Defending Against the Unlawful Seizure of Ballots (Cervantes v. Bianco)

On February 26, 2026, Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, who is currently running for Governor of California, executed a search warrant on the Riverside County Registrar of Voters and seized more than 650,000 ballots from the November 2025 special election in California relating to a ballot initiative on redistricting.  

In a press conference, Sheriff Bianco announced that the seizure of ballots is related to a criminal investigation by his office into alleged and unsubstantiated discrepancies in Riverside County’s vote count. The investigation is based on information submitted to his office by a group of private individuals who claimed to have done an audit of the election results and allegedly found a discrepancy of more than 45,000 votes in Riverside County’s totals.  

Those claims were publicly refuted by the Riverside County Registrar of Voters in a presentation that highlighted flaws in the private group’s analysis, as well as the public, but incomplete, data on which they relied.  

California law provides a robust post-election civil process to resolve any challenges to election results or concerns about election procedures. But the Riverside County Sheriff instead bypassed those procedures and used his position to abuse the criminal system by seizing ballots based on claims that were already proven to be baseless.  

Sheriff Bianco’s actions violate California law requiring public officials to maintain clear chain of custody over sensitive election materials, including ballots, and ensuring that only trained election officials conduct recounts, audits and other important post-election procedures.

On March 25, 2026, a group of Riverside County voters filed a petition with the California Supreme Court asking that they order Sheriff Bianco to return the seized ballots to the custody of the Riverside County Registrar of Voters.  

Campaign Legal Center filed an amicus brief on behalf of Common Cause and the League of Women Voters of California in support of the voters’ petition. Our brief made three key arguments:  

The seizure of ballots and other sensitive materials by law enforcement is part of a growing and extremely troubling trend already seen in Georgia, Arizona and Minnesota. Sheriff Bianco’s seizure of ballots from a 2025 election in Riverside County, California, is a clear escalation of this unlawful intrusion by law enforcement into the electoral process.  

The seizure of ballots and election materials by law enforcement outside of clearly established laws and procedures undermines our democracy and the rule of law. Law enforcement actions like those taken in Riverside risk breaking chain of custody over ballots, endangering sensitive voter data and amplifying baseless claims, all of which undermine the freedom to vote.  

This seizure was conducted less than three months before California’s primary in June. Courts must send a clear signal to law enforcement agencies that efforts to disrupt elections will not go unchecked. The California Supreme Court must act now to ensure the timely return of these unlawfully seized ballots.