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Could Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco’s election probe be a blueprint?

April 10, 2026

The Riverside County Sheriff’s Department’s investigation that seized more than 650,000 ballots has been described as unprecedented.

But could the probe, which faces several legal challenges, inspire like-minded sheriffs and attorneys general in other states to criminally investigate elections?

Perhaps, according to comments attributed to Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco.

In a March 31 USA Today interview, Bianco, a Republican running for California governor, said election and law enforcement officials have contacted his office about launching similar investigations.

“There are a lot of people reaching out to us from other states, from other counties than Riverside saying the same thing’s happening here,” Bianco told the newspaper.

“We have former poll workers saying that there is massive fraud going on … but nobody is looking into it.”

Bianco did not respond Friday, April 10, to a request for comment.

Critics, including California Attorney General Rob Bonta and Secretary of State Shirley Weber, see parallels between the Riverside County investigation and the seizing ballots by federal agents in Maricopa County, Arizona, and Fulton County, Georgia — both of which President Donald Trump lost in 2020.

Trump maintains voter fraud cost him Arizona and Georgia, an argument that’s been rejected by the courts.

Fearing Bianco’s probe could sow mistrust about California elections, Bonta has gone to court to stop it. The state Supreme Court paused the investigation Wednesday, April 8, pending further review of the case.

Bianco’s investigation stems from a complaint by a watchdog group called the Riverside Election Integrity Team, which said it discovered an approximately 45,000-vote gap between ballots cast and ballots counted in Riverside County during the November Proposition 50 special election.

Proposition 50 redrew California’s congressional districts to favor Democrats after Texas lawmakers redraw their maps to favor House Republicans.

Riverside County Registrar of Voters Art Tinoco disputes the group’s conclusions, saying they’re based on a misreading of election data. He said the gap between ballots counted and ballots cast is 103 votes.

Bianco’s department secured three search warrants from Riverside Superior Court Judge Jay Kiel to seize the county’s Proposition 50 ballots and related election materials.

Bonta and others argue the warrants lack sufficient probable cause, or fact-based evidence that a crime may have been committed. Bianco’s lawyer wrote in an email to Bonta that the Sheriff’s Department believes “the totality of the circumstances … shows that there is a fair probability that evidence of a crime is located in the total ballot count.”

The investigation comes amid ongoing national furor about the integrity and security of U.S. elections.

Trump and his supporters frequently accuse Democrats of cheating and rigging elections. But multiple independent studies show voter fraud is rare and doesn’t happen on a big enough scale to affect election outcomes.

Linda Paine, president of Election Integrity Project California, said Bianco’s investigation is similar to the research — ignored by state officials — her group’s been doing since 2011 and praised the Riverside Election Integrity Team’s work.

Paine said she hopes Bianco’s investigation inspires more like it “because we’ve been ignored by both parties.”

She added: “I hope every state in the country is doing that kind of research” that Bianco and the election integrity group are doing.

“The system we use to determine who represents us has to be like a vault and the laws have made it not like a vault where the vote can’t be touched. It’s more like a sieve.”

It’s “very unusual” for a sheriff to be leading an investigation like Bianco is, said Chad Peace, legal adviser for the nonprofit, nonpartisan Independent Voter Project. Bianco could be using the probe to elevate his standing with GOP voters he’ll need to win the governor’s race, Peace said.

“It implies that these types of strategies of leveraging voters’ distrust in the system overall are going to be increasingly used as campaign opportunities,” Peace said. “But they also just demonstrate voters’ general distrust of the system. It’s unfortunate.”

Justin Levitt, a law professor at Los Angeles’ Loyola Marymount University who served as a senior adviser for democracy and voting rights in the Biden administration, doesn’t think the Riverside County investigation will inspire copycats.

“This seizure was, I believe, unprecedented – and I expect that it will remain a misguided one-off,” Levitt said via email.

“The Attorney General and private litigants have both contested these efforts in the California Supreme Court, and I think that that court is likely to issue an opinion in fairly short order that will clearly and firmly reiterate the proper lanes for law enforcement.”

Levitt added: “There are procedures for valid contests of election procedures or election results. Those procedures are entirely distinct from criminal law enforcement, and I expect the courts to make that quite forcefully and abundantly clear.”

Orange County Register

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Could Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco’s election probe be a blueprint?

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