Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, a leading Republican candidate for governor, has seized more than 650,000 ballots from last November’s election and is investigating whether they were fraudulently counted.
“The test is simple: Physically count the ballots and compare that result to the total votes recorded,” Bianco said at a news conference Friday.
The unusual investigation received a sharp rebuke from California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta said in a statement Friday that it is “unprecedented in both scope and scale” and appears to be “not based on facts or evidence.”
“There is no indication of widespread voter fraud anywhere in the United States,” Bonta said. “Counts, recounts, hand counts, audits and court cases all support this.”
Bianco’s department on Feb. 26, according to Bonta’s office. seized Nearly 1,000 boxes of ballot material in Riverside County related to the November election for Proposition 50, which temporarily redrawn the state’s congressional districts in favor of Democrats in response to partisan redistricting in Republican states, including Texas.
The sheriff said his investigators are looking into allegations from a local citizens’ group, which “did their own audit” and found that the county’s numbers were erroneously inflated by more than 45,000 votes – a claim that has been rejected by local elections officials.
President Trump, who remains want to take off Over his 2020 election defeat, has continued to amplify election conspiracy theories and has repeatedly called on the federal government to “nationalize” state-run elections in response to what he calls widespread fraud.
Bonta and California Secretary of State Shirley Weber, both Democrats, have vowed to fight federal interference that could affect voting in California, including efforts to seize election records, as the FBI recently did in Georgia.
Bianco is a vocal Trump supporter who said in a support video In 2024, after 30 years of putting criminals in prison, he thought it was “time to put a criminal in the White House – Trump 2024, baby” – referencing Trump’s conviction by a New York jury for falsifying business records.
Bianco’s investigation, which includes all ballots cast in Riverside County in November, raises questions about how he would handle the election denial movement if elected governor.
A poll released last week by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Government Studies and co-sponsored by The Times showed Bianco and conservative commentator Steve Hilton leading by a slim margin in a crowded field of gubernatorial candidates in the left-leaning state.
Last time, Proposition 50 passed with 56% of the vote in Riverside County — a margin of more than 82,000 ballots.
A citizens’ group called the Riverside Election Integrity Team said it conducted an audit that found 45,896 more ballots were counted than were cast.
in a long february presentation At the Riverside County Board of Supervisors, Registrar of Voters Art Tinoco disputed that figure, saying it was based on a misunderstanding of raw data that had not been fully processed.
Tinoco said the actual discrepancy was 103 votes, a difference of 0.016%, well below the state’s preferred 2% error margin for certifying the results he reported.
Bianco said Friday that “there are no acceptable errors, small or large, in our elections.”
The sheriff did not name the Riverside Election Integrity Team, but the description matches those of the allegations brought before them by “a group of citizen volunteers.”
Bianco said the investigation was “not a recount” of the Proposition 50 contest and was “as much about proving that the poll is accurate as it is about showing otherwise – we won’t know until the count is complete.”
Bonta said his office has “attempted to work collaboratively” with the Sheriff’s Department to understand the basis of the investigation. The sheriff, Bonta said, “has delayed, obstructed, and otherwise refused to work in good faith with us” and failed to provide most documents sought.
“We are concerned that there is not sufficient justification to confiscate every ballot cast in this highly populated county,” an official with Bonta’s office said in an interview Friday night.
one in March 4th letter To Bianco, the Attorney General cited Bianco’s plan to use Sheriff’s Department employees, “who are not trained and have no experience” to count ballots.
“Let me be clear: this is unacceptable,” Bonta wrote. “Your decision to seize ballots and begin counting them based on vague, unfounded allegations about irregularities in the November special election results sets a dangerous precedent and will only sow distrust in our elections. You are also in flagrant violation of my instructions.”
At his press conference Friday, Bianco hit back by calling Bonta an “embarrassment to law enforcement.”
The Riverside County Superior Court judge, Bianco said, has ordered the appointment of a special master to oversee the counting of ballots.
In a statement Friday, Secretary of State Weber said, “The sheriff’s claim that his deputies know how to count is admirable. The fact is that he and his deputies are not election officials and do not have expertise in election administration.”
