Bianco’s fraud crusade is a campaign stunt. It’s also dangerous
- Share via
See more from the L.A. Times in Google Search. Set us as preferred
- Bianco used secret, sealed warrants to seize more than half a million ballots.
- A California appeals court declined to intervene until Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta first went to the Riverside County Superior Court.
Voter fraud conspiracies are like methamphetamine running through MAGA veins, stirring up equal parts passion and paranoia.
President Trump, of course, is the king pusher of this particular addiction, pathologically certain he won the 2020 presidential election (he did not). In his second term, and in advance of the November election, Trump has supercharged voter fraud lies; installed election deniers in key positions; and is attempting through the so-called SAVE America Act to disenfranchise poor and female voters.
Here in California, the seductive power of Trump’s crusade can be seen in Riverside County, where gubernatorial candidate and Sheriff Chad Bianco is definitely not pursuing a vote fraud investigation for political reasons.
“From the very, very beginning, Chad Bianco didn’t say this was political,” Bianco told me, referring to himself in the third person. “Chad Bianco said we have an allegation of fraud with numbers that don’t add up, and no one has an exact reason why. So we have to find out the exact reason why. It’s plain and simple. Plain and simple.”
If you’re clueless as to what Bianco is talking about, let me give you the short version. A citizens group of election “auditors” claimed that in the last election over Proposition 50 in November, there were about 45,800 more ballots counted than cast.
The Riverside County Registrar of Voters, Art Tinoco, a highly respected election official, gave a long presentation explaining why that number was not accurate. He said that the actual difference in ballots cast and counted is only 103, within the acceptable margin of error for the 1.4 million voters in his area.
But unhappy with that answer, the group apparently took their concerns to Bianco, who decided to use his powers of criminal investigation to circumvent the many established avenues for vote audits through his own county and the California secretary of state (though he hasn’t revealed publicly exactly what led to the investigation).
Using a secret, sealed warrant — so none of us actually know what he’s alleging — he seized more than half a million ballots. The court has apparently appointed a special master to count those ballots, though Bianco at first said his deputies would do their own counting. But we don’t know who that special master is, or even if he or she has yet been appointed.
Here’s what we do know, and why it counts as a danger not just to Riverside, but also to American democracy writ large, when a politically ambitious lawman decides to run elections himself.
The fraud fiasco
So where did the citizen-auditors get their 45,800 number? Like many California counties, Riverside tallies ballots as they come in. So for the 11 days voting was happening (and for the mail-in ballots that came later) someone was making a handwritten note for every ballot that the county received.
Yes, I said handwritten, for more than 600,000 ballots going through 2,500 workers and volunteers. It’s often inaccurate and not every ballot is going to end up being a good one — some lack signatures, for example.
Tinoco, the registrar, called these handwritten logs “raw data” that also are missing ballots from other sources that increases the final tally, such as people who register on the day they vote. So no one who understands elections expects this number to be accurate or final.
Once all these ballots are checked to make sure they should be counted, they are sent to an entirely separate system, which reads them electronically and provides the election results.
When the number of vetted ballots is compared with the number of ballots that are counted by the second system, the difference is 103, Tinoco said.
So no fraud, only human frailty with the difficult business of counting by hand.
Matt Barreto, a UCLA political science professor and director of its Voting Rights Project, said Bianco’s actions were similar to what happened in Fulton County, Ga., where the FBI seized ballots after Trump’s debunked claims of fraud — despite plain and simple explanations from election officials.
“In both cases, Georgia and Riverside, independent elections offices had already verified the accuracy of the ballot count, and in both cases the results had been certified by the Secretary of State,” Barreto said. “It is worrisome that a very partisan law enforcement officer is questioning the integrity of an election, perhaps because he did not support the results.”
The investigation
Bianco has been investigating the 45,000 claim for months, but it came to a head in recent weeks, in no small part thanks to a news conference he held. Bianco’s office, as first reported by the Riverside Record, served a warrant on the election office one day before Tinoco made his presentation to the Board of Supervisors in early February.
Since then, the California secretary of state, which handles elections, and the state Department of Justice have both tried to intervene to stop Bianco from taking ballots or doing his own recount, Pillow Guy-style. But they’ve had little luck.
Secretary of State Shirley Weber called the allegations “unsubstantiated” and questioned the legality — and common sense — of having deputies hand count ballots. Now, her office is trying to make sure folks trained in elections are involved in whatever happens next.
“The sheriff’s assertion that his deputies know how to count is admirable,” Weber said. “The fact remains that he and his deputies are not elections officials.”
Separately, California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta has gone to the courts to try to keep Bianco from spiriting away the ballots. Bonta’s office went straight to the California Court of Appeal to ask it to force the sheriff to comply with their requests to take no further action and supply the Justice Department with the probable cause evidence used to obtain the search warrant — basically tell them exactly what proof he’s using to claim a crime might have been committed.
The appeals court declined to intervene until Bonta went to the lower Riverside County Superior Court. But in the meantime, Bianco went back to his judge and asked for another secret, sealed warrant — which he got.
The bigger problem
And that brings us to why we should all be concerned about Riverside County.
First, why all the secrecy? Shouldn’t elections and everything about them be transparent, so we all can feel confident any investigation is on the up and up?
I asked Bianco why the warrants are sealed, and he told me I didn’t understand investigations.
