A California Sheriff running in the Republican gubernatorial primary, Chad Bianco, seized more than 650,000 ballots from California’s November 2025 special election last month, launching a massive voter fraud investigation.
A local watchdog group says discrepancy of nearly 46,000 excess votes had been discovered.
Bianco says the investigation was sparked by a complaint from the Riverside Election Integrity Team, a citizens group that claims voting machines tallied roughly 45,800 more ballots than were recorded as received in Riverside County during the Proposition 50 special election. The proposition redrew California’s congressional district lines to give Democrats an advantage in the upcoming 2026 midterm elections. It passed statewide with 64% of the vote and carried Riverside County with 56%.
His deputies seized approximately 1,000 boxes of ballot materials from the county’s registrar of voters in February with a warrant. Bianco held a press conference March 20 to explain the investigation.
“This investigation is simple: Physically count the ballots and compare that result with the total votes recorded,” Bianco told reporters.
Bianco said a Riverside County Superior Court judge has ordered a special master appointed to oversee the hand count, which adds independent oversight to the process. He also raised a time-sensitive concern — a state law that requires Proposition 50 ballots to be destroyed by May.
“What does sow mistrust in our system is failing to conduct an investigation, or worse, attempting to stop or interfere with a lawful investigation, to sweep it under the rug so evidence can possibly be destroyed,” Bianco said.
Democratic state officials are furious. California Secretary of State Shirley Weber said the sheriff has no legal authority to conduct the investigation.
“The Riverside County Sheriff’s Office has taken actions based on allegations that lack credible evidence and risk undermining public confidence in our elections,” Weber said. “The sheriff’s assertion that his deputies know how to count is admirable. The fact remains that he and his deputies are not elections officials, and they do not have expertise in election administration.”
The Riverside County Registrar of Voters, Art Tinoco, disputed the watchdog group’s findings, and said the discrepancy was from comparing datasets out of sequence. Tinoco said the handwritten intake logs were kept by temporary election workers during long shifts and were never intended as precise counts. He told county supervisors the final certified tally differed from the original intake by 103 votes.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta, a Democrat, sent multiple letters to Bianco over the past two months demanding he stand down, calling the seizure “unprecedented in both scope and scale” and warning it “sets a dangerous precedent and will only sow distrust in our elections.”
“During this time, the sheriff has delayed, stonewalled, and otherwise refused to work with us in good faith,” Bonta said. “To date, the sheriff has failed to provide most of the requested documentation. But, what we have been able to learn raises serious questions about the merits of this investigation.”
Bianco accused Bonta of political interference and rejected the attorney general’s characterization of the probe.
“The outrage that an investigation was happening was extremely concerning to me, especially coming from someone who claims to be a law enforcement officer,” Bianco said. “He’s an embarrassment to law enforcement.”
Bianco is leading in multiple polls in the California gubernatorial race. The June primary election is scheduled for June 9.