California Attorney General Rob Bonta claims Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco defied orders by seizing ballots, sparking a legal battle over election integrity.
RIVERSIDE COUNTY, Calif. — In new court documents, California Attorney General Rob Bonta says Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco seized 426 additional boxes of ballots from the Riverside County Registrar of Voters after Bonta’s office directed him to pause all investigative activity into ballots from the November 2025 special election.
ABC10 previously reported that Bianco, who is also a top Republican candidate for governor, had seized more than 600,000 ballots as part of an investigation into alleged discrepancies in the special election for Proposition 50.
The investigation centers on figures from the Riverside County Registrar of Voters. Bianco said an audit of handwritten logs maintained by the office shows 611,428 ballots were cast, while 657,322 votes were reported and certified to the state — a difference of 45,896.
He said the calculation was conducted by a group of citizen volunteers who obtained the records through a public records request.
“We don’t know what we’re going to find until we count those ballots,” Bianco previously told ABC10.
The Riverside County Registrar of Voters explained the discrepancy in a report to the Board of Supervisors at its Feb. 10 meeting.
The investigation has drawn sharp criticism from state officials who question the basis of the ballot seizure and warn it could undermine public trust.
In letters sent from late February through early March, Bonta urged Bianco to pause the investigation, calling it “unprecedented in scope and scale” and warning it could erode confidence in state elections.
According to new court documents filed Thursday in Riverside County, “Sheriff Bianco willfully violated the attorney general’s directives and continued to abuse the criminal process. On March 19, 2026, without notifying the attorney general, the sheriff went to court again and obtained a third search warrant.”
The filing comes after an appellate court struck down Bonta’s petition earlier this week, noting it was filed in the wrong court.
California Secretary of State Shirley Weber has also said the allegations “lack credible evidence and risk undermining public confidence in our elections.”
On Thursday, the UCLA Voting Rights Project and Xavier Becerra challenged the investigation, calling on the California Supreme Court to order Bianco to return the seized ballots to the Riverside County Registrar of Voters.
Former California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, now a Democratic candidate for governor, condemned Bianco’s actions on social media, writing in part, “Chad Bianco is out of control. Sheriffs are supposed to enforce the law, not break it.”
ABC10 has reached out to the Riverside County Sheriff’s Office for comment on whether the agency seized additional ballots this week. We have not yet heard back.
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