Overview
- Sheriff Chad Bianco expanded his cache this week by taking 426 more boxes of election materials, adding to the roughly 1,000 boxes holding about 650,000 mail ballots he seized last month.
- Attorney General Rob Bonta refiled in Riverside County Superior Court for expedited relief to stop the sheriff’s planned count, saying the warrants lack a clear crime and the probe risks eroding trust in upcoming elections.
- UCLA’s Voting Rights Project, with former Attorney General Xavier Becerra, petitioned the California Supreme Court to order the ballots returned to the county registrar, arguing law enforcement cannot handle or recount ballots.
- The seizure relied on sealed warrants signed by Judge Jay Kiel, whom Bianco previously endorsed, fueling transparency and conflict-of-interest concerns as questions mount over the legal basis for the operation.
- County Registrar Art Tinoco says the claimed 45,800-vote discrepancy comes from handwritten intake logs that are error‑prone and do not match machine counts, which he estimates differ by about 100 votes, and state officials warn the ballots also contain confidential voter signatures protected by law.