All legal documents pertaining to this case obtained by The Riverside Record can be accessed here. All of The Riverside Record’s reporting about Sheriff Chad Bianco’s election investigation can be found here.
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The California Supreme Court today dealt dual blows to Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, finding that his department’s ballot seizure was unlawful and that California Attorney General Rob Bonta’s directives were within the scope of his authority.
“We’re very disappointed in the ruling,” Bianco said in an interview with The Riverside Record, which first reported the story about the department’s investigation. “We’re going to look at our options of appeal or possible federal involvement and assistance in this. We completely disagree with the ruling, and it’s unfortunate.”
In Cervantes v. Bianco, the court said Bianco violated California Elections Code, which requires ballots to remain in the custody of elections officials, even in the event of a criminal investigation.
“[T]his clear custodial command safeguards the integrity of our elections by protecting ballots from alteration, tampering or other improper interference,” the court said in the opinion written by Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero. “While allegations of election improprieties are a very serious matter, our Elections Code contains numerous established mechanisms for investigating and proving misconduct that do not compromise the integrity of voted ballots — contrary to the means employed here.”
At last month’s hearing, Bianco’s attorney Bradley Hertz argued the elections material, including the voted ballots, were not subject to Elections Code and were instead subject to California Penal Code, which allows for the seizure of evidence with a lawfully obtained search warrant. Bianco echoed that sentiment following the court’s ruling and said the justices’ interpretation of the law was incorrect.
“They didn’t just read the law; they interpreted [based] on their own opinion,” he said. “Our attorneys brought it up very specifically…and [the court] completely, completely disregarded that.”
The court’s opinion, however, discusses the argument at length, calling all facets of it “unpersuasive,” and finding that Elections Code provides “robust avenues to investigate and prove [election-related] crimes in a manner that protects the sanctity of ballots as evidence.”
Chad Dunn, legal director for the UCLA Voting Rights Project (VRP), said in a morning news release that the court’s opinion provided important clarity for elections officials, law enforcement and voters.
“The court knocked election deniers off their feet and strengthened our hand in election protection just ahead of the November vote,” Xavier Becerra, VRP senior voting rights advisor and Democratic gubernatorial candidate, said in the same release. “We must use every lever at our disposal to beat back voter interference and intimidation. Californians’ faith and confidence in our elections depend on it.”
The suit was filed on behalf of four Riverside County voters: Riverside Councilmember Clarissa Cervantes, who is also running for Assembly District 58; Indio Councilmember Oscar Ortiz, who unsuccessfully ran for Assembly District 36; Nathan Kempe, the operations director for nonprofit Starting Over Strong, which has been pushing for increased sheriff accountability in the county; and Rebecca Robinson.
As part of its ruling, the court ordered Bianco to return the seized ballots to the custody of the Riverside County Registrar of Voters and also refrain from further handling of the ballots after their return. Bianco said he would comply with the court’s order.
“That’s what law enforcement does,” he said. “We’re not like the attorney general. We’re not like politicians. We abide by the law, and I have a court telling me to do something, so of course I’m going to abide by that ruling.”
California Secretary of State Shirley Weber, who is also on the ballot this November, said in a news release that her office would work with the Riverside County Registrar of Voters (ROV) and the Riverside County Sheriff’s Office (RSO) to ensure the orderly and secure transfer of election materials back to the ROV.
County Executive Officer Jeff Van Wagenen said in an emailed statement to The Record that the ROV would work with the sheriff’s office to ensure the ballots were returned promptly and handled securely.
“The county has confidence in Registrar Art Tinoco and the dedicated professionals in the Registrar of Voters office,” he said. “They have continued to perform their responsibilities under extraordinarily difficult circumstances while remaining focused on the work ahead.”
In his concurring opinion, Justice Goodwin Liu expanded on the difficult position the ROV was put in as a result of RSO’s investigation and chastised Bianco for the actions that led to the court hearing the case.
“This court is prepared to act with dispatch and clarity to ensure that our elections are conducted in accordance with the law. But it should not have come to this,” he wrote. “Although it is the job of courts to decide cases that come before them, we should keep in mind that the events here are ‘extraordinary.’
“Court orders aside, every public official has an independent duty to follow the law,” he continued. “The judiciary serves as an essential backstop, but the rule of law depends in the first instance on the conscientious discharge of that duty by all officials.”
The court, while ordering the ballots returned, stopped short of ordering Bianco to return all non-ballot election materials seized as part of the investigation, but said that would not prevent Bonta from issuing that order under his supervisory authority, which the court affirmed in Bonta v. Bianco.
The court’s opinion in that case, also written by Guerrero, concluded that the state Constitution gave the attorney general the power to give “binding directions to sheriffs regarding a particular investigation.”
The justices also found Bonta’s “clear, specific and lawful directions,” calling for Bianco to pause the investigation, preserve all seized material and provide the Attorney General’s Office with information relating to the investigation were within the scope of that authority.
“The supervisory power the court reaffirmed today that I have over sheriffs, including Sheriff Bianco, is rarely used because it’s rarely needed,” Bonta, who is on the November ballot, said in a morning press conference. “This was an extraordinary case — a sheriff who ignored my clear and lawful directives and blatantly violated the law.”
Bonta said he would use this authority to order Bianco to promptly return all seized materials to the ROV, pursuant to newly enacted SB 1418. After the materials are returned, Bonta said the ROV would follow the “normal course of the law,” which includes the destruction of ballots at the appropriate time.
Bianco, who earlier this year endorsed Republican Michael Gates for attorney general, called the court’s ruling “frightening.”
“If [Bonta] gets elected again, we’re all screwed,” Bianco said. “The power he was just given as a political activist — not as an attorney general, because he is a political activist — there is nothing good going to come out of this for the state of California.”
Bonta said it was his hope, and expectation, that his office would continue to work collaboratively with sheriffs across the state, though he said his office would step in as needed.
“You should expect us to exercise our authority in precisely the types of rare, extraordinary circumstances like this,” he said. “And if another sheriff decides to do something like this, and I don’t believe any sheriff will — I have no reason to believe that — you should expect us to do the same.”
Both cases stemmed from Bianco’s investigation into an alleged discrepancy between the number of ballots cast and ballots counted in last November’s special statewide election as claimed by a group of local residents calling themselves the Riverside Election Integrity Team (REIT).
The group, which conducted its own audit based on materials obtained from the ROV through public records requests, maintains there was a difference of 45,896 between the number of ballots cast and the number of ballots counted.
Tinoco has said the group’s numbers were inaccurate for a number of reasons including ballots missing from its tallies, unvalidated data and human error. The actual discrepancy, the ROV said, was 103 ballots, which Tinoco has said is well within the acceptable margin of error.
Greg Langworthy, a member of REIT who has met with the Riverside County Board of Supervisors and the ROV multiple times about the group’s audits, said he took no issue with the court’s opinions, though it was his hope that the ballots would be counted before they were destroyed.
“The investigation is paused, the ballots are preserved, and so we would just think the next step would be to count them,” he said. “And if you want to count them over in the registrar’s office, that’d be great as long as it’s public and on camera. I think that would be good.”
During his press conference, Bonta said the group’s claims had been “debunked,” and called Bianco’s subsequent investigation “a fishing expedition” that “created a constitutional emergency.”
“More than six months after my office intervened, we’ve seen no evidence that any election crimes were committed that would support the sheriff’s warrants,” he said. “Voting fraudulently is a crime and should be properly investigated…that’s not what this was about.”
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