‘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.”
Bianco, the Prolific LinkedIn Poster: ‘Some People Should Never Be Allowed To Vote’
Bianco was running for the Republican nomination in California’s gubernatorial race when he seized hundreds of thousands of ballots from election officials. Many believed his actions to be both a campaign stunt and an effort to demonstrate his election denialism bonafides to Trump voters in the state. During the primary election in June, he finished in fourth place and did not advance to the general.
Speaking from the courthouse steps after arguments last month, Bianco described the court case as a Democratic plot against free and fair elections.
“This is about an attorney general who believes that he can stop an investigatory process into something that he doesn’t want us to know the answer to, and that was not the intention of our founding fathers,” Bianco said in August, per the New York Times. “That was not the intention of the writers of our Constitution.”
But by all measures, Bianco appears to be an election denier with right-wing extremist views and connections. After he seized the ballots, he told the Washington Post that he’d consider seizing ballots again if there were any questions raised about the integrity of the primary election that he was running in at the time. He also — shocker — has ties to the constitutional sheriff’s movement, the Claremont Institute and the Oath Keepers. I wrote about this in an edition of The Franchise, TPM’s voting rights newsletter, back in April:
Bianco was previously a member of the Oath Keepers, the far-right militia group whose members were charged with seditious conspiracy related to their role in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. He has simultaneously suggested he doesn’t remember joining, while also defending the militia as “protecting the Constitution.” He also has ties to the constitutional sheriffs movement, an extremist group that believes sheriffs have supreme law enforcement authority, including the right to interfere in how elections are run. His ties to groups that espouse much of the right-wing extremist rhetoric that makes up the MAGA movement go deeper than that, too, per Democracy Docket:
He was also named the 2023 “Sheriff of the Year” by the Claremont Institute, a right-wing think tank that trains sheriffs to battle “wokeness.”
On top of all that, Bianco is apparently a prolific LinkedIn poster. In the past month alone he has posted comments suggesting “some people should never be allowed to vote” and has claimed on the social networking platform that Democrats have “created an environment where cheating and illegal voting is keeping them in office.”
Newsom Signs Bill to Block Ballot Seizures
We noted this in today’s edition of The Franchise as well, but in the wake of Bianco’s adventures in election meddling, California Democrats passed legislation that Newsom signed into law last week that would make it a felony to seize ballots or voting equipment before election results are certified. It was one of a package of new laws that California passed to insulate elections from Trump interference that was also inspired by Bianco’s actions.
“Today’s ruling affirms that in California we will defend democracy — using every branch of government. And the new laws I signed just last week add new protections so attacks like this cannot happen again,” Newsom said in a statement Thursday after the California Supreme Court opinions on the Bianco cases came down. “People deserve to know their ballot is counted and secure, and in California we will do everything we can to protect that constitutional right — this year, and beyond.”
Read This From TPM Today
Kate Riga subs in for Khaya Himmelman in today’s edition of The Franchise. First up, she unpacks the ways in which Trump’s nationwide election overreach/assault ahead of the midterms is, in some ways, a direct response to the failures of his efforts after the 2020 election to overturn the results. Why not disenfranchise everyone ahead of time? More from Kate here: Trump’s Big Attempt To Be Savvier About Stealing the Election This Time Around Failed
Yesterday’s Top Story
Brett Kavanaugh’s Imaginary Immigration Stops Opinion Gets More Embarrassing Every Day
What I’m Reading
From 16,000 to 185 to Zero: Trump’s Claims of Illegal Voting in Nevada Fizzle.
Missouri election officials tell people to hold off voting while SCOTUS deliberates on gerrymander
Listen to This To Kick off Libra Season
Don’t worry, I’m not going to get all woo woo on main, but Libra Season has begun and along with it, perfectly crisp fall air in Brooklyn. Maybe it’s the too-late-in-the-day coffee; maybe it’s the time in the zodiac calendar when I, Nicole LaFond, personally thrive; maybe it’s this new band I’ve been listening to — but things are looking up today, despite *gestures at everything*.
I recently discovered this French metal dystopique band, Gravity Metals and have been listening to this EP on repeat. They might put a pep in your step, too:
So when does the Sheriff find out after he f’d around?
No prosecution? Did I miss that part?
Imagine the outcry if a liberal pulled this garbage?
Another one of these constipational sheriffs? These guys are so full of shit.
And so Bianco will receive how much jail time for the theft of over 1,000 boxes of ballots?
That is my question. This guy committed a horrendous crime against the people of California so when will he be prosecuted?