A California sheriff who is also running for governor as a Republican has seized more than 650,000 ballots from the state’s November 2025 election, launching an investigation into voter fraud that state officials insist he has no authority to conduct. Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco took the dramatic step over the weekend after a watchdog group alleged discovering roughly 45,000 excess votes in the county during the special election on Proposition 50.
The ballot measure, pushed by Democrat Governor Gavin Newsom, sought to redraw California’s congressional districts to favor Democrats and counteract similar Republican efforts in Texas. When the Riverside Election Integrity Team raised questions about the vote count, county elections official Art Tinoco dismissed their concerns, claiming the group had misinterpreted how election day vote tallies work. Tinoco told county supervisors that initial intake logs are estimates rather than exact counts, and said the final tally was within 0.16% of the original estimate.
But Sheriff Bianco was not satisfied with that explanation. “This investigation is simple: physically count the ballots and compare that result with the total votes recorded,” he told reporters at a Friday press conference. His office now has custody of more than half a million ballots as his deputies conduct their own independent count to verify whether the election integrity team’s claims hold water.
California Secretary of State Shirley Weber, a Democrat, immediately pushed back. “The Riverside County Sheriff’s Office has taken actions based on allegations that lack credible evidence and risk undermining public confidence in our elections,” she said in a statement. Weber added a pointed jab at Bianco’s qualifications: “The sheriff’s assertion that his deputies know how to count is admirable. The fact remains that he and his deputies are not elections officials, and they do not have expertise in election administration.”
The dispute escalated when California Attorney General Rob Bonta, also a Democrat, attempted to intervene. Bonta’s office claimed they sought to review the warrants and investigative file pursuant to their supervisory authority over county sheriffs. Bianco countered that Bonta had sent multiple letters ordering him to stop the probe entirely, which the sheriff characterized as stonewalling and bad faith cooperation.
“We are especially concerned with legal deficiencies in the affidavits underlying the warrants, including the omission of material facts,” Bonta’s office said. Bianco had a different take, calling Bonta “an embarrassment to law enforcement” and finding it “concerning” that an attorney general would be “outraged” that someone was conducting an investigation into election integrity.
The standoff puts a bright spotlight on the tension between local law enforcement and state election officials when questions about ballot integrity arise. With Bianco running for governor as a Republican, his critics will inevitably frame this as political theater. His supporters will see a sheriff willing to use his authority to ensure transparent elections, even when powerful state officials demand he stand down. The question now is what his deputies will find when they finish counting those 650,000 ballots, and whether anyone in Sacramento will accept the results if they don’t like what the numbers show.
Providence watches over the bold.
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