republican-controlled state legislatures nationwide to redraw their district maps mid-cycle to help Republicans hold the House this fall. Texas was the first to act on Trump’s demands, followed by Missouri, North Carolina, Florida and others. Enough Republicans in Indiana’s state Senate bucked Trump to quash the effort there. Trump endorsed primary challengers for those who refused to bend the knee, and most of those who stood up to Trump lost their primary elections in May.

Anyway, back to California and the MAGA sheriff seizing ballots. California voters approved Prop 50 — which amended the state constitution so that state officials could, temporarily, bypass normal protocol for redistricting and approved new maps that gave Democrats an additional five seats in the House — with a 64% vote in November 2025. Shortly thereafter, Bianco seized the ballots from election officials as part of what he claimed to be an investigation into complaints from Riverside County activists (i.e. election conspiracy theorists) who claimed the vote count did not match the number of ballots election officials received.

The California Supreme Court ordered Bianco to halt his investigation back in April while the case challenging his seizure played out in court. The state’s highest court ruled on Thursday that Bianco did not have the authority to take the ballots, issuing unanimous decisions in two separate cases brought against the sheriff — one by Riverside County voters and another by California Democratic Attorney General Rob Bonta. The Supreme Court declared that Bianco’s actions threatened election integrity in the state of California. An excerpt from the ruling in the case brought by voters:

We hold that the seizure of the ballots was unlawful. California law long has recognized that voted ballots require special care and handling to safeguard them from alteration or tampering. Consistent with this principle, the Elections Code narrowly limits the circumstances in which a court may order the production of ballots for inspection, and even in those narrow circumstances, requires that ballots remain in the physical custody of the responsible elections official.

“I would underscore the seriousness of the violation here. This is not a case involving a few documents,” Associate Justice Goodwin H. Liu said in a concurrent opinion. “It involves the unlawful removal and handling by armed deputies of over 1,000 boxes of documents — and not just any documents, but the most precious documents of the citizenry in a democracy: their votes.”