“In an ongoing investigation, we never unseal the warrants,” Bianco said. “No, I can’t say never. I can’t say never. Why are you coming at me like I’m the bad person here, instead of like a rational person?”
When I asked him why a sheriff needed to be involved, rather than allowing the state officials who handle elections to investigate, he told me this was a crime investigation just like any other — domestic abuse or murder, for example.
“It’s called fraud,” he said. “Let me ask you this: Do we just let, do we let doctors investigate themselves for medical malpractice?”
The implication there is that election officials are in a conspiracy to commit an actual crime — fraud — and can’t be trusted. That jumps the shark from maybe election staff counting sloppy in their handwritten tallies of ballots received, to a — yes, folks, here it is — a conspiracy of Democrats, from those volunteers up to the highest state officials.
That is a political vendetta, straight from Trump, and has little to do with tracking down crime — which, by the way, Bianco’s office is not great at. It has some of the lowest clearance rates in the state.
“Oh, please,” Bianco said regarding my questions on whether this was, in fact, political. “I’m the sheriff of Riverside County, and my investigators are responsible for crime. I have nothing to do with this investigation.”
His news conference would beg to differ.
And now we have a precedent for a politics-driven sheriff seizing ballots, maybe to make headlines, maybe to please Trump, maybe both. What happens if other Republican sheriffs across the country decide to do some ballot seizing of their own in swing states or contested races come November?
Is it all fair game now for whoever can physically take the ballots to be the arbitrator of results?
“The political corruption in California just gets bigger and bigger,” Bianco said on social media recently.
On that, we can agree.
What else you should be reading
The must-read: Landmark L.A. jury verdict finds Instagram, YouTube were designed to addict kids
The deep dive: ‘He’s an election skeptic. And he’s in charge of elections in Shasta County
The L.A. Times Special: Court denies AG’s petition to block Republican sheriff’s investigation of 650,000 ballots
Stay Golden,
Anita Chabria
P.S. Here’s Bianco on social media not long ago, once again definitely not espousing partisan voter conspiracies.
Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Sign up here to get it in your inbox.
Insights
L.A. Times Insights delivers AI-generated analysis on Voices content to offer all points of view. Insights does not appear on any news articles.
Viewpoint
Perspectives
The following AI-generated content is powered by Perplexity. The Los Angeles Times editorial staff does not create or edit the content.
Ideas expressed in the piece
The investigation into Proposition 50 election ballots represents a politically motivated campaign stunt by a gubernatorial candidate seeking to capitalize on Trump-aligned voter fraud conspiracies rather than pursue legitimate law enforcement concerns[1][3]. The underlying allegation of 45,800 missing ballots stems from a misinterpretation of raw, unprocessed handwritten logs that county election officials have definitively explained; the actual discrepancy between ballots cast and counted is only 103 votes, well within acceptable margins of error for a county of 1.4 million voters[1][3][5].
By seizing ballots using sealed warrants and circumventing established legal channels for election audits through county and state officials, Bianco has created a dangerous precedent that threatens democratic processes and public confidence in elections[1][3]. Election administration requires specialized expertise that law enforcement officers do not possess, and allowing a politically ambitious sheriff to unilaterally conduct ballot recounts sets a troubling standard that other partisan officials could replicate in contested races nationwide[1][2][3].
The investigation lacks transparency and accountability, with sealed warrants preventing public scrutiny of the alleged probable cause and Bianco refusing to disclose how the investigation began or where ballot materials are being stored[1][3]. This secrecy contrasts sharply with the principle that elections and election investigations must be transparent to maintain public confidence in their integrity[3].
The comparison to Georgia’s Fulton County situation, where law enforcement seized ballots following Trump’s debunked 2020 election claims despite independent verification of ballot accuracy by elections officials, illustrates how this investigation mirrors broader election denial movements and suggests partisan motivation rather than genuine law enforcement concern[3].
Different views on the topic
Bianco maintains that the investigation constitutes his constitutional duty as sheriff to investigate allegations of potential criminal fraud, describing it as a straightforward “fact-finding mission” to physically count ballots and compare results with reported totals, separate from any political considerations[1][2][3]. He emphasizes that the investigation is intended “just as much to prove the election is accurate as it is to show otherwise,” suggesting neutrality in the inquiry[1][2][3].
The sheriff argues that judicial warrants, approved and signed by a Riverside County Superior Court judge, provide proper legal authorization for the ballot seizure, and that a court-appointed special master has been assigned to oversee the counting process to ensure appropriate oversight[1][3][5]. Bianco contends that his deputies are capable of conducting a proper count and questions why election officials should be permitted to investigate themselves, comparing it to allowing doctors to investigate their own medical malpractice cases[1][3].
Bianco’s office claims the investigation is rooted in legitimate citizen complaints about alleged discrepancies and that previous investigations have uncovered “isolated incidents” of ballot fraud referred to local prosecutors[1][2][4]. The sheriff asserts that without proper investigation of citizen-raised concerns about alleged ballot counting problems, legitimate questions about election administration would go unaddressed[1][3].
Bianco characterizes criticisms from state officials as politically motivated obstruction, arguing that California Attorney General Rob Bonta and Secretary of State Shirley Weber are engaged in cover-up activities rather than seeking truth about election administration[1][2][4]. The investigation’s existence demonstrates a commitment to election integrity that should not be dismissed as purely partisan, according to this perspective[1][3].
