Case Explained:This article breaks down the legal background, charges, and implications of Case Explained: Bianco, Bonta Legal Battle Launches to Review Ballot Discrepancies – Legal Perspective
The legal battle mounted by California Attorney General Rob Bonta against Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco stemming from the latter’s independent probe into alleged voting discrepancies in the November special election was escalating Friday, as the state pushed for an order to halt the sheriff’s investigation.
“The sheriff’s actions … demand judicial intervention,” according to a state Department of Justice filing in Riverside County Superior Court. “The sheriff’s misguided investigation threatens to sow distrust and jeopardize public confidence in the upcoming primary and general elections. It also sets a dangerous precedent that could invite future attempts to improperly contest election results through a misuse of law enforcement authority.”
The DOJ narrative was submitted as part of a request for a writ to put the brakes on Bianco’s probe. An initial hearing on the matter was held Friday at the Riverside Historic Courthouse, leading to the scheduling of another hearing on April 1 in which state prosecutors are expected to further brief the court.
“We are conducting an investigation into an alleged and potential 45,000 extra votes counted than the number of ballots cast in the November 2025 special election,” Bianco said earlier this week via social media. “This isn’t about counting `yes’ and `no’ votes. This is simply counting the total ballots and comparing that total with the votes reported by the Dominion machines. It’s plain and simple common sense.”
Bianco said he was bewildered why Bonta and others at the state level “would want (the review of ballots) stopped, unless he was afraid of what the count would uncover.”
The GOP gubernatorial candidate said the sheriff’s department probe should be permitted to move forward for the sake of “transparency,” rather than spike it and allow potential evidence of impropriety — or criminality — to be “swept under the rug.”
Bianco’s detectives have been granted three search warrants in the last two months, resulting in the seizure of 1,000 boxes of vote-by-mail ballots in the custody of the Riverside County Office of the Registrar of Voters.
The sheriff’s probe was initiated after he received a report from the civic watchdog Riverside Election Integrity Team in February. REIT announced there had been 45,800 ballots counted beyond the number publicly documented in election records.
REIT’s representatives are frequent speakers at Board of Supervisors’ meetings and have made both negative and positive remarks about the Office of the Registrar of Voters, its policies and practices.
REIT’s finding prompted Bianco to assert during a briefing last week that “there is no acceptable error, small or large, in our elections, let alone a 45,000-vote difference.”
It is unknown how many deputies the sheriff has assigned to the election probe. He notified Bonta’s office of his intent to appoint a “special master” who is independent of the sheriff’s office to handle the audit, according to court records.
Last week, California Secretary of state Shirley Weber suggested the sheriff was out of his depth, saying any election-related evaluation should be “conducted by those with the appropriate legal authority and subject matter expertise.”
“Similar claims raised in other states by individuals without election administration experience have been thoroughly reviewed and debunked,” she said. “My office has been reviewing the allegations and have thus far found them to be unsubstantiated.”
The special election led to passage of Proposition 50, dubbed the “Election Rigging Response Act,” authorizing the Legislature to redraw congressional district boundaries for 2026 and 2030, annulling the power of a duly constituted commission to handle the process. Critics said Prop 50 was a means of ensuring Democrat control statewide, while supporters said it was an appropriate reaction to encroachments elsewhere favoring the GOP and Trump administration.
According to state prosecutors’ court submission, the vote discrepancies identified by REIT were explained during a Board of Supervisors hearing in which Registrar of Voters Art Tinoco pointed out the election integrity group had relied on “raw data instead of the actual processed votes, and the raw data it used … was prone to human error.”
Bonta, citing his authority as the state’s chief law enforcement officer, directed the sheriff to suspend his investigation and return the boxes of ballots to the registrar.
The attorney general said that even though the sheriff had received three signed judicial warrants in Riverside County Superior Court enabling him to seize the boxes of ballots, Bianco was still acting in “open defiance of state law” through the seizures.
“The purpose of this investigation is just as much to prove the election is accurate, as it is to show otherwise,” Bianco said in response. “If the numbers match, we have done our due diligence to ensure trust … in our elections.”
Bonta said Bianco has yet to clearly demonstrate a solid foundation for initiating the probe, and as a result, he’s now impinging on the province of election authorities.
Joining the attorney general in civil actions against the sheriff over the ballot seizures is the UCLA Voting Rights Project, Riverside City Councilwoman Clarissa Cervantes and Indio City Councilman Oscar Ortiz.