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California attorney general seeks pause of probe involving 656,000 seized Riverside County ballots

March 24, 2026

Ratcheting up his showdown with Sheriff Chad Bianco, a Republican gubernatorial candidate, California Attorney General Rob Bonta has asked a state appeals court to pump the brakes on an investigation that led to the seizure of more than 650,000 ballots in Riverside County.

The Riverside County sheriff launched “an unprecedented criminal investigation” into the November 2025 Proposition 50 special election “without identifying any particular crime that may have been committed by anyone” and “openly defying the Attorney General’s lawful directives,” Bonta’s office argued in court papers filed Monday, March 23.

In an emailed statement, the attorney general’s office said the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department “is not equipped nor legally authorized to play the role of elections monitor.”

“By all appearances, this investigation is little more than a fishing expedition meant to sow distrust and undermine public confidence in our elections.”

At a news conference Friday, March 20, Bianco — a leading GOP candidate for governor in 2026 — accused Bonta, a Democrat, of trying to stop a lawful investigation.

In an emailed statement Tuesday, Bianco said: “How many crimes has Bonta investigated? Zero. How many times has he sat before a judge with a warrant in an investigation? Zero.”

“The questions should be directed only toward Bonta,” the sheriff said. “Why would you interfere and obstruct an investigation instead of assist? What are you afraid of?”

Bianco called Bonta “a corrupt political activist put in place by Gavin Newsom to run cover for the corruption in Sacramento.”

Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco called California Attorney General Rob Bonta "an embarrassment to law enforcement" during a Friday, March 20, 2026 news conference in which the sheriff defended his investigation into ballots cast by county voters during the November 2025 Proposition 50 special election. (File photo by Anjali Sharif-Paul, The Sun/SCNG) — Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco called California Attorney General Rob Bonta “an embarrassment to law enforcement” during a Friday, March 20, 2026 news conference in which the sheriff defended his investigation into ballots cast by county voters during the November 2025 Proposition 50 special election. (File photo by Anjali Sharif-Paul, The Sun/SCNG)

The sheriff’s probe stems from a complaint filed by a citizen’s election watchdog group. The Riverside Election Integrity Team alleges there’s a roughly 45,000-vote gap between ballots received and ballots counted by Riverside County in last November’s election for Proposition 50, a ballot measure that redrew California’s congressional districts to favor Democrats.

The initiative passed statewide with 64% of the vote. It also won 56% of the vote in Riverside County.

Riverside County Registrar of Voters Art Tinoco disputes the alleged 45,000-vote gap, calling it a misreading of election data. The actual gap between ballots counted and ballots cast is just 103 votes, Tinoco has said.

Citing his authority as the county’s top law enforcement officer, Bianco launched an investigation and obtained a search warrant to seize roughly 1,000 boxes of ballot materials from the registrar. More than 656,000 registered voters in Riverside County cast ballots in last November’s election.

Bianco has said his department will count the ballots to determine if the alleged gap exists and if so, what caused it.

He said the probe has nothing to do with his gubernatorial bid. But the investigation raises questions about how Bianco — an ardent supporter of President Donald Trump, who frequently spreads election misinformation and denies losing to Joe Biden in 2020 — would handle election matters if elected governor.

In court documents, Bonta’s office focused on Bianco’s comments from last week’s news conference about the investigation being a fact-finding mission and that its purpose “is just as much to prove the election is accurate as it is to show otherwise.”

Fact finding is “a blatantly insufficient basis to embark on a criminal investigation,” Bonta’s office argued in papers filed with the state appellate court.

The sheriff’s Thursday, March 19, search warrant application is “so facially insufficient that it failed to meet even the most basic constitutional and statutory standards, most notably that it did not allege the commission of a crime,” the appeal read, adding the sheriff is flagrantly ignoring Bonta’s authority over California sheriffs.

The appeal asks the court “to pause all work and provide the Attorney General with a copy of the case file and related documents so he could better understand the basis of the investigation and work with the Sheriff to decide the best course of action.”

The sheriff, who called Bonta “an embarrassment to law enforcement” at Friday’s event, maintains he has an obligation to investigate alleged crimes in Riverside County.

“I hope we can all agree,” the sheriff said Friday. “There is no acceptable error, small or large in our elections, let alone a 45,000-vote difference.”

Riverside County Supervisor Jose Medina, a former Democratic assemblymember, criticized Bianco’s investigation during Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting.

“Many on different sides of the political spectrum have said how wrong this is,” Medina said. “It’s mind-boggling to me how we’ve gotten here.”

“We all heard the same evidence. None of us saw any wrongdoing. But still the Riverside County sheriff, for his own political reasons, chose to take those ballots” from the registrar.

Also at Tuesday’s meeting, Nathan Kemp, a member of the Riverside Sheriff Accountability Coalition, dressed in white. Kemp said he did so “to symbolize integrity of the voters … in hopes that you will use your power as a shield to protect voters.”

“Voters deserve to know that ballots are being held properly,” he told supervisors. “You have the authority to protect the voters, ballots and their integrity.”

It’s not the first time Bianco’s office has investigated county elections.

In November 2023, sheriff’s investigators sought voter registration records and interviewed elections staff as part of a criminal probe into voter fraud, according to former registrar Rebeca Spencer.

That investigation is continuing, Bianco said Friday.

This also isn’t the first time Bonta and Bianco have clashed. In 2023, the attorney general’s office launched a civil rights investigation into the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department, which has been criticized for the number of inmate deaths in its jails. Bianco said that investigation is politically motivated.

Staff Writer Allyson Vergara contributed to this report.

California attorney general seeks pause of probe involving 656,000 seized Riverside County ballots Orange County Register

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California attorney general seeks pause of probe involving 656,000 seized Riverside County ballots

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