A recent episode involving a California sheriff who obtained a search warrant and seized more than 650,000 ballots from a November 2025 special election has raised the troubling possibility that a similar incident could occur while a state's vote-counting process is still underway. This Report explores these concerns and offers guidance to the state and local actors best positioned to address them.
Starting in February 2026, the sheriff of Riverside County, California obtained a series of search warrants and seized more than 650,000 ballots cast just months earlier in a special statewide election on a ballot measure to redraw California’s congressional districts.1 The sheriff, who was running for governor at the time, claimed he was investigating a local citizen group’s allegation that county election officials had inflated the vote total by nearly 46,000 votes and vowed to count the ballots by hand.2 However, this alleged discrepancy had already been publicly debunked by the local election administrator, and the sheriff’s action was reportedly the first time in U.S. history that a sheriff had taken possession of previously cast ballots.3 Despite this, the sheriff defended his actions as just a “normal law enforcement” investigation, asking “Why not just get to the bottom of it and see what the difference in the numbers were?”4
Local law enforcement has a legitimate role in protecting free and fair elections by providing security and responding to public safety emergencies. But the Riverside County sheriff’s unprecedented seizure immediately raised serious concerns. In addition to resting on an already-debunked alleged irregularity, it circumvented California’s established processes for raising and resolving allegations of election irregularities—processes that do not contemplate a role for law enforcement and that the citizen group itself chose not to pursue.5 And it disrupted the state’s chain of custody requirements for ballots, which carefully prescribe rules governing who may handle election materials, under what circumstances, and how.6 In response, multiple lawsuits were promptly filed challenging the sheriff’s seizure,7 and the California Supreme Court has, for now, ordered the sheriff to halt any further action while that litigation plays out.8 As of this writing, the ballots remain in the sheriff’s possession.9
Importantly, the Riverside County incident—although the first known instance of a local law enforcement official seizing ballots—is not the only example from this year of law enforcement officials pursuing election materials based on dubious grounds. Similar efforts have been carried out by federal law enforcement agents in Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, and Wisconsin investigating conspiracy-fueled theories about the 2020 presidential election. And while all of these episodes centered on elections that had already been certified, they raise the troubling possibility of something similar occurring while a state's vote-counting process is still underway. Such a scenario would significantly compound every one of the concerns the Riverside County seizure raised. It would not only disrupt the chain of custody for ballots whose count has not yet been certified, but it could also prevent election officials from completing the count in the first instance, prevent post-election processes provided for under state law to be conducted, and cast doubt on the legitimacy of the results.
This Report explores these concerns and offers guidance to those best positioned to address them. Others have already offered valuable guidance that focuses primarily on the threat from federal law enforcement seizing election materials.10 This Report instead focuses on the threat posed by local law enforcement, like sheriffs, and on potential responses by actors such as state courts, attorneys general, election administrators, potential litigants, and state legislatures.
Part I provides background on recent, unprecedented efforts by law enforcement officials to obtain election records in several states, with particular attention given to the Riverside County episode, since it involved a local official rather than a federal agency and is therefore most directly relevant to this Report. Part II then examines the statutory frameworks states have developed to safeguard the ballot-counting process and to resolve concerns about potential irregularities. And Part III concludes with guidance on how various actors can prepare for potential law enforcement seizures of election materials before the next incident occurs.
