A sheriff tried to put an election on trial. The California Supreme Court said no

The request came from Attorney General Rob Bonta, whose office wanted time to review the basis for Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco’s investigation. His deputies hauled away more than 650,000 ballots from the 2025 special election, relying on fraud claims from a local group of election deniers.

On September 24, the California Supreme Court put a stop to it. In two unanimous rulings, it made clear that the attorney general’s power to supervise sheriffs is binding, and in a companion case, it ruled the seizure unlawful and returned the ballots back to election officials. The message to every sheriff in California heading into November: Ballots belong with election officials.

Riverside isn’t an isolated case. It’s the latest escalation of a years-long campaign to sow distrust in elections, and the consequences are measurable. In 2025 alone, at least 17 states passed 32 restrictive voting laws that make it harder to cast a ballot. And 38% of election officials say they have been threatened, harassed, or abused for just doing their jobs. When a sheriff can take a county’s ballots on the word of election deniers, that pressure only grows. 

The U.S. election system is a human endeavor. It is complex and, at times, imperfect. But one thing it’s not is rigged. In my work with more than 200 local election officials across the country, one thing is clear: running elections takes specialized expertise. Election officials follow strict protocols that detect issues and correct errors before they affect outcomes, which is why voter fraud is incredibly rare. When a legitimate challenge arises, there are transparent recount processes, and not one step of it calls for armed law enforcement seizing ballots based on flimsy evidence.

With the midterms just weeks away, the lesson for the rest of the country is clear: sham investigations like this must be stopped in their tracks. Even when they find nothing, they do damage. A sheriff hauling ballots out of an election office tells voters there must be something to find, and it hands election deniers their next talking point. Not to mention the incentive to continue to push law enforcement to take baseless action. When frivolous fraud claims arise, courts must follow the California Supreme Court’s example and refuse to legitimize them.

The Riverside County case exposed a breakdown in the checks that are supposed to stop this kind of overreach. At every turn, Bianco took the word of election deniers over the county’s own election experts. The registrar publicly walked county supervisors through the numbers and explained the discrepancy. Instead of engaging with that explanation, Bianco told a judge the registrar had never offered one. And the judge who approved the warrants should have rejected them. As the attorney general pointed out, the warrants named no specific crime and no suspect.

Second, Bianco brushed off the one official with the authority to supervise him. After ignoring the attorney general’s request to wait, Bianco also defied his direction to pause. He had deputies with no training begin a hand count.  The court’s ruling makes clear that a sheriff can’t simply ignore that check. It rejected the idea that the state’s top law enforcement officer must remain a “mere bystander” to an investigation this unprecedented.

Magistrate judges, and state courts across the country need to be prepared to reject baseless claims of fraud as these investigations have gone as far as the FBI seizing ballots in Fulton County, Georgia. In that case, a federal judge was found to help the FBI refine its search warrant instead of rejecting it for flaws.

To be sure, questions about an election deserve answers. Even the attorney general said he took the concerns in Riverside seriously. But California already has a way to answer them: a recount, conducted in public by trained election officials. The group behind the Riverside complaint never asked for one. 

Some will argue the ruling lets the state override a locally elected sheriff. But the local official responsible for those ballots was the county registrar of voters, and it was the sheriff who overrode him. This ruling doesn’t weaken local control of elections. It protects it.

No amount of proof will satisfy election deniers who seize on small errors that don’t change an outcome. But a sheriff can’t undermine an election simply because some people don’t like the results. 

As election deniers test the same tactics in Georgia and beyond, courts everywhere must stop these investigations, and quickly. Every day a baseless investigation drags on and feeds the lie it was built on. Election administration must remain in the hands of trained election officials. Election integrity shouldn’t be on trial.

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Public Rights Project filed a brief in Bonta v. Bianco on behalf of California counties and election officials. Read more about the case here.