Riverside County Sheriff Bianco seized 650,000 election ballots and launched unauthorized fraud probe, defying AG's halt order

On February 26, 2026, Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco—a Republican candidate for California governor—seized approximately 650,000 ballots from a November 2025 special election and opened an unauthorized criminal investigation into alleged election fraud. His probe rested entirely on disputed claims from the Riverside County Election Integrity Team, a local activist group, which alleged a roughly 46,000-ballot discrepancy in the count. County Registrar Art Tinoco had already publicly rejected those allegations as a misreading of preliminary vote data before some of the warrants were even signed. Unsealed warrants later revealed that Bianco's investigators presented no informants, no witnesses, and no forensic expert analyses to the court—only the activist group's assertions. A sympathetic county judge nonetheless signed the warrants; one election expert subsequently described the group's claims as "the political equivalent of flat earthers," a former prosecutor called the warrants "pretty light," and State Senator Tom Umberg, a former federal prosecutor, flagged the highly unusual omission of any specific criminal allegations from the warrant applications.

After California Attorney General Rob Bonta ordered Bianco to halt the investigation, the sheriff defied the directive and seized an additional 426 boxes of ballots. Bonta argued that Bianco—simultaneously a gubernatorial candidate in the same electoral ecosystem he was investigating—was using law enforcement power to manufacture doubt around a settled election outcome. The seizure broke the chain of custody for sensitive voter materials including ballot signatures, home addresses, and voting records, raising additional concerns about the security of voter data.

Updates

2026-04-08 — California Supreme Court ordered Bianco to pause ballot probe [1]

The California Supreme Court ordered Bianco to pause the investigation and preserve all seized materials while legal challenges to the seizure proceed. Attorney General Bonta stated the ruling "reins in the destabilizing actions of a rogue Sheriff."

2026-08-24 — California Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Bianco's ballot case [6, 7]

California Supreme Court justices heard oral arguments over Bianco's ballot seizure and appeared skeptical of his defense. Bianco's attorney argued county sheriffs may seize ballots after obtaining a warrant regardless of state election-administration law, and separately argued the state attorney general lacks authority to issue orders to county sheriffs. The court did not immediately rule.