Sheriff Chad Bianco can’t catch a break. That’s a good thing
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- During his run for governor, Bianco seized more than 650,000 ballots from the Proposition 50 redistricting race.
- The state Supreme Court heard arguments in two lawsuits over the ballot seizure. Things did not seem to go well for the sheriff.
Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco is not lazy, I’ll give him that.
During his unsuccessful run for governor this year, you may recall that the MAGA devotee found time to seize more than 650,000 ballots from the Proposition 50 redistricting race, claiming he suspected there were tens of thousands more votes cast than there should have been — a favorite (and false) complaint of election deniers.
There were not.
Undaunted by reality, and likely law, Bianco announced he was going to have his deputies recount the votes, even though this kind of interference in the chain of custody of ballots never had occurred anywhere in the United States.
This unprecedented seizure of ballots — something election-denier-in-chief President Trump has been hinting at trying himself for years — quickly became a national news story, and a national concern.
With midterms looming and more than one MAGA sheriff out there, what would stop another conspiracy-minded, badge-wearing maverick from doing something similar this November, potentially throwing our national election into turmoil?
The specter of Bianco setting a precedent for like-minded conspiracists to follow prompted two significant lawsuits — one led by the election experts at the UCLA Voting Rights Project and the other from state Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta.
The state’s high court heard arguments Monday in the dispute over whether Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco had the authority to seize more than 600,000 ballots in last year’s special election in what he claimed was an investigation into potential voter fraud.
The state Supreme Court heard arguments in those cases Monday, and while we’ll have to wait for the official rulings, things did not seem to go well for the sheriff.
What surprised me most, or maybe just relieved me, was how thin Bianco’s arguments were to support his actions. In the end, his legal team came with little more than contortions and cartwheels, trying to twist Bianco’s overreach into existing law.
His lawyer, Bradley Hertz, attempted to argue that legislators, when crafting laws protecting ballots, meant different rules to apply to investigations of elections preceding formal prosecutions. If that sounds confusing, it’s because it is.
Hertz seemingly was trying to convince the court that Bianco legally could pull his shenanigans as long as he didn’t actually find criminal wrongdoing, which would trigger a different set of rules.
“That seems bizarre,” Justice Goodwin H. Liu said during a back-and-forth with Hertz.
Indeed.
But it was Justice Joshua Groban who hit at the national implications of what Bianco had done — and what it could mean for the midterms if this court ruled in his favor.
“It seems like under your broad view of the warrant power ... the sheriff could could seize ballots even before election day, right?” Groban asked. “Even before they were counted.”
It’s terrible to have ballots seized after they’re counted. It’s devastating if they were to be taken before there was an official tally, because how would anyone trust that there hadn’t been tampering? Simply seizing uncounted ballots, no matter what happens next, would create such paranoia and uncertainty that the election results almost certainly would be called into question — something that could play into the favor of, say, a wannabe authoritarian who fears he’s likely to lose a fair vote count.
Even Hertz seemed to acknowledge such a scenario was bad.
“If search warrants were allowed during the election or preelection, that would obviously wreak havoc,” he said. “There would be, kind of, a cat out of the bag, so to speak. You can’t count ballots if they’re not in the possession of the registrar.”
But then Hertz tried to come up with logic that what Bianco was arguing wouldn’t mean that ballots could be seized anytime, anyhow, and that instead courts could find a way to allow seizing only after the official count. The court did not seem convinced that this was a good idea, or that that is what the law should or did allow.
If that case didn’t go well for Bianco, it was the second case brought by Bonta that really might end up being a hard loss.
For years, decades really, in California and across the country, there has been a group of sheriffs who have argued they are a law onto themselves because they are elected, not hired or appointed. Some of these sheriffs argue that they are literally above federal law.
In California, there has at times been momentum to rein in this line of thinking by creating clear boundaries in law, but the state Legislature always has backed down in the face of opposition from law enforcement.
One potential curb on sheriffs’ power comes from a single line in our state Constitution that seems to say the state attorney general has supervisory power over them. But the meaning and power of this particular clause has long been debated and seldom invoked.
Bonta, however, invoked it against Bianco, claiming the the sheriff had to back off the ballot-seizing because Bonta had authority to order him to stop. Bianco did stop, to his credit. But the standoff was heard by the court Monday and likely will force clarity on an issue that has long lacked it.
Here again, the justices seemed amenable to Bonta’s argument that sheriffs, at least to some extent, answer to him as the state’s chief law enforcement officer. But the justices seemed far more cautious on this issue, and even the state’s attorney conceded that “it’s actually pretty remarkable how little our Constitution says about county sheriffs.”
