Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco says he’d like to be our governor, but more and more, I feel like the real goal for the far-right provocateur is just to be MAGA-famous.
This is good. He is alright. Honestly, who hasn’t dreamed of their own 15 minutes in Southern California? And he certainly has police-stache to play the role of Wicked Wild West lawman.
But Bianco’s bid for celebrity could help extremists sweep US elections, and that’s a problem — one California needs to deal with quickly, before it suffers the consequences of its actions in the midterms. There are two separate issues at play here, both of which state courts will be asked to consider in the coming days – Bianco is apparently putting his so-called investigation on hold until there is some degree of clarity and hopefully sanity in those matters.
First of all, there are California sheriffs accountable to someoneOr are they a law unto themselves? Second, Who can legally handle and count ballots in California According to the law, if state law actually matters?
The fact that these two issues are now coming to the fore is no accident. President Trump has made claims of election fraud moving towards this moment For years, it has largely been out of the consciousness of mainstream voters, but deliberately pushed by those who want MAGA officials to remain in power, even at the expense of democracy.
The real question being answered in Riverside right now — the one we should all be clear on — is, if Republicans want to invalidate election results that don’t suit them this November, what are the nuances of actually doing that?
Bianco is trying to answer.
“This is more than what Sheriff Bianco is doing,” said Matt Barreto, faculty director of the . UCLA Voting Rights Project. “…That shouldn’t be happening. And again, it doesn’t matter whether the Democrats are winning or the Republicans are winning, no sheriff should be coming in and capturing or counting ballots.”
By now, you’ve probably heard that Bianco obtained multiple secret, sealed search warrants from a friend judge This allowed him to remove hundreds of thousands of ballots in his county from November’s Proposition 50 election.
Bianco claims he has the right to seize these ballots and investigate as he sees fit – and that is not our business or anyone else’s, not even AT’s. Gen. Rob Bonta, who ordered Bianco to stop what he was doing until Bonta could review it.
Bianco has largely ignored that order, instead collecting even more ballots late last week — but reserving a fixed finger for simple communication to Bonta. Fox News loved it. Bianco’s admission Monday that he is halting his efforts is the first sign that even he can see that he has gone too far.
But Bianco’s arrogance is in line with the attitude of many so-called constitutional headA national movement by some far-right elected lawmakers with which Bianco is associated, although he has never claimed full affiliation.
These extremist sheriffs delusionally believe that they are above both state and federal law, and they decide for themselves what is and is not constitutional in their jurisdictions – and therefore what is and is not the law.
Since around 2020, empowered by successes in bypassing pandemic restrictions, These Sheriffs Dive Even Deeper into the Election Fraud Movement Trump loves to boast of expanding powers to investigate alleged fraud. Although their national organization doesn’t publish its membership list, media and other tracking suggests there are at least dozens of like-minded lawmakers across the country who are likely watching Riverside County closely.
Some election experts now worry that if Bianco is successful in the courts in upholding the right to take ballots, it would set a dangerous legal precedent that gives other constitutional sheriffs the right to do so in the midterms. Only then will it be fresh, uncounted ballots – leaving these far-right sheriffs to provide the results instead of trained, trusted election officials.
“What if the ballots haven’t been properly counted yet by the right people and a sheriff decides they want to seize them?” Said Chad DunnJoe, co-founder of UCLA’s Voting Rights Project and trial attorney Successfully stopped Texas gerrymandering effortFor now anyway.
Dunn said, “Once the chain of custody … is broken, as has happened with these, you will never be able to count them in a way that you will be able to get reasonable confidence from the public.” “This puts the entire election process at risk.”
Constitutional sheriffs will become boots on the ground for Trump’s election deniers to enforce his will, confiscate ballots as they see fit and create such a crisis of confidence that it’s possible we voters, Republican or Democrat, will never accept the results.
It could also give Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson a possible reason – the ongoing fraud investigation – to not seat an elected Democrat. Stopping as they did with Arizona’s Adelita Grijalva After winning a special election last year.
The Voting Rights Project, along with Democratic gubernatorial candidate Xavier Becerra, filed a lawsuit last week asking the state Supreme Court to uphold the laws that govern how ballots are counted in California — basically protecting the chain of custody and making it clear that sheriffs can’t ignore it and aren’t part of it.
“Under California law, they do not have the right to withdraw ballots from the voter registrar, and under California law, they do not have the right to count or handle ballots,” Barreto said. “There is no doubt that this violates California election law.”
Separately, Bonta’s office filed its own action, keeping the constitutional sheriff’s issue front and center. Bonta is asking the courts to tell Bianco that he is not a law unto himself, and in fact answers to the state attorney general.
The issue of whether sheriffs have a legal duty to listen to the state’s top law enforcement officer has long been one of Bonta’s battles — he argued about it with then-LA Sheriff Alex Villanueva in another public corruption case involving then-LA County Supervisor Sheila Kuehl.
I’m guessing Bianco will tell Bonta about that simple one-finger communication, exactly like Villanueva did.
But now the time has come for the state to decide how powerful the sheriffs are, this time for the good of the country. The State Legislature has made repeated attempts to clarify this issue, which has been a failure on their part.
Legislators could amend the state constitution to allow sheriffs to be appointed rather than elected – similar to police chiefs. The Board of Supervisors could then hire and fire them just like other law enforcement leaders.
Due to the blatant absence of the Legislature on this issue, we have to depend on the courts. This is likely to be a long battle.
Meanwhile, Bianco is paying attention to his mustache. It became a national story, boosting his profile as a champion of election deniers everywhere in the MAGA-verse.
Whether Bianco wins or loses these legal battles, reopening his investigation or not, he has won the battle for attention — he’s even polling at the top in the governor’s race, thanks to the 8 million Democrats who refused to opt out.
Barreto points out that Riverside County, once red, is rapidly turning purple. Bianco’s tenure as elected sheriff may not last forever. Despite the elections, his attack on the Governor is not possible.
But maybe Fox News will be so impressed by his aggressive statements that he will get an offer. Maybe Trump, who has been known to watch it, will like it. So many possibilities through publicity.
And such real damage to democracy.
