The California Supreme Court ruled Sheriff Chad Bianco violated the state's election law when his office seized ballots from the Riverside County registrar.
The justices ruled unanimously that Bianco must return the ballots to the county’s top election administrator and “refrain from further handling” them. In a second ruling, the court also held that Bianco broke the law when he ignored directives from the state’s attorney general to hold off on his plans to execute a search warrant to seize the ballots last March.
Bianco’s argument “overlooks 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,” Guerrero wrote.
“There is no need to introduce this risk because the Elections Code already contains its own comprehensive procedures for recounting and examining ballots, including for law enforcement purposes, without exposing them to alteration or tampering — unlike the unlawful seizure that occurred here,” the ruling read.
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