If Bianco loses on this issue, it would be huge. It would mean that Bianco not only overstepped his power by seizing the ballots, but that he also had forever lessened the power of California sheriffs by clarifying they do answer to the attorney general. I’m sure that will be very popular with other sheriffs.
We’ll see what the justices say, but at least it seems likely that this embarrassing chapter of California election history will end in favor of the law, and democracy.
Maybe Bianco really does believe his conspiracy theories. After all, “there are some people who believe they had breakfast with Elvis on Sunday,” pointed out Chad Dunn, who argued the case for the Voting Rights Project.
“We can’t satisfy them,” Dunn warned.
More importantly, we shouldn’t — even when they wear a badge. Our laws already have robust protections for elections, and rogue sheriffs aren’t one of them.
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Ideas expressed in the piece
- The column argues that Sheriff Chad Bianco’s seizure of more than 650,000 Proposition 50 ballots was an unprecedented intrusion into the election process that threatened the integrity of the vote and the chain of custody for ballots.
- It contends that Bianco’s justifications were legally flimsy, describing his legal team’s arguments as strained attempts to retrofit his conduct into existing law rather than grounded in clear statutory authority.
- The piece highlights that California Supreme Court justices appeared skeptical of Bianco’s position, pressing his lawyer on how such a broad view of warrant power could allow sheriffs to seize ballots even before they are counted, which the column presents as a dangerous national precedent for election-denier sheriffs elsewhere.[2][9][11]
- It further maintains that seizing ballots after counting is already harmful, but taking them before an official tally would be devastating, because it would fuel paranoia about tampering and give authoritarian-leaning politicians a pretext to undermine legitimate results.
- The column emphasizes that even Bianco’s lawyer acknowledged that allowing search warrants during or before an election would wreak havoc, yet, in the column’s telling, still sought a narrow legal theory to permit post-count ballot seizures without convincing the justices.
- It asserts that Bianco’s actions reflect a broader movement among some sheriffs who claim to be nearly independent of state and even federal oversight, and argues that this “constitutional sheriff” mindset has flourished for decades because legislators have repeatedly backed down from clarifying limits on sheriff power.
- The piece presents Attorney General Rob Bonta’s lawsuits and reliance on a state constitutional clause giving the attorney general supervisory authority over sheriffs as a crucial test of whether sheriffs can be compelled to respect state election law and statewide democratic interests.[2][3][9][11]
- It suggests that if the court affirms Bonta’s authority, Bianco will not only lose on the ballot seizure itself but also permanently narrow the autonomy of California sheriffs by establishing that they are subject to the attorney general’s supervision.[2][9][12]
- The column concludes that existing laws already provide robust protections for elections and that indulging conspiracy-minded officials, even when they wear a badge, undermines democracy rather than safeguards it, framing Bianco’s conduct as a cautionary tale about the dangers of rogue law enforcement actors in electoral matters.
Different views on the topic
- Supporters of Bianco’s actions argue that the ballot seizure was part of a legitimate criminal investigation into alleged discrepancies in the Proposition 50 vote count, pointing to complaints from a local “election integrity” group that claimed tens of thousands more votes were logged than there were ballots.[1][7][10]
- Bianco has described the operation as a fact-finding mission designed to physically recount the ballots and compare them with official tallies, maintaining that the investigation was aimed at verifying, not undermining, the outcome of the redistricting election.[1][4][7]
- His legal team contends that the seizure was authorized by search warrants signed by a judge, including a jurist identified in reporting as a political ally, and argues that this judicial oversight demonstrates that law enforcement followed proper procedures rather than acting lawlessly.[1][4][9]
- Bianco and allies have characterized the backlash from Attorney General Bonta and voting-rights advocates as politically motivated, suggesting that Democratic officials are using the courts to shield a redistricting measure that benefited their party and to discredit a Republican sheriff running for governor.[4][5][6][10]
- Some law-enforcement organizations and local prosecutors have backed aspects of Bianco’s claims, arguing that sheriffs need broad investigative authority, including over election-related matters, to respond to citizen complaints about potential fraud or mismanagement and to restore confidence where voters suspect irregularities.[2][6][9]
- Defenders of robust sheriff independence point to the fact that sheriffs are elected officials and contend that heavy-handed supervision by the attorney general could erode local control, weaken direct accountability to county voters, and centralize too much power in statewide officeholders.[1][9][11]
- From this perspective, the litigation over Bianco’s investigation raises concerns that future sheriffs might be chilled from probing credible election complaints, out of fear that any aggressive inquiry could be portrayed as partisan or unlawful and swiftly blocked by state authorities.[1][5][8][11]
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