A California appellate court on Tuesday denied the state attorney general’s appeal to halt the Riverside County Sheriff’s investigation into alleged election fraud.
The California Attorney General’s Office said the court’s denial was based solely on where the case was filed and was not a ruling on the substance of the petition. “The facts have not changed. The Riverside County Sheriff continues to directly defy the Attorney General’s instructions, in violation of the California Constitution and state law,” the office said, adding it is evaluating next steps.
Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, a Republican running for governor, seized more than 611,000 ballots from the Prop 50 special election, which approved a redistricting measure that made five previously Republican U.S. House seats more favorable to Democrats. Prop 50 passed in Riverside County with more than 56% of the vote; ballots in favor exceeded those against by about 82,570 votes, according to The Associated Press.
Bianco said his office was acting on a complaint from a local group alleging roughly 45,800 more votes were reported to the California Secretary of State than were actually cast. He described the sheriff’s operation as a “fact-finding mission” and said the probe would involve physically counting ballots and comparing that tally to the totals reported.
Secretary of State Shirley Weber rejected the allegations as lacking credible evidence and warned they risk undermining public confidence in elections. She noted that Bianco and his deputies are not elections officials and do not have the election-administration expertise required to conduct such investigations, and said similar claims by nonexperts in other states have been reviewed and debunked.
County elections officials also disputed Bianco’s claim, saying the machine count and the final count submitted to the state differed by about 100 votes. The Riverside County Registrar of Voters said it “will continue to comply with all lawful court orders and with all legal obligations applicable to election materials and election administration.”
Bonta’s office said it had sent letters to the sheriff’s agency over the past two months echoing Weber’s concerns and warning the probe sows distrust. The attorney general’s statement said the sheriff “has not identified any particular crime that may have been committed by anyone — a necessary predicate to obtain a criminal search warrant.” It added that the civil process for requesting a recount or challenging results, overseen by state and local elections officials, has not been invoked.
Bianco has defended the investigation, saying it is unrelated to his gubernatorial campaign and asserting, “I have a duty to investigate alleged crime in Riverside County.” Until March, several polls showed Bianco and conservative commentator Steve Hilton leading the Republican field. In California’s top-two primary system, only the two highest vote-getters in June advance to the November general election, a dynamic that can penalize crowded fields.
Mid-March polls showed Hilton leading with about 19% and Tom Steyer around 13% in a UC Berkeley-Politico survey; other results included Rep. Eric Swalwell, Bianco and former Rep. Katie Porter each near 11%, and former State Attorney General Xavier Becerra at about 5%. An Emerson College poll showed similar front-runners.