Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco is reining in his investigation into alleged voting discrepancies during the November special election, publicly stating the probe will not proceed for now due to the lawsuits challenging his actions.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed a civil suit last week seeking an immediate halt to Bianco’s audit, insisting the GOP gubernatorial candidate’s seizure of ballots demanded “judicial intervention.”
“The sheriff’s misguided investigation threatens to sow distrust and jeopardize public confidence in the upcoming primary and general elections,” according to the suit filed in Riverside County Superior Court. “It also sets a dangerous precedent that could invite future attempts to improperly contest election results through a misuse of law enforcement authority.”
Bianco released a statement over the weekend, saying the vote count probe was “on hold,” attributing the suspension to “politically motivated lawsuits and court filings.”
Hearings on Friday and Monday did not go forward. However, another hearing requested by the plaintiffs is tentatively set for Thursday morning at the Riverside Historic Courthouse. Nothing is expected to be resolved regarding the merits of the suit, or the sheriff’s actions to date.
“We are conducting an investigation into an alleged and potential 45,000 extra votes counted than the number of ballots cast in the November 2025 special election,” Bianco said last week via social media. “This isn’t about counting `yes’ and `no’ votes. This is simply counting the total ballots and comparing that total with the votes reported by the Dominion machines. It’s plain and simple common sense.”
Bianco said he was bewildered why Bonta and others at the state level “would want (the review of ballots) stopped, unless he was afraid of what the count would uncover.”
The Republican gubernatorial candidate said the sheriff’s probe should be permitted to proceed for the sake of “transparency.”
Deputies were granted three search warrants in the last two months, resulting in the seizure of 1,000 boxes of vote-by-mail ballots in the custody of the Riverside County Office of the Registrar of Voters.
The sheriff’s probe was initiated after he received a report from the civic watchdog Riverside Election Integrity Team in February. REIT announced there had been 45,800 ballots counted beyond the number publicly documented in election records.
REIT’s finding prompted Bianco to assert during a briefing earlier this month that “there is no acceptable error, small or large, in our elections, let alone a 45,000-vote difference.”
Bianco had notified Bonta’s office of his intent to appoint a “special master” independent of the sheriff’s office to handle the audit, according to court records.
California Secretary of State Shirley Weber on March 20 suggested the sheriff was out of his depth, saying any election-related evaluation should be “conducted by those with the appropriate legal authority and subject matter expertise.”
She said her staff found the allegations of voting irregularities “to be unsubstantiated.”
The special election led to passage of Proposition 50, dubbed the Election Rigging Response Act, authorizing the Legislature to redraw congressional district boundaries for 2026 and 2030, annulling the power of a duly constituted commission to handle the process. Critics said Prop 50 was a means of ensuring Democratic Party control statewide, while supporters said it was an appropriate reaction to encroachments elsewhere favoring the GOP and the Trump administration.
According to state prosecutors’ court filing, the ballot discrepancies identified by REIT were explained during a Board of Supervisors hearing in which Registrar of Voters Art Tinoco pointed out the election integrity group had relied on “raw data instead of the actual processed votes, and the raw data it used … was prone to human error.”
Bonta, citing his authority as the state’s chief law enforcement officer, directed the sheriff to suspend his investigation and return the boxes of ballots to the registrar.
The attorney general said that even though the sheriff had received three judicially approved warrants enabling him to seize the boxes, Bianco was still acting in “open defiance of state law” through the seizures.
“The purpose of this investigation is just as much to prove the election is accurate, as it is to show otherwise,” Bianco said in response. “If the numbers match, we have done our due diligence to ensure trust … in our elections.”
Joining the attorney general in civil actions against the sheriff over the ballot seizures is the UCLA Voting Rights Project, Riverside City Councilwoman Clarissa Cervantes and Indio City Councilman Oscar Ortiz.