alarm bells<\/a> among Democratic leaders who worried the ballot seizure was a local outcrop of conservative efforts to undermine vote-by-mail.<\/p>\nDuring oral arguments in San Francisco, the court\u2019s justices peppered Bianco\u2019s attorney, Bradley Hertz, with questions as to why the sheriff was not bound by state laws that restrict access to ballots during a criminal prosecution.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Xavier Becerra, senior adviser to the UCLA VRP and attorney on file in the case, speaks during a press conference following oral arguments in Cervantes et al. v. Bianco, a case challenging Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco\u2019s seizure of more than 650,000 ballots cast in the November special election, at the steps of the Earl Warren Building at the California Supreme Court on Aug. 24, 2026.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt says in no event shall the packet or its content be taken from the custody of the elections official,\u201d Justice Kelli Evans said. \u201cSo I\u2019m just not following your argument.\u201d<\/p>\n
Justice Joshua Groban questioned whether the case presented by Bianco would open the door for the seizure of ballots during an ongoing election.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cUnder your broad view of the warrant power, pursuant to a lawful warrant, the sheriff could seize ballots even before Election Day, right?\u201d Groban said.<\/p>\n
Hertz said that state law limits access to ballots only during prosecutions \u2014 not investigations.<\/p>\n
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Clarissa Cervantes, Riverside City Council member and plaintiff, speaks during a press conference following oral arguments in Cervantes et al. v. Bianco, a case challenging Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco\u2019s seizure of more than 650,000 ballots cast in the November special election, at the steps of the Earl Warren Building at the California Supreme Court on Aug. 24, 2026.<\/p>\n
California Attorney General Rob Bonta brought a second suit, arguing that Bianco illegally ignored his direction as the state\u2019s top law enforcement official to halt the investigation.<\/p>\n
Riverside County sheriff\u2019s deputies began seizing boxes of ballots in late February, in response to a complaint from a citizens group.<\/p>\n
That group, the Riverside County Election Integrity Team, had conducted an audit of ballot intake forms \u2014 sheets filled out by election workers detailing how many ballots had arrived at their vote center. The audit concluded that the ballot intake forms had only detailed 611,426 ballots \u2014 45,896 short of the county\u2019s final count of 657,322 votes.<\/p>\n
Art Tinoco, the county\u2019s registrar of voters, described the intake forms as an unrefined count that does not provide an apples-to-apples comparison to the final count of ballots.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThese are completed in the field by election officers during long workdays \u2014 let\u2019s keep that in mind; folks get tired,\u201d Tinoco told the Riverside County Board of Supervisors. \u201cIt\u2019s very possible that the staff may not have recorded the numbers accurately on these daily mail intake forms.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bianco said his deputies would be recounting ballot envelopes, but not reviewing the votes inside, in order to determine the reason for the discrepancy with the intake forms.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt looks like well-meaning officers essentially trying to build a vote-counting airplane while they\u2019re flying it,\u201d said Chad Dunn, an attorney for the Riverside County voters who brought the suit against Bianco\u2019s actions.\u00a0<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/20260824_CASCBIANCOBALLOTS_GC-30-KQED.jpg\")
Xavier Becerra, senior adviser to the UCLA VRP and attorney on file in the case, center, speaks to Dr. Matt Baretto, faculty director at UCLA VRP, left, and Chad Dunn, legal director at UCLA VRP, right, following a press conference regarding Cervantes et al. v. Bianco, a case challenging Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco\u2019s seizure of more than 650,000 ballots cast in the November special election, at the steps of the Earl Warren Building at the California Supreme Court on Aug. 24, 2026.<\/p>\n
In April, the Supreme Court blocked Bianco\u2019s investigation from moving forward while it considered Bonta\u2019s challenge.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Justices questioned California Solicitor General Sam Harbourt, who said the power for Bonta to supervise the actions of county sheriffs \u201cwas intended to be expansive.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat to me says if he wants to drop into a particular county and say, \u2018Cease this prosecution for shoplifting,\u2019 it shall be done\u2019 \u2026 as long as he deems it in the public interest,\u201d Groban said. \u201cThat sounds almost unlimited.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hertz said that Bonta\u2019s powers are much more curtailed \u2014 that the attorney general has an \u201cadvise and consent\u201d relationship with local sheriffs, and can only voice his displeasure with local law enforcement actions.<\/p>\n
\u201cDirect supervision does not mean absolute control, and sheriffs are not employees of the attorney general,\u201d Hertz said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"During oral arguments in San Francisco, justices questioned the Republican Riverside County sheriff\u2019s seizure of more than 650,000…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":442927,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":["post-442926","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442926","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=442926"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442926\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/442927"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=442926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=442926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=442926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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<\/p>\n