{"id":240960,"date":"2026-03-28T16:04:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-28T16:04:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/240960\/"},"modified":"2026-03-28T16:04:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-28T16:04:09","slug":"california-supreme-court-asked-to-stop-riverside-county-ballot-seizure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/240960\/","title":{"rendered":"California Supreme Court asked to stop Riverside County ballot seizure"},"content":{"rendered":"

California Attorney General Rob Bonta has asked the state Supreme Court to immediately halt an alleged voter\u2011fraud investigation<\/a> by Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, arguing the sheriff defied state authority by seizing more than 650,000 ballots from a recent special election.<\/p>\n

The request escalates a constitutional clash between California\u2019s top law enforcement officer and a sheriff who is also running for governor.<\/a><\/p>\n

Bianco has defended the probe as necessary to maintain public trust in elections, saying the investigation is \u201cjust as much to prove the election is accurate as it is to show otherwise\u201d and describing it as a fact\u2011finding effort rather than a criminal case.<\/p>\n

Bianco’s seizure of Riverside County’s ballots stems from an audit by a local group<\/a> calling itself the Riverside Election Integrity Team, which claimed the county’s tally included nearly 46,000 more ballots than were received in the election, which the county has rejected.<\/p>\n

Bonta, whose office\u00a0has <\/a>been separately investigating<\/a>\u00a0the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department since February 2023 due to a rise in jail deaths and other issues, also raised concerns about the merits of the voter-fraud investigation, citing “legal deficiencies” in the affidavits supporting the warrants\u00a0Bianco obtained.<\/p>\n

The petition<\/a>, filed March 27, asks the California Supreme Court to stop Bianco from continuing his investigation and to order him to comply with the attorney general’s directives.<\/p>\n

More: Here\u2019s why California AG clashes with Riverside sheriff over ballots<\/a><\/p>\n

Investigation continued despite AG’s demands\"California<\/p>\n

California Attorney General Rob Bonta, left, and Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco.<\/p>\n

According to the filing, Bianco obtained search warrants on Feb. 9 and Feb. 23 and began seizing ballots later that month. After Bonta directed the sheriff on Feb. 26 to pause the investigation, Bianco instead seized roughly 1,000 boxes of ballots that same day and continued his inquiry in the weeks that followed.<\/p>\n

The attorney general\u2019s office issued additional directives in early March ordering Bianco to halt the investigation and provide records explaining its legal basis. The sheriff did not comply, the filing states.<\/p>\n

Bianco obtained a third search warrant on March 19 and held a press conference the following day, where he said the investigation would continue despite Bonta\u2019s objections.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe outrage that an investigation was happening was extremely concerning to me, especially coming from someone who claims to be a law enforcement officer,\u201d Bianco said at the press conference. \u201cI\u2019ve said this a minimum of a thousand times \u2014 he\u2019s an embarrassment to law enforcement.\u201d<\/p>\n

Four days later, on March 24, Bianco seized an additional 426 boxes of ballot materials, completing the seizures authorized under the warrants, according to the petition.<\/p>\n

That same day, a state appeals court declined to intervene, prompting the attorney general\u2019s office to seek emergency review from California\u2019s highest court.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Court of Appeal\u2019s decision was based solely on where we filed the case and is not a ruling on the underlying merits of the petition,\u201d Bonta\u2019s office said in a statement.<\/p>\n

Uncertainty mounts over lack of special master oversight<\/p>\n

In a separate filing<\/a> on March 26, the UCLA Voting Rights Project asked the California Supreme Court to order Bianco to return the seized ballots to the Riverside County Registrar of Voters, arguing that state law requires election materials to remain in official custody.<\/p>\n

That petition was filed on behalf of four Riverside County voters: Indio City Councilmember Oscar Ortiz, Riverside City Councilmember Clarissa Cervantes, Rebecca Robinson, and Nathan Kempe, an advocate for increased sheriff accountability in the county.<\/p>\n

Bianco said at his March 20 press conference that a special master would oversee a court\u2011supervised review of the ballots. However, both the warrants and the affidavits supporting the seizures remain under court seal.<\/p>\n

In a letter<\/a> filed Friday, March 27, the UCLA Voting Rights Project <\/a>said no special master has been appointed, citing reporting<\/a> by The New York Times.<\/p>\n

Bonta\u2019s petition, filed the following day, likewise states that it is \u201cunclear if a special master has been appointed or whether a \u2018recount\u2019 has begun.\u201d<\/p>\n

What does the California Supreme Court petition say?<\/p>\n

In his filing<\/a>, Bonta argues that Bianco\u2019s actions violate the California Constitution by disregarding the attorney general\u2019s supervisory authority over county sheriffs. As the state\u2019s designated \u201cchief law officer,\u201d the attorney general has the power to direct local law enforcement in criminal investigations, the petition states.<\/p>\n

The filing characterizes the dispute as an \u201cunprecedented constitutional emergency\u201d and asks the court to issue an immediate stay halting the investigation while the case is reviewed.<\/p>\n

Bonta also argues the investigation lacks a valid legal basis, noting that Bianco has not identified a specific crime or suspect to justify the search warrants. The petition further contends that removing ballots from election officials may violate state law requiring election materials to remain in official custody.<\/p>\n

The California Supreme Court must now decide whether to take up the case \u2014 and whether to grant the attorney general\u2019s request to temporarily stop the investigation.<\/p>\n

Jennifer Cortez covers education in the Coachella Valley. Reach her at jennifer.cortez@desertsun.com.<\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: California AG asks high court to halt Riverside sheriff ballot probe<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"California Attorney General Rob Bonta has asked the state Supreme Court to immediately halt an alleged voter\u2011fraud investigation…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":240961,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7166,7,1801,9,8,2081,28687,77950,734,12081,612,2794,2214,15698],"class_list":["post-240960","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-ballots","tag-california","tag-california-attorney-general","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-california-supreme-court","tag-chad-bianco","tag-fraud-investigation","tag-law-enforcement","tag-law-enforcement-officer","tag-riverside-county","tag-rob-bonta","tag-supreme-court","tag-the-investigation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240960","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=240960"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240960\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/240961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=240960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=240960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=240960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}