Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, who is a leading Republican candidate for governor, has seized more than 650,000 ballots from November\u2019s election to determine whether they were fraudulently counted. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis investigation is simple: Physically count the ballots and compare that result with the total votes recorded,\u201d Bianco said at a news conference Friday. <\/p>\n
The unusual probe drew a sharp rebuke from California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, who said in a statement that it is \u201cunprecedented in both scope and scale\u201d and appears \u201cnot to be based on facts or evidence.\u201d<\/p>\n
Critics, meanwhile, said Bianco\u2019s ballot seizure is a threat to democracy and another attempt by Republican election deniers to disenfranchise voters. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere is no indication, anywhere in the United States, of widespread voter fraud,\u201d Bonta said. \u201cCounts, recounts, hand counts, audits, and court cases all support this.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to Bonta\u2019s office, Bianco\u2019s department on Feb. 26 seized<\/a> about 1,000 boxes of ballot materials in Riverside County related to the November election for Proposition 50<\/a>, which temporarily redrew the state\u2019s congressional districts to favor Democrats in response to partisan redistricting in Republican states, including Texas.<\/p>\n In a March 4 letter<\/a> to Bianco, Bonta said the seizure of the ballots \u201csets a dangerous precedent and will only sow distrust in our elections.\u201d He threatened to seek legal recourse if Bianco does not halt his investigation. <\/p>\n Bonta also said he has \u201cserious concerns\u201d about whether Bianco had probable cause to obtain two warrants<\/a> for the election materials and questioned whether Bianco had concealed important information from the magistrate judge who approved the warrants. <\/p>\n Bianco said his investigators are looking into allegations by a local citizens group that \u201cdid their own audit\u201d and found that the county\u2019s tally was falsely inflated by more than 45,000 votes \u2014 a claim that local election officials have rejected. He said that it\u2019s his constitutional duty to investigate a potential crime and that he is not trying to change the election results.<\/p>\n Proposition 50 passed in Riverside County with 56% of the vote \u2014 a margin of more than 82,000 ballots. Statewide, it passed with about 64% of the vote and a margin of more than 3.3 million ballots<\/a>. <\/p>\n Bianco\u2019s investigation comes as President Trump, who remains fixated<\/a> on his 2020 election loss, continues to amplify election conspiracy theories and has repeatedly called for the federal government to \u201cnationalize<\/a>\u201d state-run elections to counter what he says is widespread fraud. <\/p>\n Bonta and California Secretary of State Shirley Weber, both Democrats, have vowed<\/a> to fight federal interference that could affect voting in California, including efforts to seize election records, as the FBI recently did in Georgia<\/a>. <\/p>\n Bianco is an outspoken Trump supporter who said in an endorsement video<\/a> in 2024 that, after 30 years of putting criminals in jail, he figured it was \u201ctime to put a felon in the White House \u2014 Trump 2024, baby\u201d \u2014 referencing Trump\u2019s conviction<\/a> by a New York jury for falsifying business records while paying hush money to a porn actor.<\/p>\n His investigation, which includes all the ballots cast in Riverside County in November, raises questions about how he would handle the election denialism movement if elected governor. <\/p>\n A poll released last week<\/a> by UC Berkeley\u2019s Institute of Governmental Studies and co-sponsored by The Times showed Bianco and conservative commentator Steve Hilton leading the crowded field of gubernatorial candidates by slim margins, with the Democratic vote split among multiple candidates in a left-leaning state. <\/p>\n Kim Nalder, a political science professor and director of the Project for an Informed Electorate at Sacramento State, said that Bianco\u2019s ballot seizure is \u201cthe sort of thing that should not happen in a healthy democracy.\u201d <\/p>\n The system has plenty of safeguards, she noted, including county registrars and the California Fair Political Practices Commission.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s terrifying, honestly, that the jurisdiction over ballots and election processes and recounts should even be in question and that a sheriff should feel himself entitled to seize ballots,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n On Saturday, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, a Democratic candidate for governor, said<\/a> that Bianco appeared to be chasing \u201cMAGA stardom\u201d and called his investigation \u201ca dangerous abuse of power and no different from what we\u2019re seeing from Donald Trump and the extreme Republican efforts to disenfranchise voters nationally.\u201d <\/p>\n A citizens group called the Riverside Election Integrity Team has said it performed an audit finding that 45,896 more ballots were counted than were cast. <\/p>\n In a lengthy February presentation<\/a> to 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. <\/p>\n The actual discrepancy, Tinoco said, was 103 votes, a variance of 0.016%. <\/p>\n Bianco on Friday said that there \u201cis no acceptable error, small or large, in our elections.\u201d <\/p>\n The sheriff did not name the Riverside Election Integrity Team, but his description of the allegations brought to him by \u201ca group of citizen volunteers\u201d matched theirs. <\/p>\n Bianco said the investigation was \u201cnot a recount\u201d for Proposition 50 and was \u201cjust as much to prove the election is accurate as it is to show otherwise \u2014 we will not know until the count is complete.\u201d <\/p>\n Bonta said his office has \u201cattempted to work cooperatively\u201d with the Sheriff\u2019s Department to understand the basis for the probe. The sheriff, Bonta said, \u201chas delayed, stonewalled, and otherwise refused to work with us in good faith\u201d and failed to provide most of the requested documents<\/a>. <\/p>\n David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research and a former senior trial attorney overseeing voting enforcement for the Department of Justice\u2019s Civil Rights Division, said Bianco is spreading \u201cfalse claims\u201d about a fair election that was decided by a huge margin. <\/p>\n Becker questioned how warrants could have been issued for the ballots, \u201cgiven that this likely implicates California laws requiring election officials to maintain chain of custody of all election materials for many months after an election.<\/p>\n \u201cFor transparency, the Sheriff should share all affidavits and evidence offered in support of the warrant, as well as details about how\/where the ballots are being stored,\u201d he said in an email.<\/p>\n Bianco has said the warrants are now sealed.<\/p>\n