Editor’s note: All legal documents pertaining to this case obtained by The Riverside Record can be accessed here. All reporting about Sheriff Chad Bianco’s election investigation can be found here.
This story has been updated with additional comment from Sheriff Chad Bianco posted to social media.
Attorney General Rob Bonta Friday filed a new petition with the California Supreme Court in an effort to halt Sheriff Chad Bianco’s ongoing investigation into last November’s special statewide election, first reported by The Riverside Record.
“In any context, a dispute involving a sheriff’s claimed authority to arrogate to himself the constitutional powers of the attorney general would warrant this court’s review,” the petition said. “The importance of the dispute is only magnified in this case because the sheriff rejects the attorney general’s supervision to pursue an unprecedented investigation into purported election fraud.”
Bianco did not immediately respond to a request for comment by The Record, but in a Saturday social media post called the ongoing legal action an attempt “to use taxpayer money to bankrupt the Riverside County Sheriff’s Office,” with legal fees.
“The Attorney General’s Office has taken massive steps at taxpayers’ expense to prevent a lawful investigation from occurring,” he said. “The only question that should be asked is, ‘Why would anyone not want an investigation to occur?”
He reiterated that his investigation was simply looking to count how many ballots there were, not conducting a recount of the vote, before ending the video by telling viewers to “stay tuned.”
In the filing, the California Department of Justice (DOJ) asked that the court determine whether Bianco was “violating the constitution and the government code by refusing to follow supervisory directives issued by the attorney general,” and whether action by the appellate court to order the sheriff to comply with Bonta’s orders was warranted to address Bianco’s “extraordinary and ongoing constitutional and statutory violation.”
The filing requested the court order an immediate stop to the sheriff’s investigation pending consideration of the petition. It also asked the court either review the appellate court’s dismissal of a petition filed Monday or transfer the petition back to the appellate court with instructions to “show cause and proceed to the merits,” while also leaving in place the California Supreme Court’s order to halt the investigation pending a resolution of the order to show cause.
Bonta, in the petition, once again reaffirmed his department’s belief that his office has legal authority to “direct the activities of any sheriff relative to the investigation or detection of crime,” and said that Bianco had routinely disregarded that authority.
“In the sheriff’s view, the power to direct and take charge of investigations now belongs exclusively to him—and not the attorney general,” the petition said. “That view is incompatible with the state’s constitutional and statutory design.”
Bonta again laid out the timeline, starting with last November’s special election, pointing out that the results of the Prop 50 election were not contested, and it was not until a group of Riverside County residents, who call themselves the Riverside Election Integrity Team (REIT), informed the sheriff that the group had found a discrepancy of more than 45,000 between ballots cast and ballots counted.
“Relying on its own amateur interpretation of the Registrar’s documents, REIT claimed that only 611,426 valid ballots had been cast in Riverside County—45,896 fewer ballots than the number of votes ultimately counted,” the petition said. “On February 10, 2026, after reviewing REIT’s ‘audit,’ the [Riverside County] Registrar of Voters [(ROV)] gave a public presentation at a Riverside County Board of Supervisors Meeting debunking REIT’s findings, and answered questions from supervisors.”
The Record first reported on this workshop, explaining in detail the issues raised.
In response to the group’s stated findings as presented to his department, Bianco obtained a search warrant February 9, one day before the workshop. A second warrant was obtained February 23, nearly two weeks after the ROV’s presentation.
The following day, Bonta said his office learned of the investigation and immediately reached out to the sheriff.
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On February 25, The Record first reported the investigation was happening, as Bonta’s office “asked Sheriff Bianco to provide copies of the probable cause affidavits submitted in connection with the warrant requests,” set to be executed February 27.
Bianco emailed the affidavits to the DOJ February 26, which the filing said “did not identify any specific felony offense the sheriff had probable cause to believe had been committed or that a particular person had committed a felony,” as required by law.
Despite talking with the DOJ about the department’s concerns and direction to pause the execution of the warrants until March 6 so the department could have time to fully review them, Bianco instead moved up the date and seized 1,000 boxes of ballots hours after speaking with the DOJ on February 26.
This is when a series of exchanges between Bonta’s office and Bianco started, as made public following Bianco’s March 20 press conference, in which the DOJ told the sheriff to halt his investigation and provide all requested information.
The final outreach from Bonta’s office, according to the petition, was made March 13. At that time, Bianco said he would comply and send the requested material by March 18, but that didn’t happen, according to the petition.
