Riverside County Sheriff Must Return 650,000 Seized Ballots, Court Rules

Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco must give back roughly 650,000 ballots he took from a November 2025 special election, the California Supreme Court ordered Thursday. The court called the seizure unlawful. It said state law keeps voted ballots in the hands of election officials, even when there is a criminal investigation.

The ballots came from a statewide vote on congressional redistricting. The measure passed easily across California. It also won in Riverside County by about 80,000 votes. That margin matters here. It means the seized ballots were not a small sliver of a close race. They were a big chunk of a contest that already had a clear result.

I read the ruling and felt a quiet worry. Not about the outcome of that vote. About what it means when a sheriff can remove so many ballots from the people who are supposed to guard them. Trust in elections does not break all at once. It wears down in moments like this, when the rules look bendable.

Sheriff Bianco said he acted on a complaint from a local citizens group. The group said it found a roughly 45,000-vote gap between ballots cast and ballots received in Riverside County for Proposition 50, the redistricting measure. County election officials said the group misread the data. The registrar of voters, Art Tinoco, said the real gap was 103 votes, well within the state’s allowed margin of error.

The court did not wait for more debate on that point. In a unanimous decision, the justices said the sheriff broke the law when he seized the ballots in February. They ordered him to return them to the Riverside County Registrar of Voters at once. They also told him to stop handling the ballots, except as needed to comply with the order.

There was a second unanimous ruling tied to this case. The court said Sheriff Bianco also violated the law when he ignored a directive from Attorney General Rob Bonta to pause the seizure plan. That part of the decision reinforces a simple idea. One office cannot override another on the custody of ballots. The election code sets the line. The court said the sheriff crossed it.

This is not a story about which party benefits. The redistricting measure was backed by Gov. Gavin Newsom and favored Democrats in future House maps. But the legal question is narrower. Who keeps the ballots after they are cast? California’s answer is clear. The elections official does. The court quoted the code directly. In no event shall voted ballots be taken from the custody of the elections official.

I keep thinking about the workers in the registrar’s office. They count, they log, they seal. They do it under rules that are meant to be boring on purpose. Boring is good here. It means the process does not depend on who is in charge this year. When a sheriff’s deputies roll in and take 12 pallets of boxes, that boredom breaks. People notice. They wonder what else could be moved, and why.

The scale of this seizure is hard to miss. About 650,000 ballots is not a small sample for a audit. It is a large share of one county’s votes in a special election. Moving that many ballots creates risk by itself. Chains of custody get longer. Access gets tighter. The court said the sheriff’s actions created a substantial risk to election integrity. That phrase is dry on the page. In practice, it means more chances for error, for confusion, for doubt.

There are still open questions. Was the sheriff’s investigation justified from the start? He said he was following up on allegations from a citizens group. Election officials said those claims were unfounded. The search warrants that allowed the seizure were signed by a Riverside County Superior Court judge, Jay Kiel. New reporting has noted that Bianco endorsed Kiel when he ran for the bench. That detail does not decide the case. It does add to the unease.

What happens next is more straightforward. The ballots go back to the registrar. The sheriff’s office must stop its recount of ballot envelopes tied to Proposition 50. Attorney General Bonta has said there will be legal consequences for breaking the election code. He called the sheriff’s move unprecedented in scope and scale. The court’s language points the same way.

I do not think this ruling will calm everyone who worries about voting. Some will say the court protected the wrong side. Others will say it only did what the law requires. Both reactions are human. But the law here is not subtle. It keeps ballots where they belong. It keeps the count in the hands of the people tasked with counting.

For ordinary voters, the takeaway is plain. Your ballot should not leave the custody of the elections official. Not for a recount. Not for a probe. Not because a sheriff decides to look again. That rule exists so you do not have to wonder who touched your vote after you cast it.

The California Supreme Court drew that line again on Thursday. It said the sheriff went too far. It told him to put the ballots back. That is the end of this chapter. The next one will test whether the warning holds.

Browse: Politics