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Court rejects bid to pause Riverside County sheriff’s probe that seized 656,000 ballots

March 25, 2026

A California appeals court on Tuesday afternoon, March 24, dealt a setback to Attorney General Rob Bonta’s effort to pause an investigation that led to the seizure of more than 650,000 ballots in Riverside County.

According to online court records, a three-judge panel in the Fourth Appellate District rejected Bonta’s petition to suspend the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department’s probe of whether a gap exists between ballots received by the county and ballots counted in November’s Proposition 50 special election.

No reason was given for the ruling, a copy of which wasn’t immediately available Tuesday evening.

In an emailed statement, Bonta’s office said: “The facts have not changed. The Riverside County Sheriff continues to directly defy the Attorney General’s instructions, in violation of the California Constitution and state law.”

It added: “The Court of Appeal’s decision was based solely on where we filed the case and is not a ruling on the underlying merits of the petition. We are evaluating next steps to ensure a swift and appropriate resolution to this matter.”

Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco could not be immediately reached for comment Tuesday evening.

The investigation puts Bonta, a Democrat, at odds with Bianco, who is running as a Republican for governor and leads in several polls. Both have traded barbs in the media over the probe, with the sheriff calling the attorney general “an embarrassment to law enforcement” and Bonta calling Bianco’s actions a threat to the public’s faith in elections.

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 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.

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. A statement from Bonta’s office called the probe “little more than a fishing expedition.”

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.

Orange County Register

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Court rejects bid to pause Riverside County sheriff’s probe that seized 656,000 ballots

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