The Supreme Court of California ruled 7-0 on 24 September that Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco unlawfully seized about 650,000 ballots from the county registrar1. Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero wrote for the Court in Cervantes v. Bianco, which ordered Bianco to return the ballots and stop handling them. "We hold that the seizure of the ballots was unlawful," the opinion says. State election law says voted ballots may "in no event" leave the election official's custody, criminal investigation or not.
The ballots are from the 4 November 2025 special election on Proposition 50, which put the Legislature's congressional map in force through 2030. California adopted that map in answer to Texas's mid-decade redistricting, the same race to redraw that put Missouri's 2025 map before the courts, and the first House elections on its lines are on 3 November. A group named in the opinion had made an unverified claim of a 45,896-ballot gap between valid ballots and the official count, and the sheriff obtained a warrant on 9 February.
In a companion case, Bonta v. Bianco, the Court held that Attorney General Rob Bonta, a Democrat, acted lawfully when he directed the sheriff to pause the investigation2. Bianco, who ran unsuccessfully for governor as a Republican this year, called it a "lawful investigation" and said he would appeal to the federal courts, according to CalMatters3. The ruling sets a state-law limit on any seizure of cast ballots that a sheriff or prosecutor might attempt after 3 November.
