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RIVERSIDE, Calif. (CN) — The UCLA Voting Rights Project has asked the California Supreme Court to order Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco to promptly return the roughly 650,000 ballots cast in last year’s special election to the appropriate election officials in the Southern California county.
Bianco, a Republican running for governor, seized the ballots as part of a criminal investigation into a purported discrepancy between the number of ballots that were cast and the number counted in the November election on California’s Prop. 50 redistricting proposal intended to give five more seats to Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives.
“The proceedings in this case raise critical issues regarding our democracy and election integrity,” four Riverside County voters represented by the UCLA project said in their petition Wednesday with the state’s top court. “The fundamental question involves whether the Riverside County Sheriff is legally allowed to seize hundreds of thousands of lawfully cast ballots under the guise of a criminal investigation without any transparency over the chain of custody, handling, and counting of those ballots.”
The petitioners claim they have no expectation that the privacy of their validly cast ballots will be respected in the sheriff’s physical recount or that any announcement of a new count will have any basis in fact.
Without the careful application of procedures mandated by the California Election Code, no reliable recount can take place, they argue, and any count Bianco may announce as part of his “gambit” will be tainted.
After a citizen group claimed its audit found about 46,000 more ballots had been counted than were cast in Riverside, Bianco obtained search warrants from a Riverside County Superior Court judge — whose election he had supported and who in turn supported the sheriff’s reelection — to seize the more than 600,000 ballots that were cast and said his office would manually recount them.
“This is not a recount to determine how many votes were for or against Prop. 50,” Bianco said at a March 20 press conference.
The investigation, Bianco said, was simply to physically count the ballots and compare the total with the number of votes reported.
The four Riverside voters who petitioned the California Supreme Court, on the other hand, cited data by UCLA voting data scientists that show voting totals in the county had been 100% accurate over the past five years.
Earlier this week, California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed a petition with the California Court of Appeals to stop Bianco’s impromptu recount.
The appellate court, however, immediately rejected the petition on procedural grounds, prompting the attorney general to file a new petition Thursday with the Riverside County Superior Court.
The petition with the California Supreme Court is not at the same risk as the AG’s one with the California Court of Appeals to get denied on procedural or jurisdictional grounds because it pertains to a statewide question over which the Supreme Court can exercise original jurisdiction, said Sonni Waknin, an attorney with the UCLA Voting Rights Project.
“If it is the case that any sheriff in the state can override the California Legislature’s directives regarding who may have custody of cast ballots and how they may be handled, then there is no integrity in the process,” the petitioners claim. “What is to stop any other sheriff or elected official from doing the same during the 2026 midterm elections?”
The petitioners, who are also represented by VRP Senior Voting Rights Adviser and former California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, claim Bianco has violated numerous sections of the California election code, and they seek a court order directing the sheriff to return the ballots to the county’s election officials and prohibiting his office from counting them.
“We are conducting a lawful investigation, approved by a judge,” Bianco said in response to the UCLA and AG petitions. “I think the failed democratic candidates are just trying to rally a base for their own political benefit. What does Becerra have to hide from a lawful investigation?”
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