Instead, on March 19, Bianco obtained a third warrant, the contents of which he said at his press conference ordered him to continue counting the ballots under the supervision of a court-appointed special master. In a previous filing, Bonta said that warrant said no such thing, and instead was similar in nature to previous warrants obtained with an “enhanced (and still deficient) explanation of probable cause.”
The DOJ, on March 23, filed a petition at the appellate court asking the court to order the sheriff to comply with the DOJ’s directives and cancel the March 19 warrant. The court denied the peition stating that the DOJ had not adequately shown it could not seek adequate relief at the Riverside County Superior Court.
On March 24, the sheriff executed that warrant, seizing an additional 426 boxes of “ballot materials,” from the ROV, the filing said. The petition said it was unclear if a special master had been appointed or whether a count of the ballots had restarted. The filing also said Bianco had still not provided the DOJ with all of the requested documents.
According to the filing, Bianco now has “nearly all voting-related documents from last November’s special elections.” While the information of what specifically Bianco had taken was redacted, the filing previously mentioned ballots and mail ballot envelopes.
The petition said the DOJ was now pursuing relief in two parallel cases: one at the Riverside County Superior Court and one at the California Supreme Court, both of which stated the warrants and supporting documents were legally deficient and omitted material facts.
The filing argued that the California Supreme Court should take up the case because the “unprecedented constitutional emergency unfolding in Riverside County,” demanded action.
“Sheriff Bianco’s defiance of the attorney general’s directives not only represents an unprecedented departure from our constitutional structure, but also imperils public trust in the integrity of our state’s electoral system,” the filing stated. “Every day that the sheriff ’s illegal and baseless probe continues, there is a growing possibility that the public will call into question the fairness of elections based on misinformation spread by the sheriff and the perception that his investigation is legitimate.”
The filing came hours after attorneys for the DOJ missed Friday morning’s hearing on two ex parte petitions at the Riverside County Superior Court. The department said its attorneys had called in and were ready to present, but they were given an incorrect number, an incident addressed in the filing.
“Although an attorney for the attorney general dialed in for the hearing, the hearing was pulled from the calendar,” the filing said. “The notices of hearing issued by the superior court reflected a meeting ID number for a different courtroom.”
The filing said Bonta’s office was able to resolve the scheduling issue and secured a hearing on Monday to set a briefing schedule and secure a court order to be able to submit redacted public filings protecting information that a judge had previously ordered to be sealed.
This is the second petition filed with the state’s highest court. The first was filed Thursday by the UCLA Voting Rights Project on behalf of four Riverside County voters: Riverside Councilmember Clarissa Cervantes who is running for Assembly District 58, Indio Councilmember Oscar Ortiz who is running for Assembly District 36, Rebecca Robinson and Nathan Kempe, who is the operations director of the nonprofit Starting Over Strong, which has been pushing for increased sheriff accountability in the county.
Both Ortiz and Cervantes spoke at a press conference Friday morning put on by a coalition of community advocacy groups.
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The Riverside Election Integrity Team audited the Proposition 50 election by making public records requests of the ROV to obtain copies of all the ballot collection logs created by the ROV’s election workers. The workers counted and recorded 611,426 legal ballots on these logs; however, the Liberty Vote system counted and certified 657,322 votes: 45,896 more votes than the number of legal ballots cast.
Our team delivered copies of all these ballot collection logs to the Sheriff last month, and I believe it was his duty to investigate. Accurate elections are the foundation of our Constitutional Republic: our government derives its “just powers from the consent of the governed.” If our election system does not produce accurate results, we have lost our right to self-government. Each of our elected officials promises to support and defend this right. If the Sheriff refused to investigate our evidence, I believe he would be neglecting to honor his oath of office.
Our team found the same issue in the 2024 General Election: 33,888 more votes were counted than the number of legal ballots we could account for on the ballot collection logs created by the ROV election workers. This evidence was convincing enough for the Riverside County Civil Grand Jury to include it in their June, 2025 report to the county. I believe that the county, our sheriff included, are duty-bound to investigate these discrepancies as well.
I do not believe our Registrar is the cause of these discrepancies (though he also is responsible to investigate the cause). Our team would not have been able to complete our audits without the good work of Registrar Tinoco’s election workers and without his willingness to give us copies of his ballot collection logs. I believe our Registrar is doing his best to use the election system he is required to use by our state, but our state requires him to use a voting system that, according to our audits, is not producing yield accurate results. By counting the number of physical ballots, our Sheriff will test the validity of the election process our Registrar is required to use and trust. This is essential information our Registrar needs in order to correct the cause of the apparently inaccurate vote counts before the next election.