California Supreme Court Orders Riverside Sheriff Chad Bianco to Pause Election Probe, Preserve Seized Ballots 

The California Supreme Court on Wednesday directed Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco to immediately pause his ongoing investigation into alleged discrepancies and potential irregularities in the November 2025 special election ballots and to preserve all seized materials while legal challenges proceed. 

The order, issued by the state’s highest court, halts further examination of more than 600,000 ballots seized by the Riverside County Sheriff’s Office as part of a probe into a citizen complaint about vote-counting issues in the special election on Proposition 50, the controversial redistricting measure advanced by Gov. Gavin Newsom and Democratic leaders. 

Sheriff Bianco, a Republican candidate for California governor in 2026, obtained judicial warrants to seize over 1,000 boxes of election materials after his department identified what it described as significant mismatches in county records to state records. Local election officials had previously dismissed the complaint as unfounded, but Bianco pressed forward, arguing the probe was necessary to verify the accuracy of the results. 

California Attorney General Rob Bonta, who has aggressively challenged the sheriff’s actions, praised the Supreme Court’s decision. “What the Sheriff says and what he does are often two different things,” Bonta stated. “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.” 

The ruling marks the latest development in a series of lawsuits filed by Bonta’s office, a voting rights group represented by the UCLA Voting Rights Project (on behalf of four Riverside County voters), and others who argue that state election law reserves custody and handling of ballots exclusively to county registrars and prohibits sheriffs from seizing or examining them in this manner. 

As previously reported by the California Globe, Sheriff Bianco held a press conference accusing Attorney General Bonta of attempting to intimidate his office and derail the investigation after discrepancies surfaced between Riverside County’s internal handwritten logs showing 611,428 ballots cast in the Prop 50 special election and the higher certified totals released by Secretary of State Shirley Weber. 

The sheriff obtained search warrants from a Riverside County judge and seized the ballots to conduct a forensic review, a move Bonta and Democrats labeled as overreach and a threat to the electoral process. Bianco has maintained the investigation was lawfully authorized and aimed solely at uncovering facts about potential irregularities in the high-stakes redistricting referendum. 

The Supreme Court’s order requires Bianco and his office “to pause the investigation into the November 2025 special election and preserve all seized items.” The case has now been returned to lower courts for further proceedings, with the high court retaining oversight. 

Critics of the decision, including supporters of election transparency efforts, have decried the ruling as yet another example of California’s one-party political establishment shielding itself from scrutiny—especially given the political implications of Prop 50, which many conservatives rightfully argued was a Democratic power grab to gerrymander congressional districts in the state’s favor.

The California Globe will continue to monitor developments in this case.