California Sheriff Ordered to Stop Ballot Seizure After Grabbing Half a Million Votes

A Republican sheriff running for governor seized more than half a million ballots from a California county election — and now the state Supreme Court has ordered him to stop.

Sheriff Chad Bianco of Riverside County grabbed 1,426 boxes of election materials over the past month, claiming he was investigating voter fraud in a November 2025 special election on redistricting. Local election officials told county supervisors the fraud allegations were baseless. The state attorney general ordered Bianco to stand down. Bianco responded by seizing hundreds more boxes of ballots.

On Wednesday, the California Supreme Court issued an emergency order forcing Bianco to "pause the investigation into the November 2025 special election and preserve all seized items." The court is now reviewing whether Bianco had any legal authority to take election materials in the first place.

"What the Sheriff says and what he does are often two different things," California Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a statement. "Today's decision by the California Supreme Court reins in the destabilizing actions of a rogue Sheriff, prohibiting him from continuing this investigation while our litigation continues."

Bianco's ballot grab started with a complaint from a local citizens group questioning the ballot count. Election officials investigated and found nothing wrong. That did not stop Bianco from launching his own probe — one that Bonta argues the sheriff has no legal authority to conduct. Election oversight in California falls to county registrars and the secretary of state, not law enforcement.

After Bonta ordered Bianco to halt the investigation, the sheriff seized an additional 426 boxes of ballots. A county judge had approved the initial seizure, which Bianco has cited as justification for his actions. But state officials and voting rights groups say a county judge cannot override state election law or grant sheriffs powers they do not have.

Bianco is one of two leading Republican candidates for governor in California. His ballot seizure mirrors tactics used by Trump administration officials, who recently raided an election office in Georgia and seized ballots and documents. President Donald Trump has spent years making unsubstantiated claims about the 2020 election, and some Republican officials have adopted similar rhetoric about their own state elections.

Bianco claimed last week that he paused his investigation due to mounting legal challenges. The Supreme Court order makes that pause mandatory and enforceable.

The dispute highlights a growing pattern of elected officials using law enforcement powers to undermine public confidence in elections. Bianco seized ballots from an election that local officials certified as clean. He did so over the objections of the state attorney general and despite having no statutory authority over election materials. And he escalated the seizure after being told to stop.

Voting rights advocates warn that these kinds of unauthorized investigations — even when they find nothing — damage trust in the democratic process. They also set a dangerous precedent: if sheriffs can seize ballots based on unfounded complaints, any election result can be thrown into chaos by a partisan official with a badge.

The California Supreme Court will now decide whether Bianco overstepped his authority. In the meantime, the half-million ballots he grabbed remain in his custody, frozen by court order while the legal fight plays out.