Appeals Court Denies Bid to Halt Riverside Sheriff's Election Probe

Before Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco seized more than 650,000 ballots from the November Proposition 50 election, he needed a judge to sign the warrants. He turned to Jay Kiel, a former deputy district attorney whose 2022 judicial campaign Bianco had personally endorsed.

A three-judge appellate panel this week denied California Attorney General Rob Bonta's bid to shut that investigation down, a ruling that leaves control of Riverside County's entire Prop 50 ballot haul inside the sheriff's department while Bianco campaigns for governor.

Bonta's office characterized the defeat as a procedural error rather than a substantive legal loss, saying the 4th Appellate District rejected their request "based solely on where we filed the case and is not a ruling on the underlying of the petition." In the 70-page petition Bonta had filed with the appellate court, he described the investigation as "sweeping and unprecedented" and "an abuse of the criminal process" that would "sow distrust and jeopardize public confidence" ahead of the midterm elections. The panel's brief ruling told him to apply to a lower court instead.

"The facts have not changed," Bonta's office said in a statement. "The Riverside County Sheriff continues to directly defy the Attorney General's instructions, in violation of the California Constitution and state law."

Bianco, a leading Republican candidate for governor, said his investigators launched the probe after the Riverside Election Integrity Team, a local citizen group, conducted its own audit and claimed the county's Prop 50 tally had been inflated by roughly 45,800 votes. Riverside County Registrar of Voters Art Tinoco disputed that figure in a February presentation to county supervisors, saying the group relied on raw, incompletely processed data that excluded confidential, provisional and other ballot categories. The actual discrepancy, Tinoco said, was 103 votes.

Prop 50 temporarily redrew California's congressional districts to benefit Democrats, shifting five Republican-held House seats. It passed in Riverside County with more than 56 percent of the vote, with ballots in favor outnumbering those against by about 82,570, according to the Associated Press. Statewide the margin exceeded 3.3 million votes. Bianco has insisted his probe is not a recount of the outcome but a "fact-finding mission" to determine whether any votes were fraudulently counted, and has accused Bonta, a Democrat, of improperly interfering with a lawful criminal investigation.

California Secretary of State Shirley Weber said the allegations "lack credible evidence and risk undermining public confidence in our elections." Kim Nalder, a political science professor and director of the Project for an Informed Electorate at Sacramento State, called the investigation "an electoral ploy," linking it to Bianco's alignment with President Donald Trump, who has falsely claimed widespread fraud in past elections and has called on the federal government to nationalize state-run elections.

On March 26, the UCLA Voting Rights Project, joined by former California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, filed a separate petition with the California Supreme Court asking that all seized ballots be returned immediately to the Registrar of Voters. Bonta's office said it was evaluating next steps, leaving two parallel legal challenges alive as the governor's race accelerates.