The Riverside County episode occurred against a backdrop of increasing federal law enforcement efforts to seize election materials—efforts that, as detailed below, provide important context for, and may have precipitated, what unfolded in California. Today’s concerns about law enforcement seizures of election materials largely trace back to the 2020 election, when some of President Trump’s advisers pushed him to order the military to seize voting machines in swing states, going as far as drafting an executive order.11 President Trump’s then-attorney general rejected the plan, but the President later told the New York Times that he regretted his decision not to pursue it.12 And since returning to office, President Trump has repeatedly made unfounded claims of election fraud and urged federal law enforcement to investigate them.13
Taking the President’s cue, the FBI and Department of Justice have, since early 2026, pursued election records from local election officials in at least four states—each traced to widely discredited claims of irregularities in the 2020 election.14 In January, the FBI executed a search warrant at Fulton County, Georgia’s election hub, seizing hundreds of boxes of 2020 election materials.15 This was reportedly the first time the Justice Department has ever seized state election records over the objection of state election officials,16 and it occurred despite the FBI’s own Atlanta field office having reportedly determined, before the raid occurred, that the warrant lacked evidence of criminal wrongdoing.17 Federal law enforcement has since pursued similar efforts in three other states: subpoenaing records from a much-maligned state legislative audit of the 2020 election in Arizona,18 demanding 2024 ballots from a Michigan county based on debunked allegations of 2020 election irregularities,19 and interviewing election officials in Wisconsin about the 2020 election.20
The Riverside County episode, which offers the clearest example of the distinct threat potentially posed by state and local law enforcement, occurred in this same climate. In February and March of this year, the Riverside County sheriff obtained a series of search warrants from a county judge authorizing his department to seize more than 650,000 ballots cast in California’s November 2025 special election.21
The sheriff’s warrant application was premised on an alleged election irregularity that had already been debunked by the time the first search was executed.22 More specifically, a local, self-proclaimed “election integrity” group alleged that local election officials counted 45,896 more ballots in the election than had actually been cast.23 The group had shared its claims with the sheriff’s office, which led to a deputy filing a warrant application based on the claims.24
Separately, the group also made its claims public, resulting in the county board of supervisors holding a special public meeting in February 2026 to discuss them.25 At this meeting, the county’s registrar of voters addressed the citizen group’s claims for more than an hour, explaining that the group had made several errors.26 First, the group’s figure did not account for confidential votes, conditional voter registration votes, or provisional votes.27 Second, the group erroneously relied on preliminary data that would not account for ballots that were subsequently verified through the state’s ballot curing process.28 And third, rather than using data from the county’s electronic system that tracks and counts each ballot, the group relied upon error-prone handwritten logs completed by poll workers.29 These logs, the registrar explained, are not used in counting ballots, and they would not capture certain types of ballots, including provisional ballots.30
The actual discrepancy, the registrar explained, was that 103 more ballots were counted than had been cast, out of more than 650,000 total ballots in the county—approximately a 0.016% error rate.31 This figure was later independently confirmed by a local news outlet.32 The registrar attributed the discrepancy to human error by fatigued election workers,33 and noted that the error rate was in line with what other counties saw and within an acceptable margin of error under state law.34 This public explanation, however, did not stop the sheriff’s office from executing search warrants and seizing more than 650,000 ballots from the registrar’s office to investigate the same discrepancy.35
Once the warrants were executed, the sheriff and his deputies took possession of the seized ballots and began conducting what they described as their own hand count of the results.36 California's secretary of state and attorney general both publicly questioned the sheriff’s authority to conduct anything resembling a recount of election results and said the episode threatened to undermine public confidence in elections.37
The seizure prompted both litigation and legislation, discussed in greater detail in Part III. Multiple parties sued to halt the investigation and compel the return of the ballots, and the California Supreme Court has, for now, ordered the sheriff to take no further action while that litigation proceeds.38 In the meantime, the state legislature enacted a law more explicitly prohibiting the kind of seizure the sheriff carried out.39
While the Riverside County episode remains, to date, the only instance of a local sheriff actually seizing ballots, some observers have expressed concern that other local officials could follow this example.40 That concern is heightened by a broader political climate in which the President says he regrets not seizing voting machines in 2020 and in which federal law enforcement has pursued states’ election materials on dubious grounds. As Stephen Richer, the former Republican recorder of Maricopa County, observed, there has been “an increasing appetite for seizing materials for the sake of simply seizing materials.”41 And while each of the examples described above concerned an election that had already been certified, that “appetite for seizing materials” raises the concern that a similar seizure could occur this November while a state’s ballot-counting process is still underway. The next part of this Report examines why that scenario would be so problematic.
Were ballots to be seized while a state’s ballot-counting process is still underway, it would pose at least two distinct and serious risks, both of which would carry serious consequences for public confidence in the legitimacy of the process. First, it would likely prevent election officials from completing the count and certifying the results within the timelines required by state law, potentially disrupting the democratic transfer of power. And second, it would break states’ ballot chain-of-custody requirements, which are the primary mechanisms states use to protect the integrity of ballots throughout the counting process. This part examines each risk.
State election codes establish a carefully sequenced set of post-election processes through which ballots are counted, results are certified, and concerns about irregularities are raised and resolved. Each step depends on the completion of the one before it, meaning that disrupting any single step risks cascading consequences for the entire process.
