Legal fight continues as Riverside County sheriff seizes more ballots in election probe

RIVERSIDE, Calif. (KABC) -- The legal battle between the Riverside County sheriff and the state's top law officer continues as Sheriff Chad Bianco seized hundreds of additional boxes of ballots this week.

Bianco has now retrieved roughly a thousand boxes from the Riverside County Registrar of Voters, according to court records, after executing three search warrants as part of his investigation into an alleged vote discrepancy in the county stemming from last year's special election for Prop 50.

His latest tranche of boxes comes after California Attorney General Rob Bonta directed him to pause his probe.

A citizens' group says Riverside County claimed handwritten logs showed that just over 611,000 votes were cast in November, where a machine count showed more than 657,000 ballots were counted.

At a recent Riverside County Board of Supervisors meeting, Registrar Art Tinoco stood by the machine count of the ballots, saying the handwritten logs reviewed by the citizen group were reference guides prone to human error.

The roughly 45,000 vote discrepancy would not change the result of the election, but Bianco is pursuing a recount.

"The Riverside County Sheriff's Office is conducting an investigation based on evidence obtained from the ROV. The investigation simply sought to determine the validity of the allegations of election fraud. The exact same way every investigation is conducted," Sheriff Bianco said in a statement Friday.

Bonta has demanded Bianco halt his effort, issuing directives to the sheriff while they work to understand the basis for the investigation. Bonta's office said Bianco flagrantly ignored those directives.

"The Sheriff has not identified any particular crime that may have been committed by anyone - a necessary predicate to obtain a criminal search warrant. In his own words, this investigation is 'just as much to prove the election is accurate as it is to show otherwise,'" said a spokesperson for the AG's office.

This week, an appellate court struck down Bonta's petition asking the court to get involved and order Bianco to pause, noting that Bonta filed his petition in the wrong court.

Bonta then filed another petition, this time in Riverside County Superior Court, asking a judge there to intervene and require Bianco to comply with his orders.

A hearing was supposed to take place on Friday in Riverside, however it was reset for Monday morning.

Bonta alleges Bianco's actions could sow distrust and jeopardize public confidence in the upcoming primary election, an election Bianco himself is part of as a leading Republican candidate for governor.

The UCLA Voting Rights Project has launched its own legal effort to halt Bianco's efforts, asking the California Supreme Court to rule that the ballots must be returned to the Registrar of Voters.

"The attorney general's office has taken massive steps, at taxpayers' expense, to prevent a lawful investigation from occurring. The only question that should be asked is why anyone would not want an investigation to occur," Bianco said in a statement.