It wasn't that long ago that Republican Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco looked to be in a decent position to make the top two in California's June gubernatorial primary. The dream for conservatives was that he and businessman/pundit Steve Hilton would be the lone survivors of the vote, meaning that whichever candidate won the general election in November, we’d have a Republican governor.
Alas, this is still California, and while Hilton did make it through and is running against former Biden-era HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra, Bianco didn’t make the cut.
He had made plenty of news in February, though, when he seized 650,000 ballots from the November 2025 Proposition 50 election after discrepancies were alleged. Prop. 50 was the Gavin Newsom-led effort to shred the state constitution and conduct redistricting mid-decade and tilt the Golden State field even further to the left. Sadly, it passed, and the gerrymandered new districts are in effect.
California officials are not known to welcome scrutiny — just ask independent journalist Nick Shirley — and they pitched a fit over Bianco’s bold move and took him to court. On Thursday, the state Supreme Court dropped two rulings in their favor.
He must return the ballots, the judges ruled:
Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco broke the law when he seized more than 650,000 ballots and created “a substantial risk to election integrity,” California’s Supreme Court ruled on Thursday morning.
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.
BREAKING: The California Supreme Court ruled that Sheriff Chad Bianco unlawfully seized roughly 650,000 ballots from the 2025 Proposition 50 election, ordering their return and requiring him to comply with Attorney General Rob Bonta's directive to pause his investigation. pic.twitter.com/TehkOF2C0u
— SCOTUS Wire (@scotus_wire) September 24, 2026
Although counting the vote in California often takes weeks and the entire system is widely suspected of allowing fraud, Newsom was quick to gloat over the judgments and crow about how wonderful and safe it all is.
BREAKING!! CA Supreme Court just ruled Riverside Sheriff Chad Bianco illegally seized ballots last year.@CAGovernor Gavin Newsom on this welcome news:
— Governor Newsom Press Office (@GovPressOffice) September 24, 2026
“Today’s ruling affirms that in California we will defend democracy — using every branch of government. And the new laws I… pic.twitter.com/Wbv2c8nFzK
BREAKING!! CA Supreme Court just ruled Riverside Sheriff Chad Bianco illegally seized ballots last year.
@CAGovernor Gavin Newsom on this welcome news:
“Today’s ruling affirms that in California we will defend democracy — using every branch of government. And the new laws I signed just last week add new protections so attacks like this cannot happen again. People deserve to know their ballot is counted and secure, and in California we will do everything we can to protect that constitutional right — this year, and beyond.”
Bonta and Newsom got what they wanted — shutting down the investigation — but here’s what they did not do: provide an answer for why there was a 45,896-vote discrepancy in the Riverside County Prop. 50 initial ballot count. The county registrar has given a complicated explanation of the situation and claimed the final count was accurate, but questions still remain. Why wouldn’t a little more sunshine on the issue be a good thing?
I highly doubt we’ll see any effort to investigate this further, however. The last thing either of those two slick leftist politicians wants is transparency.
Editor’s Note: Gavin Newsom wants to turn America into one big version of California - a failed, overtaxed, dystopian nightmare.
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