California Supreme Court pauses sheriff’s Prop 50 voter-fraud probe
California’s high court has put the brakes on an investigation alleging voter fraud in last year’s election to allow a Democratic-favored congressional map redraw.
The California Supreme Court has ordered Riverside County sheriff and gubernatorial candidate Chad Bianco to stop his investigation into alleged voter fraud last November.
This all comes from the election in which Californians approved Proposition 50.
CA court decisions
In a unanimous vote, the justices decided to hear California Attorney General Rob Bonta’s challenge to Bianco’s actions.
The court said Bianco and his staff “are hereby ordered to pause the investigation into the November 2025 special election and preserve all seized items.”
Bonta reacted to the news.
“Today’s decision by the California Supreme Court reins in the destabilizing actions of a rogue Sheriff, prohibiting him from continuing this investigation while our litigation continues,” he said.
Meanwhile, a separate court decided the initial search warrant given to Bianco must be unsealed. That warrant, issued by Bianco ally Judge Jay Kiel, had originally been sealed from public view.
Bianco investigation
The investigation began in February when Bianco got that warrant from Kiel. A citizen group called the Riverside Election Integrity Team claimed the county had nearly 50,000 more ballots than it received.
The county’s registrar of voters said the group just misread the data, and there was no reason to doubt the results.
That didn’t stop Bianco and his team from seizing more than half a million ballots, calling the effort a “fact-finding mission.”
His plan was to physically count the ballots and compare them with the posted results.
That action led to a swift response from Bonta, who said Bianco and his team were not qualified to conduct any sort of recount. He sent several letters to Bianco, pressuring him to stop.
“I am concerned about the potential for this investigation, which is unprecedented in scope and scale, to undermine public confidence in state elections,” Bonta wrote in one of those letters.
Investigation paused
Bonta eventually asked the courts to step in, which is where the Supreme Court’s decision this week stemmed from.
CalMatters and other media outlets in the state had also filed motions in court to unseal the original warrant from Kiel.
“The public should not be forced to navigate these competing allegations without the facts on which the investigation is based,” Jean-Paul Jassy, attorney for the news outlets, wrote in that motion. “Nor does the law require them to.”
Following the legal actions from Bonta, media outlets and the UCLA Voting Rights Project, Bianco said the investigation and the recount were temporarily on hold.
“We are on hold because of the politically motivated lawsuits and court filing,” Bianco said at the time.
Prop 50
Proposition 50 passed handily in very blue California, allowing the state to redistrict to give more favorable districts to Democrats in this year’s midterm election. More than 64% of the vote was in the measure’s favor.
The U.S. Department of Justice sued over the move but was swiftly rejected in court two months later.
It was a direct response from Gov. Gavin Newsom and state Democrats to President Donald Trump asking Texas to redistrict to give Republicans more House seats, leading to a nationwide gerrymandering battle.
Ella Rae Greene, Editor In Chief
