Chad Bianco ran for governor as a Republican, lost, and then used his badge to seize more than half a million ballots from an election Democrats won. On Thursday, every justice on California’s Supreme Court ruled he broke the law. Twice. Now he has to give the ballots back.
Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco broke California election law when he seized more than 650,000 ballots from the county’s top election official, the California Supreme Court ruled unanimously on Thursday, September 24. In a second ruling handed down the same morning, the justices found he broke the law again by ignoring Attorney General Rob Bonta’s orders to back off.
Two Rulings, Two Losses, Zero Dissents
The court didn’t split hairs. In back-to-back decisions, the justices found Bianco had no legal right to take the ballots and no legal right to defy the state’s chief law enforcement officer once he was told to stop. He’s now required to return the ballots to the registrar and end his investigation, pending review by Bonta.
Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero’s language was blunt. Bianco’s arguments, she wrote, “fail to persuade us that we should interpret (California election law) in a manner inconsistent with its plain text, which mandates that voted ballots remain in the custody of elections officials.”
On Bianco’s claim that the attorney general had no power to rein him in, the court was even sharper, writing that his arguments “all boil down to the unsustainable view that the state’s chief law enforcement officer … must remain a mere bystander to an unprecedented sheriff’s investigation of undeniable statewide significance. As we have explained, that is not the case.”
When Bianco argued his case in August, the same justices had already described his legal theories as “bizarre” and “more than counterintuitive.”
He Seized Ballots From an Election His Side Lost
The ballots Bianco took came from the November 2025 special election, when California voters approved redrawing the state’s political boundaries in a way that favors Democrats. Bianco didn’t like the result. So he obtained a search warrant from a politically friendly judge and took the ballots anyway, despite a state law that explicitly bars removing ballots from election officials.
Who pushed him to do it? Internal emails show he acted at the urging of the far-right “constitutional sheriff” movement and local activists pointing to supposed discrepancies in the vote count. Riverside’s registrar of voters said those claims came from a misreading of preliminary vote data. In other words, there was no fraud. There was a sheriff who lost a race, sided with election deniers, and grabbed 650,000 ballots on their say-so.
Secretary of State Shirley Weber didn’t mince words in her brief to the court: “Sheriff Bianco violated (California election law’s) clear mandate when he removed voted ballots from the custody of the Riverside County Registrar of Voters.”
The Court Called Out the Real Danger
The ruling didn’t just address the paperwork. Guerrero warned directly about what happens when law enforcement gets its hands on ballots outside the legal process.
“Allowing law enforcement unfettered access to ballots, or the ability to handle and count them in secret based on unregulated protocols, itself creates a substantial risk to election integrity,” she wrote, adding that the state already has “comprehensive procedures for recounting and examining ballots... without exposing them to alteration or tampering, unlike the unlawful seizure that occurred here.”
That’s the state’s highest court saying, in plain terms, that the actual threat to election integrity here was the sheriff himself.
A Playbook for the Midterms, Now Shut Down
Voting rights advocates had warned from the start that Bianco’s seizure could become a template for other right-wing sheriffs hoping to overturn results they don’t like. The timing makes that fear concrete: the ruling lands just six weeks before the November midterms that will decide control of Congress for Trump’s final two years in office. And California isn’t the only place this is happening. The FBI recently showed up in Shasta County, a MAGA stronghold, after its own elections chief made ballot-stuffing claims.
California Democrats aren’t waiting to see who tries next. Gov. Gavin Newsom just signed two new laws in response to Bianco’s raid: one makes it a felony to seize or order the seizure of ballots, election records, or voting machines before results are certified, and another expands the ban on taking election materials from election officials.
Bianco Has Already Said He Won’t Stop
Here’s the part that should worry everyone. Back in August, before the ruling came down, Bianco said his office would keep investigating the 2025 election no matter what the court decided. The Supreme Court has now ordered him to stand down. Whether a Republican sheriff who already ignored the attorney general once will actually respect a unanimous ruling from the state’s highest court is the question hanging over Riverside County heading into November.
A Republican sheriff who lost his own bid for governor took 650,000 ballots from an election his side lost, on the word of fringe activists peddling claims the county’s own election chief debunked. Every justice on California’s Supreme Court ruled it illegal. He has to give them back. And he’s already promised not to let it go.