The sequence begins on election night with an initial—and unofficial—count at the precinct level.42 State laws then require that local election officials conduct an official count most commonly known as the canvass, during which officials verify, reconcile, and tally all the valid ballots cast in their jurisdiction.43 Once the canvass is complete, officials review and formally certify the results.44
The ballot counting process does not end there, however. States also provide mechanisms for recounting and contesting election results—processes specifically designed to catch, and where necessary, correct the types of irregularities that law enforcement officials have cited as a reason for conducting investigations. As to recounts, these procedures are often automatically triggered when the margin falls within a specified threshold or, alternatively, are available upon request.45 And nearly every state provides a formal contest procedure in which candidates or, in some states, voters may present evidence of irregularities or unlawful conduct to a court or other tribunal and seek to rectify the results or order a new election.46
Importantly, each of these steps in the ballot counting process must be completed within a prescribed timeline. The exact timelines may vary by state and even by office, but state laws commonly require that the canvass be completed within a few weeks after the election, that results be certified promptly thereafter, that any recount be requested within days of certification, and that election contests be commenced within a few weeks of certification.47 These deadlines are essential to ensuring that results are finalized in time for winning candidates to be seated when their terms begin, which is often relatively soon after the election.
Seizing ballots during this process threatens to disrupt the carefully sequenced procedures described above—including those specifically designed to catch and correct irregularities—by removing the very materials election officials need to complete them. Because the steps are interdependent, a delay to any one of them risks delaying everything that follows, ultimately threatening the orderly and timely transfer of democratic power.
In addition to disrupting the counting process itself, seizing election materials would also break states’ carefully prescribed legal requirements for how ballots must be handled and secured. Collectively known as chain-of-custody requirements, these provisions serve as the primary mechanism states use to ensure that the ballots being counted, recounted, audited, or litigated over have not been tampered with and are in fact the same ballots that were actually cast.48 And as the examples below illustrate, this framework consistently assigns responsibility for handling ballots to trained elections officials—not law enforcement.
The chain-of-custody requirements can begin even before election officials receive ballots from voters. States commonly require that blank ballots be delivered to polling locations in sealed packages, with the seal broken only in public view.49 States also commonly require polling place workers to open and exhibit the ballot box in front of witnesses before voting begins, to demonstrate that it is empty, and prohibit the box from being reopened until after the polls have closed except in narrow circumstances.50
The chain of custody continues once voting begins. Consider ballots cast at traditional polling locations. After the polls close, state laws commonly require precinct-level workers to count the ballots cast at their polling location before sealing and transporting them, or to seal the ballots without counting them and transport them directly to a central tabulating center where they will be counted.51 Illustrating the level of detail in these requirements, Illinois law requires precinct workers, once they have counted the ballots, to “securely bind” the ballots in a box “with a soft cord having a tensile strength of 60 pounds,” wrap the box “with heavy wrapping paper” that the workers must all sign, and then “seal the package with filament over the signatures and around the package lengthwise and crosswise, at least twice each way.”52
States have similar rules for other forms of cast ballots, including those cast by mail, cast early in person, or returned via drop box.53 States typically specify in detail who from the public may observe the counting process, who may handle the ballots, what storage containers must be used, how any transfers must be documented, and what other security and transparency measures must be observed.54
These chain-of-custody requirements then extend through the official counting process. State laws typically require ballots to remain under seal during this process and be opened only in narrow, specified circumstances.55 States also commonly impose additional safeguards on any unsealing, such as requiring that it occur only in the presence of a bipartisan team of officials. States typically provide for public observation as well, whether by members of the general public or designated representatives of campaigns or political parties, allowing the public to see for itself whether ballots are being handled properly.56
The chain of custody continues even after the official count is complete. States typically require that ballots be resealed and maintained under secure conditions for a specified retention period.57 Federal law adds a further layer of retention requirements, requiring election officials to preserve all records relating to federal elections for at least 22 months after the election.58 During this period, ballots may be removed from their sealed containers only for specified purposes, such as pursuant to a court order, or to conduct a recount, election contest, or audit; otherwise, they must remain under seal until the end of the retention period, at which point officials are authorized to destroy them.59
Critically, the chain-of-custody requirements are not merely aspirational—they carry serious legal consequences when broken. Courts have ruled that a break in the chain of custody can prevent ballots from being recounted.60 Election officials, too, have raised concerns about whether they may lawfully count ballots where the chain of custody was not maintained. For example, 37 ballots in a Michigan city were initially not counted in a tight November 2025 mayoral contest after three non-election officials entered the city clerk’s sealed office where the ballots were kept, violating the state’s chain-of-custody requirements;61 a state appellate court eventually ordered the ballots counted.62 And further underscoring just how seriously states take these requirements, many states have enacted criminal penalties for violations of the provisions.63
Local law enforcement often has a legitimate role in the election process, like responding to safety emergencies. But with respect to the custody of ballots and other election materials, these chain-of-custody requirements contemplate, at most, a very narrow role. When law enforcement is mentioned at all, its role is typically limited to a specific task, such as transporting or temporarily serving as custodian of election equipment, and only at the direction of another official.64 In Texas, for instance, a sheriff or police chief may serve as custodian of the key to a ballot box during the post-election period, but not of the ballots themselves, and state law makes it a misdemeanor for that officer to “knowingly relinquish” custody of the key.65 And in New Hampshire, state police may collect ballots from local election officials in narrow circumstances, but only at the direction of designated state officials, such as the attorney general or secretary of state.66
Taken together, these requirements form a comprehensive framework—extending from before ballots are even cast through long after results are certified—that both protects the integrity of the ballots themselves and ensures the process remains transparent to the public. Importantly, this framework consistently assigns responsibility to trained election officials rather than law enforcement. A law enforcement seizure would break this framework, replacing carefully designed procedures with the improvised, closed-door handling of ballots by officers who lack the training or legal authority that election officials have. This, in turn, could destroy the integrity of the ballots and undermine the public’s ability to observe and trust the process.
