California sheriff running for governor seizes more than a half million ballots from 2025 election

RIVERSIDE, Calif. — A California sheriff running for governor seized more than half a million ballots cast in a November special election from county election officials, saying he was investigating a discrepancy in ballot counting.

County elections officials disputed the claims of Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, a Republican. California Attorney General Rob Bonta, a Democrat, called Bianco’s move unprecedented and said it was intended to sow distrust in the election.

Bianco held a news conference Friday, saying his office launched the investigation after receiving a complaint from a local citizens group about vote counting in a November 2025 redistricting special election.

In the special election, voters approved a measure to redraw congressional districts to favor Democrats in the upcoming midterm elections. The measure passed in the county by a margin of more than 80,000 votes.

Bianco entered ballots in Riverside County, the inland California county of 2.5 million where he was twice elected sheriff. He called the effort a “fact-finding mission.”

“This investigation is simple: physically count the ballots and compare that result with the total votes reported,” he said Friday.

Bianco is one of two prominent Republicans running for governor in a crowded June primary that includes more than a half-dozen Democrats. California has a primary system that places all candidates on the same ballot, regardless of party, and sends the two candidates with the most votes to the November general election.

Leading California Democrats fear that their party has so many candidates that they risk splitting votes and sending Bianco and Steve Hilton, another top Republican, to the general election. That would be a stunning result in a heavily Democratic state.

Bianco said the investigation had “absolutely nothing to do” with his campaign for governor.

“I have a duty to investigate alleged crimes in Riverside County,” he said.

The effort comes as President Donald Trump has repeatedly challenged the results of the 2020 election, citing unsubstantiated cases of fraud. His administration recently seized ballots and other documents from an election office in Georgia. Some Republicans echoed Trump’s speech on voting in their states.

Bonta has repeatedly sent letters to Bianco’s office over the past two months, saying his staff is not qualified to conduct a recount. In one of the letters, Bonta wrote that the seizure of ballots was “unacceptable” and “sets a dangerous precedent and will only sow distrust in our elections.”

The letters say Bianco seized nearly 1,000 boxes of ballots and election materials from the county elections office with a warrant in February. The problem, Bianco said, is a discrepancy reported by a citizens group between handwritten voting logs and the number of votes reported to the state.

Bianco said the alleged discrepancy amounted to about 45,800 votes — a difference that election officials refuted at county meetings, saying the automatic count and the final tally submitted to the state differed by about 100 votes. They say the handwritten lists, which were not relied upon to verify the count, were maintained by temporary election officials who had worked long days and could have made mistakes.

Bianco said Friday that counting had started and stopped, but would now resume under the supervision of a special master appointed by a judge.