A California sheriff seized ballots. The court ruling shutting the probe will resonate nationwide

By Jeremy Herb, Tierney Sneed, CNN

(CNN) — The California Supreme Court shut down a right-wing sheriff’s efforts to seize and investigate ballots over debunked allegations of vote “discrepancies,” in a legal fight that has helped election officials prepare for any similar attempts during November election.

Sheriff Chad Bianco’s March seizure of 650,000 ballots from Riverside County’s 2025 election for a high-profile state redistricting referendum came on the heels of a search warrant that the FBI executed to obtain 2020 ballots from Fulton County, Georgia — a chief target of President Donald Trump’s election subversion claims.

While both investigations concern elections that had already occurred, they raised fears that federal and local agents would try to seize live ballots while the 2026 vote was still being counted and certified, particularly as Trump and his allies have repeatedly raised baseless claims of widespread voter fraud.

Bianco, for instance, was running in California in a GOP primary where Trump’s endorsement was still up for grabs.

“Election officials are planners. And so, they have to consider possibilities even if they’re not going to happen — to be ready in case they do,” said David Becker, a former Justice Department voting section attorney who now advises election administrators of both parties. “They’re considering wild possibilities that they wouldn’t have had to before.”

Chief among the concerns is how handing over those materials to investigators would break the chain of custody, as state and local regulations impose strict procedures for handling ballots to maintain public confidence in election results.

The state Supreme Court wrote that “allowing law enforcement unfettered access to ballots, or the ability to handle and count them in secret based on unregulated protocols, itself creates a substantial risk to election integrity.”

In the months since those two episodes, state officials have instructed local election administrators to alert them if law enforcement demands voting materials. Some states have even passed laws requiring that notification and imposing stiff penalties for anyone involved in an unlawful seizure of ballots. Election law scholars have attempted to educate judges about the unique concerns around ballots for when they’re considering warrants and subpoenas for voting materials.

Justin Levitt, a law professor at Loyola University who has worked on voting issues for Democratic administrations, predicted that the Riverside County fight — and the “clarity” of the new state court ruling — will have national repercussions.

“I don’t think there’s a magistrate (judge) in the country who’s going to not think twice about a search warrant” related to elections, Levitt said.

In a video responding to the state Supreme Court’s ruling that he return the ballots, Bianco argued that the court had “ruled against lawful investigations” and said that he was exploring options to appeal to federal courts.

Bianco argued that his investigation of the ballots was justified because he was presented with evidence of a possible crime and he claimed that the court’s decision had undermined public confidence in elections.

“When reasonable evidence is brought to law enforcement and lawful investigations are shut down by the courts, how do you expect people to have faith in our systems,” Bianco asked.

Breaking the chain of custody

The FBI’s Fulton County seizure in January had already put election officials on notice that federal government — which has been instructed by Trump, after his false 2020 election-rigging claims, to make voter probes a priority — was willing to take unprecedented steps to investigate elections.

But the Riverside County warrant highlighted a new risk: that local law enforcement would seek to seize ballots for their own politically tinged investigations into elections.

The sheriff’s office prepared a plan for the ballots to be counted by investigators; Bianco’s lawyer told CNN in March his office had consulted with “experts” and looked at “protocols” when designing the procedures but declined to go into more detail.

Once California Attorney General Rob Bonta, a Democrat, caught wind of warrant, he ordered that Bianco hold off while the state office took a closer look at the issue. When the sheriff seized the ballots anyway, Bonta took him to court. The opinions issued by the California Supreme Court (in addition to Bonta’s case, voters in the county filed their own challenge to the seizure) said Bianco broke the law by ignoring the attorney general’s directives, while concluding that the seizure was unlawful.

The opinion creates a clear precedent for how lower courts in California should act if similar issues arise in the future. However, it will not bind courts in other states, and the laws those courts would be considering when reviewing seizures of ballots will be different than the California laws that led to Thursday’s ruling.

Still, officials in other states and the legal experts that advise them told CNN that a silver lining of the episode was that the tactic was tested in California — a state that was poised to act aggressively in court to shut it down. Bonta’s office has also taken a lead role in the litigation over Trump’s efforts to meddle in election administration and said he’s in conversation with other states ahead of the midterms.

“This is a time for sharing best practices to flagging threats and risks to our shared democratic election system, and to be prepared across state boundaries for what might come next,” Bonta said in a news conference this week.

Election officials prepare

In the wake of the Riverside seizures, the California legislature passed laws to explicitly narrow the circumstances when law enforcement can obtain ballots and to impose criminal penalties for anyone involved in an unlawful attempt to remove ballots from the custody of election officials.

New laws in California, as well as in Connecticut, also require local jurisdictions to quickly notify state officials if they learn of search warrants or other law enforcement actions targeting election materials. State officials have issued guidance about how to handle demands from investigators for ballots, and they engaged in conversations with law enforcement about the sensitives investigating the vote.

Election officials are “working with their state’s attorney general, with county attorneys, with city attorneys to make sure everyone understands who actually has authority and access to any part of the election procedures and processes,” said Tammy Patrick, a former Maricopa County, Arizona, election official who is now the chief programs officer for the National Association of Election Officials.

Making judges aware of the sensitivities has also been part of the effort. With the input of other election law scholars and former judges, Richard Hasen, an election law professor at University of California-Los Angeles, published a white paper seeking to guide judges on how they should assess applications from law enforcement to obtain ballots. Among its recommendations is that judges consider granting investigators access to copies of ballots, rather than the ballots themselves, to maintain chain of custody.

Becker said that the response to the Georgia and Riverside episodes may give pause to others who might want to replicate similar ballot seizures elsewhere.

“I think it’s nearly impossible we’re going to see another one of those, particularly in the post-election environment, even though election officials are making sure they’re prepared,” Becker said.

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