The California Supreme Court has ordered a Republican county sheriff who seized more than half a million 2025 election ballots to pause his probe into election fraud allegations while the judges review the legal challenge against it. The Wednesday order came after California Attorney General Rob Bonta, a Democrat, last month asked the court to step in. A voting rights group is also challenging the ballot seizure. The dispute started earlier this year and escalated last month when Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco seized 1,000 boxes of election materials to investigate a complaint from a local citizens group about the ballot count from a November 2025 special election on redistricting.