Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, a Republican running for governor in California, seized more than half a million ballots from county election officials and said his office is investigating a discrepancy in ballot counts from a November 2025 special election, according to the Associated Press. Bianco held a news conference Friday, saying the seizure and the investigation followed what he described as a citizen-group complaint and that his work would culminate in a physical count of the ballots.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta, a Democrat, disputed Bianco’s account and said the move was unprecedented. Bonta also said the effort was designed to sow distrust in elections, according to AP.
Bianco said his office launched the investigation after receiving a complaint from a local citizens group about the ballot count for the November 2025 special election held on redistricting. In that election, voters approved a measure to redraw congressional district lines to favor Democrats in the upcoming midterm election, and the measure passed in Riverside County by a margin of more than 80,000 votes, AP reported.
Bianco described his effort as a “fact-finding mission” in Riverside County, a region of about 2.5 million people where he has twice been elected sheriff. He said the investigation was “simple: Physically count the ballots and compare that result with the total votes reported,” according to AP.
On the legal and administrative side, Bonta’s office has argued Bianco’s approach is improper. AP reported that Bonta sent letters to Bianco’s office over the last two months saying Bianco’s staff is not qualified to conduct a recount. In one of those letters, Bonta wrote that the ballot seizure was “unacceptable” and “sets a dangerous precedent and will only sow distrust in our elections,” AP said.
AP reported that Bianco’s letters and actions were also aimed at specific election materials. The letters said Bianco seized nearly 1,000 boxes of ballots and election materials from the county’s elections office with a warrant in February, and that the issue concerned a discrepancy a citizen group reported between handwritten ballot intake logs and the number of votes reported to the state.
Bianco told reporters that the alleged discrepancy amounted to about 45,800 votes. County elections officials, AP reported, have disputed that characterization at county meetings, saying the machine count and the final count submitted to the state differed by about 100 votes. They argued that the handwritten rolls were not relied on to check the count and that they were kept by temporary elections workers who worked long days and may have made mistakes, AP said.
Bianco said Friday that the count had started and stopped, and that it would resume under the supervision of a special master appointed by a judge. He also told AP that the investigation had “absolutely nothing to do” with his campaign for governor, adding that he said he has a duty to investigate alleged crime in Riverside County.
The ballot seizure unfolded as two prominent Republicans, Bianco and Steve Hilton, compete in a crowded June top-two primary that places all candidates on the same ballot regardless of party. In California’s system, the two candidates who receive the most votes advance to the November general election, and Democrats have expressed concern that splitting the vote could send Bianco and Hilton forward, AP reported. Some of the broader campaign framing also echoed recent disputes over election results by President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly disputed the 2020 election, AP reported.