California and a voting rights group filed legal challenges to stop GOP sheriff’s ballot seizure

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California’s Democratic attorney general and a voting rights group launched legal challenges this week to halt a seizure and recount of more than half a million 2025 election ballots by a Republican county sheriff who is running for governor.

The dispute over the ballot seizure in Riverside County, which began last month, escalated this week as Democratic Attorney General Rob Bonta urged the court to step in and Sheriff Chad Bianco doubled down by taking more ballots from a county election office. A Riverside County judge held a hearing Friday on Bonta’s request for the case to move quickly.

His office said in a Thursday filing that Bianco seized another 426 boxes of election materials this week. Bianco said his probe was legal and approved by a Riverside County judge.

“We are conducting a lawful investigation, approved by a judge,” he said in a statement. “I think the failed democratic candidates are just trying to rally a base for their own political benefit.”

Separately, the UCLA Voting Rights Project argued in a state Supreme Court filing Thursday that the seizure violated state laws on election materials.

Bianco, one of two prominent Republican gubernatorial candidates, earlier this month said his office had launched the investigation after receiving a complaint from a local citizens group about the ballot count from a November 2025 special election on redistricting. He called the effort “a fact-finding mission,” seizing some 650,000 ballots in Riverside County, the inland California county of 2.5 million people where he has twice been elected sheriff. Local election officials told the county Board of Supervisors last month the complaint was unfounded.

Bianco said last week that his office would physically count the ballots and compare the result with the total votes reported to the state. The counting is being done by sheriff’s officials under the supervision of a special master appointed by a court. He did not give a timeline on when the counting would conclude.

Bonta’s first effort this week to stop the count failed after an appeals court said his petition was filed in the wrong place. He’s now refiled it in a lower court.

“Absent swift action by this Court, the Sheriff’s misguided investigation threatens to sow distrust and jeopardize public confidence in the upcoming primary and general elections, not just in Riverside County but around the State,” the petition reads. “It also sets a dangerous precedent that could invite future attempts to improperly contest election results through a misuse of law enforcement authority and the criminal process.”

The sheriff, a supporter of President Donald Trump, said he obtained warrants signed by a judge to seize the ballots. Bianco said the alleged discrepancy amounted to about 45,800 votes — a difference elections officials have refuted at county meetings, saying the machine count and the final count submitted to the state differed by about 100 votes. They argue the handwritten rolls, which were not relied on to check the count, were being kept by temporary elections workers who had worked long days and may have made mistakes.

The UCLA Voting Rights Project argued the sheriff has no authority to seize the ballots in a petition filed on behalf of several Riverside County voters. It’s asking the state Supreme Court to order Bianco to return the ballots.

“Law enforcement officials are legally prohibited from interfering in counting ballots, in California and nationwide,” former state attorney general Xavier Becerra, a Democrat who is running for governor and serves as a senior advisor of the group, said in a statement. “A candidate for Governor should know the law and lead by example, not weaponize his law enforcement office for political gain.”

The ballot probe came as President Trump has repeatedly disputed the results of the 2020 election, citing unsubstantiated instances of fraud. His administration recently seized ballots and other documents from an election office in Georgia. Some Republicans have mirrored Trump’s rhetoric on voting in their states.