{"id":8806,"date":"2026-03-24T02:21:11","date_gmt":"2026-03-24T02:21:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/8806\/"},"modified":"2026-03-24T02:21:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-24T02:21:11","slug":"the-riverside-county-sheriff-has-seized-650000-ballots-heres-what-we-know","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/8806\/","title":{"rendered":"The Riverside County sheriff has seized 650,000 ballots. Here’s what we know"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Chad Bianco, the Riverside County sheriff and a leading Republican candidate for governor, has seized<\/a> more than 650,000 ballots from last November\u2019s election as part of an investigation that he called a \u201cfact-finding mission\u201d to determine if they were fraudulently counted. <\/p>\n

Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, the state\u2019s top law enforcement official, has sharply criticized the probe, which he called \u201cunprecedented in both scope and scale.\u201d <\/p>\n

In a March 4 letter<\/a> to the sheriff, 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

Bianco said Friday that 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 emphatically rejected.<\/p>\n

Here is what we know.<\/p>\n

Why were ballots taken?<\/p>\n

According to Bonta\u2019s office, Bianco\u2019s department on Feb. 26 took about 1,000 boxes of ballot materials in Riverside County related to the November election for Proposition 50, which temporarily redrew the state\u2019s congressional districts to favor Democrats in response to partisan redistricting in Republican states, including Texas.<\/p>\n

Bianco said that it\u2019s his \u201cconstitutional duty\u201d to investigate a potential crime and that he is not trying to change the election results.<\/p>\n

The investigation includes all of the 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 with 64% of the vote, a margin of more than 3.3 million ballots. <\/p>\n

Bianco said he had been contacted by \u201ca group of citizen volunteers\u201d that said it performed an audit finding that 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. <\/p>\n

In a February presentation to the Riverside County Board of Supervisors, Registrar of Voters Art Tinoco disputed the group\u2019s allegations and said they were based on a misunderstanding of raw data that had not been fully processed.<\/p>\n

The actual discrepancy, Tinoco said, was 103 votes \u2014 a variance of 0.016%.<\/p>\n

How did the sheriff get the ballots?<\/p>\n

Bianco said his department served the registrar with a warrant \u201capproved and signed by a judge\u201d on Feb. 9. <\/p>\n

According to Bonta\u2019s office, an additional warrant was issued on Feb. 23. Bianco said the warrants are now sealed.<\/p>\n

In the March 4 letter to Bianco, the attorney general said he had \u201cserious concerns\u201d about whether the sheriff had probable cause to seize the election materials. <\/p>\n

Bonta questioned whether Bianco had concealed information from the magistrate judge who approved the warrants, including details from the registrar\u2019s analysis of the citizen group\u2019s allegations.<\/p>\n

An official from Bonta\u2019s office told The Times that the attorney general \u201cfound out in the middle of the week that [Bianco] was going to execute the warrants on a Friday.\u201d Bonta\u2019s office asked the sheriff to slow down and share information about the investigation, but \u201cinstead of waiting, he actually moved it up\u201d and seized the ballots sooner than planned, said the official, who would only speak on background. <\/p>\n

Bianco said a Riverside County Superior Court judge ordered the appointment of a special master to oversee the ballot count. His investigators had already begun counting, but the tally would start over under the court\u2019s guidance, Bianco said.<\/p>\n

The ballots would have soon been destroyed<\/p>\n

California law requires county officials to keep election materials \u2014 including ballots and voter identification envelopes \u2014 for 22 months for elections involving a federal office and for six months for all other contests. <\/p>\n

The materials must be sealed and then destroyed at the end of the retention period. <\/p>\n

The Proposition 50 election took place on Nov. 4, so the ballots are scheduled to be destroyed in May. <\/p>\n

Why investigate now?<\/p>\n

Political observers say that Bianco \u2014 a leading gubernatorial candidate \u2014 appears to be vying for attention from President Trump and his supporters. <\/p>\n

Kim Nalder, a political science professor and director of the Project for an Informed Electorate at Sacramento State, said the investigation appears to be \u201can electoral ploy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAt this stage in the election, most voters haven\u2019t really tuned into the gubernatorial race, and there are a ton of candidates,\u201d she said. \u201cPeople who don\u2019t know his background will know now. This is clear signaling.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump has repeatedly called on the federal government to \u201cnationalize\u201d state-run elections. He remains fixated on his 2020 election loss and has falsely claimed widespread fraud. <\/p>\n

In January, the FBI raided the elections office in Fulton County, Ga., seizing 2020 presidential election records. And this month, the Republican leader of Arizona\u2019s state Senate said he had handed over 2020 election records to the FBI, complying with a federal grand jury subpoena for records related to a controversial audit of the election in Maricopa County. <\/p>\n

Bianco is an outspoken Trump supporter. <\/p>\n

A poll released last week 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

The top two vote getters, regardless of party, will advance to the November election. <\/p>\n

Bianco said the investigation was \u201cnot a recount\u201d for Proposition 50 and had nothing to do with his campaign for governor. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Chad Bianco, the Riverside County sheriff and a leading Republican candidate for governor, has seized more than 650,000…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8807,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[5231,738,6224,6433,609,2718,1684,8,630,9,1688,6583,6584,6582,148,7,742,6208],"class_list":{"0":"post-8806","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-top-stories","8":"tag-allegation","9":"tag-ballot","10":"tag-bonta","11":"tag-chad-bianco","12":"tag-election","13":"tag-group","14":"tag-gubernatorial-candidate","15":"tag-headlines","16":"tag-investigation","17":"tag-news","18":"tag-office","19":"tag-proposition","20":"tag-registrar","21":"tag-riverside-county-sheriff","22":"tag-state","23":"tag-top-stories","24":"tag-vote","25":"tag-warrant"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@news\/116281768859975518","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8806","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8806"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8806\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8807"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}