Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco has taken custody of more than 650,000 ballots from last November’s special election and plans to physically recount them as part of an inquiry into alleged tally errors. The move targets ballots tied to Proposition 50 and has already drawn immediate pushback from state election officials and county elections staff. It also arrives as Bianco runs for governor, with supporters pitching the review as an effort to restore public confidence in local results.
Bianco’s team describes the effort as a straightforward count to compare paper totals with reported results. His department seized roughly 1,000 boxes of ballot materials on Feb. 26 and now holds more than 650,000 ballots in the sheriff’s custody. California Attorney General Rob Bonta has publicly blasted the operation as "unprecedented in both scope and scale" and said it "appears not to be based on facts or evidence," according to the Los Angeles Times. Bianco, for his part, has said: "there is no acceptable error, small or large, in our elections."
Officials Push Back
County elections officials have challenged the premise of the sheriff’s probe. In a presentation to the Board of Supervisors, Registrar Art Tinoco said the gap flagged by citizen auditors came from a misreading of preliminary figures and that the actual discrepancy was just 103 ballots, a number he noted was far below the state’s certification thresholds. Secretary of State Shirley Weber warned the seizure "fuels election conspiracy theories" and said such actions "fall well outside of the law," as reported by the San Francisco Chronicle.
Judge Orders Oversight
Bianco said a Riverside County Superior Court judge has ordered the appointment of a special master to oversee the hand count and comparison, a step the sheriff has framed as providing independent oversight. The court’s involvement adds another legal layer to a probe that state officials and county staff have already questioned, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Audit Claims Versus County Data
A citizens group calling itself the Riverside Election Integrity Team claims it found 45,896 more ballots were counted than were cast. County staff counters that the figure comes from comparing different raw datasets out of sequence rather than from an actual overcount. Officials also point out that Proposition 50 carried Riverside County by more than 82,000 votes and say routine processing explains apparent mismatches in preliminary numbers, as detailed by the San Francisco Chronicle.
Political Stakes
The investigation lands in the middle of a crowded gubernatorial primary in which Bianco has emerged as a competitive Republican contender. Political analysts say the ballot seizure could both energize his base and deepen scrutiny of his campaign’s ties to election skepticism. Poll snapshots show a fluid field with several candidates clustered in the mid-teens, a reminder of how quickly narratives can shift in the weeks before the June primary. Recent polling compilations are available on Wikipedia.
County supervisors and elections staff say they will cooperate with investigators while defending the integrity of their processes, and state officials have vowed to monitor the review closely. How long the ballots remain in the sheriff’s custody and what the special master’s review ultimately reveals will be decided in court. For now, the clash is both a legal test and a political flashpoint as California moves deeper into primary season.
