Chad Bianco, Riverside County sheriff and a leading Republican candidate for governor, has seized more than 650,000 ballots from last November’s election as part of an investigation he called a “fact-finding mission” to determine whether they were fraudulently counted.
Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, the state’s top law enforcement official, has sharply criticized the investigation, which he called “unprecedented in both scope and scale.”
In March 4th letter Bonta, the sheriff, said the seizure of ballots “sets a dangerous precedent and will only lead to distrust in our elections.” He threatened to take legal recourse if Bianco did not stop his investigation.
Bianco said Friday that his investigators were 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 vehemently rejected by local elections officials.
Here’s what we know.
Why were the ballots taken?
According to Bonta’s office, on February 26, Bianco’s department took away approximately 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.
Bianco said he had a “constitutional duty” to investigate possible crime and that he was not trying to change the election results.
The investigation includes all ballots cast in the county, where Proposition 50 passed with 56% of the vote, a margin of more than 82,000 ballots. Statewide, it passed by a margin of more than 3.3 million ballots with 64% of the vote.
Bianco said he was contacted by “a group of citizen volunteers” who said they had conducted an audit that found 45,896 more ballots were counted than were cast. He did not name the group, but the allegations match those made by a group called the Riverside Election Integrity Team.
In a presentation in February before the Riverside County Board of Supervisors, Voter Registrar Art Tinoco denied the group’s allegations and said they were based on a misunderstanding of raw data that had not been fully processed.
The actual discrepancy was 103 votes — a difference of 0.016%, Tinoco said.
How does the sheriff get ballots?
Bianco said his department had sent the warrant “approved and signed by the judge” to the registrar on February 9.
According to Bonta’s office, an additional warrant was issued on February 23. Bianco said the warrants have now been sealed.
In a March 4 letter to Bianco, the attorney general said he had “serious concerns” about whether the sheriff had probable cause to seize election materials.
Bonta questioned whether Bianco had concealed information from the magistrate judge who approved the warrant, including details of the Registrar’s analysis of the citizen group’s allegations.
An official in Bonta’s office told The Times that the attorney general “found out mid-week that (Bianco) was going to execute the warrant on Friday.” Bonta’s office asked the sheriff to slow down the investigation and share information about the investigation, but “instead of waiting, they really escalated it” and seized ballots earlier than planned, said the official, who would speak only on background.
Bianco said a Riverside County Superior Court judge ordered the appointment of a special master to oversee the counting of ballots. Bianco said his investigators had already begun counting, but would resume under the court’s guidance.
ballot papers will soon be destroyed
California law requires county officials to keep election materials – including ballots and voter identification envelopes – for 22 months for elections involving federal office and six months for all other contests.
The material should be sealed and then destroyed at the end of the retention period.
The Proposition 50 election took place on November 4, so the ballots are scheduled to be destroyed in May.
Why investigate now?
Political observers say Bianco – a leading gubernatorial candidate – is vying for the attention of President Trump and his supporters.
Kim Nalder, a political science professor and director of the Project for Informed Voters at Sacramento State, said the investigation appears to be “an election ploy.”
“At this stage of the election, most voters haven’t really tuned into the governor’s race, and there are a lot of candidates,” he said. “People who don’t know his background will know now. This is a clear indication.”
Trump has repeatedly called for the federal government to “nationalize” state-run elections. He is worried about his defeat in the 2020 election and has made false claims of massive fraud.
In January, the FBI raided a Fulton County, Ga. Raided the elections office and seized records of the 2020 presidential election. And this month, the Republican leader of Arizona’s state Senate said he had turned over 2020 election records to the FBI, complying with a federal grand jury subpoena for records related to a controversial audit of elections in Maricopa County.
Bianco is a vocal Trump supporter.
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, with the Democratic vote in the left-leaning state split among multiple candidates.
The top two vote-getters, regardless of party, will advance to the November election.
Bianco said the investigation was “not a recount” for Proposition 50 and had nothing to do with his campaign for governor.
