California Republican sheriff Chad Bianco must return more than 650,000 ballots his department confiscated earlier this year in an unprecedented move that violated election law, a state supreme court ruled on Thursday.
“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,” the chief justice, Patricia Guerrero, wrote in a Thursday opinion.
