Secret warrants obtained by the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department to seize more than 650,000 ballots in a controversial investigation into election fraud allegations will soon be made public.
Riverside County Superior Court Judge Gail O’Wren ordered the warrant sealed Tuesday after several media organizations, including The Times, sued to review the documents. The warrants have not yet been issued, but they are expected to provide the first glimpse of the fraud allegations – allegations that officials say are baseless.
Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, who supported the investigation, was in favor of sealing the warrant, according to the judge’s order. Riverside officials had asked to keep the documents confidential, citing an active investigation.
Three search warrants, which were requested by the Sheriff’s Department and signed by a county judge, allowed deputies to seize approximately 1,400 boxes of ballots in February and March. There is no exact figure for the number of ballots seized, although 1,000 boxes are estimated to contain 650,000 ballots.
The investigation and ballot seizure were widely criticized and led to several legal challenges, including one from California Attorney General Rob Bonta.
Bonta said his office reviewed the warrants after they were issued, and found “deficiencies” that justified stopping the investigation and execution of the warrants, according to court filings. “The affidavits do not identify any specific felony crime that the sheriff had probable cause to believe had been committed or that any particular individual had committed a felony,” Bonta said.
However, Bianco did not comply with the Attorney General’s request and had the ballot confiscated.
But as legal challenges mounted, Bianco recently announced he had suspended the investigation pending a legal review. Bianco, an ardent President Trump supporter, is the Republican nominee for governor, although Trump this week endorsed the other GOP candidate, conservative commentator Steve Hilton.
Also on Wednesday, the California Supreme Court granted Bonta’s request to halt the investigation, and ordered all parties in the case to “cease the investigation of the November 2025 special election and preserve all seized items.”
Bonta argued that a formal court order was necessary because “what the sheriff says and what he does are often two different things.”
“Today’s decision by the California Supreme Court puts a halt to a rogue sheriff’s destabilizing actions, barring him from continuing this investigation while our litigation continues,” Bonta said in a prepared statement. He called the decision “a necessary and appropriate response to what is clearly an unprecedented situation.”
Bonta’s office last month petitioned the Supreme Court for review after California’s Fourth District Court of Appeal rejected the petition, forcing the attorney general to file new petitions in both Riverside County Superior Court and the state’s highest court. Both remain operational.
The UCLA Voting Rights Project has also filed an application petition In the California Supreme Court, arguing that all ballots must remain in the custody of the county voter registrar under state law.
The ballots in question are from the November election for Proposition 50, which temporarily redrawn state congressional districts in favor of Democrats in response to partisan redistricting in Republican states, including Texas. After conducting its own audit of the election, a local citizens’ group claimed that the county’s tally was falsely inflated by more than 45,000 votes. Bianco has said he wants to “determine the validity” of that claim.
Voting fraud is rare across the United States, and Riverside County Voter Registrar officials have vehemently rejected any claims of voter fraud. In a lengthy, public presentation, Registrar of Voters Art Tinoco explained that the group’s allegations were false, based on a misunderstanding of raw data that had not been fully processed.
The actual discrepancy, Tinoco said, was 103 votes — a difference of 0.016%.
California law requires county officials to keep election materials sealed for 22 months for elections involving federal office and six months for all other contests.
The Proposition 50 election took place on November 4, so the ballots are scheduled to be destroyed in May.