The potential for a local law enforcement seizure of ballots during the ballot-counting process presents a real risk to the integrity of elections. Fortunately, courts, attorneys general, potential litigants, and legislatures each have meaningful options available to reduce that risk.
This part proceeds accordingly. It begins with state courts, which are the last—and most immediate—line of defense against unwarranted seizures, since law enforcement generally cannot act without a court’s approval. It then turns to state attorneys general, who can proactively offer guidance that might shape how local law enforcement and courts approach these questions. Next is litigation, which offers an important but incomplete remedy once preventive efforts have failed and a seizure has already occurred. And it closes with potential legislative reforms.
Perhaps the most important thing courts can do in the immediate term is to familiarize themselves with the statutory frameworks discussed in Part II and how they interact with their states’ standards for law enforcement search warrants; that way, if law enforcement seeks a warrant or otherwise attempts to obtain election materials, judges will be prepared. This education can happen at the individual level, through judges’ own initiative, as well as at the institutional level, through guidance issued by state supreme courts.
At the individual level, a useful starting point is a resource the UC Berkeley Edley Center on Law & Democracy has published specifically to help courts evaluate law enforcement requests for election materials.67 Although this resource was written primarily for federal magistrate judges, its guidance is instructive for state court judges as well, though the precise considerations for a warrant application may vary depending on a state’s own jurisprudence.
Given how much is at stake in disrupting a state’s carefully constructed chain-of-custody protections—particularly while ballots are still being counted—the Edley Center encourages courts to apply heightened scrutiny to warrant applications seeking election materials. Key considerations include: whether the warrant application rests on sufficient evidence of a specific crime rather than general allegations; whether the affiant has sufficient training and experience to draw conclusions about the alleged crimes or evidence sought; whether there is evidence that the state’s existing election safeguards were not followed; whether the specific allegations were previously investigated by state or county officials, and if so, what the results were; and whether there is enough information for a judge to make an independent determination about probable cause.68
Based on these considerations, the Edley Center has a few recommendations. When a warrant application presents a novel legal issue, judges should consider holding the application and sua sponte seeking expedited amicus briefing to get the benefit of outside expertise.69 Where a seizure might be warranted but could disrupt an active election, courts should consider ways to minimize disruptions, such as by delaying a warrant’s execution, limiting seizure to copies of materials to preserve original records, or to permit local elections officials to observe the search.70 And when the relevant considerations point against a seizure, judges should be prepared to deny the warrant.
At the institutional level, state supreme courts can use their supervisory power to issue guidance to lower courts on how to evaluate law enforcement requests for election materials, providing a more systematic approach to the individual-level education discussed above. The supervisory power refers to state supreme courts’ authority to oversee the administration of justice in their states’ courts.71 Every state high court claims this authority, typically either through explicit constitutional provisions or by inference from their role as head of the judicial branch.72 Unlike traditional adjudicative power, this authority operates independently of specific cases or controversies, enabling courts to act proactively rather than waiting for a dispute to arise.73 Interested parties, including state attorneys general, election officials, and civic organizations, can even petition their high courts to take such proactive steps.
State supreme courts have used this power in the elections context in the recent past, with the Arizona and Michigan Supreme Courts issuing election-related guidance to their lower courts ahead of the 2024 election.74 Courts could offer similar guidance that specifically addresses warrants and law enforcement efforts to obtain election materials. They could, for example, alert trial-level judges to the potential for law enforcement to seek court-approval to seize election materials and instruct those judges to weigh the considerations discussed above when presented with warrant applications or similar requests, establishing a clear framework in advance.
