Overview
- The UCLA Voting Rights Project, joined by Xavier Becerra, filed Thursday asking the state high court to force Sheriff Chad Bianco to return Riverside County’s November 2025 ballots, which remain in his custody.
- The petition says the sheriff had no legal authority to take lawfully cast ballots and warns any recount by deputies would not be trusted by voters.
- Bianco, a Republican candidate for governor, defends the action as normal police work and says a judge could appoint a monitor for a short, supervised count after Judge Jay Kiel signed the warrants.
- Attorney General Rob Bonta’s bid to halt the probe was denied at the appellate level on procedural grounds, and he has now filed in trial court as county election officials say the alleged 45,896-vote gap reflects bad readings of intake logs and the real difference is about 100.
- The coverage has widened to Bianco’s ideology and potential conflicts, with Democracy Docket noting links to the “constitutional sheriffs” movement and a past Oath Keepers tie, while voting-rights groups and the secretary of state warn that removing ballots from trained custodians breaks chain-of-custody and erodes trust.