Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco seized more than 650,000 ballots over the weekend as part of a criminal investigation into alleged vote-count irregularities in California's November 2025 special election, and Sacramento's top Democrats are furious about it.
The seizure, which the Daily Mail reported involved a warrant approved by a judge, has sparked a public clash between the Republican sheriff and California's Democratic secretary of state and attorney general. Both state officials say Bianco lacks authority and expertise to conduct a ballot count. Bianco says he's doing what any law enforcement officer would do: following the evidence.
At the center of the dispute is Proposition 50, a redistricting measure introduced by Governor Gavin Newsom and approved statewide with 64 percent of the vote in November of last year. In Riverside County, just east of Los Angeles, the measure won 56 percent. A total of 656,000 votes were cast in the county. A citizens' watchdog group says roughly 46,000 of those votes cannot be accounted for.
The investigation traces back to the Riverside Election Integrity Team, a third-party citizens' group that audited voting machines and ballot intake records. Greg Langworthy, a leader of the group, explained its method at a Shasta County Board of Supervisors meeting in February.
"We are accounting for all the ballots that came into the system, and there cannot be any more votes than the ballots that came into the system."
Langworthy said the exact number of ballots that could not be accounted for was 45,896. That figure became the basis for Bianco's probe. The sheriff's office took physical custody of the ballots, nearly 1,000 boxes of election materials, as Newsmax detailed, and Bianco announced his plan at a Friday press conference.
"This investigation is simple: physically count the ballots and compare that result with the total votes recorded."
Simple enough, you'd think. Count what's in the boxes. Compare it to the official number. If they match, case closed. If they don't, somebody has explaining to do.
But California's political establishment does not appear interested in finding out.
California Secretary of State Shirley Weber wasted no time dismissing the investigation. She told City News Service that Bianco's office "has taken actions based on allegations that lack credible evidence and risk undermining public confidence in our elections."
Weber went further, questioning whether deputies are qualified to count ballots at all. "The sheriff's assertion that his deputies know how to count is admirable," she said. "The fact remains that he and his deputies are not elections officials, and they do not have expertise in election administration."
That line landed with a sneer. Voters might reasonably wonder: if trained law enforcement officers can't count pieces of paper, who exactly can? And if the official count is accurate, what is there to fear from a recount?
Riverside County election official Art Tinoco dismissed the watchdog group's findings last month. He framed the discrepancy as a misunderstanding. The handwritten ballot intake logs the group relied on, Tinoco said, were supposed to be estimates rather than exact counts. The final tally, he claimed, was within 103 votes of that estimate, a difference of 0.16 percent. Fox News reported that Tinoco posed the question directly to county supervisors: "Did the Nov. 4, 2025, statewide special election have a 45,896-ballot discrepancy between ballots cast and ballots counted?" His answer: "No."
If Tinoco is right, a physical count should confirm it. That's the part Sacramento seems reluctant to allow.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta's office jumped into the fray with a statement to Fox News Digital saying it had "attempted to work cooperatively with the Sheriff's Office in order to better understand the basis for their investigation, including by reviewing the warrants themselves and by requesting the Sheriff's complete investigative file."
The AG's office also accused Bianco of obstruction, claiming the sheriff "has delayed, stonewalled, and otherwise refused to work with us in good faith." Bonta's team said the situation raises "serious questions about the merits of this investigation."
The Washington Times noted that Bonta called the ballot seizure "unacceptable," warning it "sets a dangerous precedent and will only sow distrust in our elections."
Bianco fired back without hesitation.
"AG Bonta has repeatedly shown he is an absolute embarrassment to law enforcement. He has never conducted an investigation. The only investigations he seems to be a part of are the ones he is interfering with. A judge approved the warrant, so Bonta's opinion means absolutely nothing. It's no wonder California is ripe with waste, fraud, and abuse of taxpayer money; We have an incompetent AG."
That's not diplomatic language. But Bianco's core point is straightforward: a judge reviewed the evidence and signed a warrant. The court, not the attorney general, has jurisdiction over the seized ballots. And the court has appointed a special master to oversee the count.
Bianco is a Republican running for governor of California, a fact his critics have used to paint the investigation as a political stunt. And Proposition 50 was Newsom's initiative, introduced in response to a redistricting move in Texas that was said to have strengthened Republican prospects in the upcoming midterms. The political stakes on both sides are obvious.
But political motivation doesn't invalidate a warrant signed by a judge. And a watchdog group's findings, right or wrong, deserve a transparent answer, not a wall of bureaucratic dismissal. If 45,896 ballots really can be explained by sloppy handwriting on intake logs, a physical count will prove it. If they can't, voters deserve to know.
Breitbart reported that state election officials and the attorney general maintain Bianco is not authorized to conduct a recount or election probe in this manner. But Bianco has not called it a recount. He's called it a criminal investigation, one backed by a judicial warrant and now supervised by a court-appointed special master.
The distinction matters. A recount is an administrative process governed by election law. A criminal investigation into potential fraud is a law enforcement function. Bianco is exercising the latter, and a judge agreed he had cause.
California's reaction follows a familiar script. When anyone outside the approved election bureaucracy asks hard questions about ballot handling, the response from Democratic officials is always the same: you lack authority, you lack expertise, and your questions are dangerous.
It's the same playbook seen in federal investigations into election offices elsewhere. Question the count, and you're accused of undermining democracy. Ask for transparency, and you're told transparency would cause distrust. The circular logic protects the system from scrutiny while insisting the system needs no scrutiny.
The broader fight over election integrity continues to intensify nationally. House Republicans have pushed election reform legislation with voter ID mandates, and the White House has pledged executive action on voter identification if Congress stalls. In that context, a county sheriff physically seizing ballots to verify a count is not an isolated event. It's a symptom of a system that has lost public trust and refuses to earn it back.
Bianco told reporters the results of the physical count should come within days. "The court has jurisdiction over the evidence, and the court has appointed a special master to oversee the count," he said. "We will know more in the coming days."
The special master will supervise the count. If the numbers match the official tally, Bianco's critics will claim vindication. If they don't, California's election apparatus will face questions it has spent weeks trying to avoid.
Either way, voters in Riverside County, and across California, will get something Sacramento's leaders never wanted to give them: an independent check on the people who count their votes. The fact that it took a sheriff with a warrant to make that happen tells you everything about where election accountability stands in the Golden State.
When the people in charge of counting the ballots tell you it's dangerous to double-check their work, that's not a reason to stop asking. It's a reason to count twice.