Another proactive step would be for state attorneys general and election administrators to issue advisory opinions or other written guidance clarifying the legal framework governing law enforcement’s access to election materials. Such guidance could be directed at election officials and, in states where the attorney general has supervisory authority over local law enforcement,75 directly to law enforcement officers.
This would not be wholly new territory. State officials already issue guidance to law enforcement on other election-related matters, such as advising how officers should respond to disruptions or emergency situations at early voting locations, polling places, or ballot drop boxes.76 But reporting earlier this year found that election officials have largely been left “in the dark” about how to respond to the kind of ballot seizure scenario Riverside County experienced.77
Guidance addressing that gap could answer several questions the Riverside County episode raised. This includes whether local law enforcement has any legitimate role in the ballot counting process, under what circumstances law enforcement has authority to seize election materials, and what showing is required before a warrant for election materials may be sought. It could spell out the consequences for law enforcement officials who disregard it, including potentially losing entitlement to a state-funded legal defense,78 and direct local administrators to immediately contact the attorney general or state election officials if law enforcement seeks access to their materials. Guidance addressing those points would benefit election officials and local law enforcement officers alike, and could give state courts a legal framework to draw on when evaluating warrant applications.
Litigation is also an option for responding to a law enforcement seizure of election materials, though it may not fully avoid the harms described in Part II. This is because litigation cannot restore the chain of custody once broken, and because a lawsuit may not be resolved in time to prevent disruption to an ongoing ballot-counting process. Still, litigation remains valuable, as it can potentially pause an attempted seizure, secure the return of seized materials, and deter future seizures by raising their legal and political costs. Potential challengers, like state attorneys general, civic organizations, candidates, and voters, can all prepare for that possibility in advance.
Two lawsuits filed in response to the Riverside County episode offer useful roadmaps for how such challenges might be structured.79 One suit was filed by the California Attorney General, who made two claims: first, that the warrants were constitutionally defective because they failed to allege the commission of a specific crime or identify any person believed to have committed one; and second, that under the state constitution, the attorney general has supervisory authority over county sheriffs and that the Riverside County Sheriff was in open defiance of the attorney general’s lawful directives to cease the investigation.80
Separately, the UCLA Voting Rights Project filed suit on behalf of four voters, arguing that the seizure violated the state elections code by bypassing the legislature’s carefully prescribed safeguards for ballot custody and transparency, and that the sheriff’s hand count of the seized ballots amounted to an unauthorized recount conducted outside the public procedures state law requires.81 Of course, the sheriff disputes the claims in both lawsuits, but the California Supreme Court has halted the sheriff’s investigation while the litigation is ongoing.82 The court held oral argument on August 24, 2026.83
Potential challengers in other states can prepare to bring similar suits by identifying in advance which of these theories, or analogous theories under their own state’s law, would be available to them. Civic organizations, candidates, and voters can also identify potential plaintiffs and claims in advance, so that a challenge can be filed quickly if a seizure occurs.
Perhaps the most durable protection against a law enforcement seizure of election materials is a clear statutory prohibition. As discussed in Part II, states’ existing frameworks for counting ballots typically contemplate no role—or at most a very limited one—for local law enforcement. State legislatures could build on this by enacting legislation that more clearly prohibits or restricts local law enforcement from seizing ballots.
California offers a model. In the wake of the Riverside County episode, the state legislature passed a law addressing several dimensions of the problem.84 It prohibits unauthorized access, distribution, modification, or seizure of voter rolls, voter lists, or voting technology by law enforcement agents, including federal agents, absent a court order or an investigation into a specific violation of California law.85 It restricts peace officers from interfering with election administration or disrupting election workers carrying out their duties, except in public safety emergencies.86 It makes it a crime to remove cast ballots from election officials.87 And it requires the state attorney general to issue guidance to county election officials on how to respond to law enforcement requests for access to areas where ballots are cast, processed, or handled—the kind of guidance discussed above that other state attorneys general could provide on their own initiative, even without similar legislation.88 Other states could consider enacting similar protections.
The developments described in this Report paint a troubling picture: Law enforcement agencies at both the local and federal levels have used debunked allegations of election misconduct to seize or access election materials outside the frameworks contemplated by state law. And while the incidents so far have concerned elections that have already been certified, they raise the even more concerning possibility of a similar seizure occurring while ballots are still being counting—something that could disrupt the integrity of the process and even threaten the democratic transfer of power.
But none of this is inevitable. This Report has outlined concrete steps that courts, attorneys general, election administrators, potential litigants, and legislatures can take now to guard against it before ballots are put at risk.