Overview
- California’s Fourth District Court of Appeal denied Attorney General Rob Bonta’s emergency request Tuesday, leaving Sheriff Chad Bianco’s election investigation in place for now.
- Bianco’s office seized about 1,000 boxes holding roughly 650,000 Proposition 50 ballots on February 26 using search warrants that a judge approved and later sealed.
- Bianco says he will physically count ballots to test a local group’s claim of a 45,896-vote gap, while Registrar Art Tinoco says the group misread intake data and pegs the true variance at about 103 ballots.
- A Riverside Superior Court judge ordered a special master to oversee any counting, as Bonta challenges the warrants for lacking probable cause and warns the seizure breaks ballot chain-of-custody norms.
- The fight carries political and practical stakes as Bianco runs for governor and as state rules set non-federal election materials for destruction six months after the vote, placing these November 2025 ballots on track for disposal in May.