A California court denied the state attorney general’s appeal to halt the Riverside County Sheriff’s election fraud investigation on Tuesday.
In a statement, California Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office said the appellate court denied their request “based solely on where we filed the case and is not a ruling on the underlying of the petition.”
“The facts have not changed. The Riverside County Sheriff continues to directly defy the Attorney General’s instructions, in violation of the California Constitution and state law,” Bonta’s office wrote. “We are evaluating next steps to ensure a swift and appropriate resolution to this matter.”
Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, who is running for governor, seized more than 611,000 ballots from the Prop 50 special election in which voters approved a redistricting measure that shifted five of California’s Republican U.S. House seats to be more favorable to Democrats in the midterm elections this year.
Prop 50 passed in Riverside County with more than 56% of the vote, according to The Associated Press. The ballots in favor of the new congressional maps surpassed those against by about 82,570 votes, according to AP.
Bianco claimed his agency was investigating a complaint from a local group alleging a possible discrepancy in which about 45,800 more votes were reported to California’s Secretary of State. He described the probe as a “fact-finding mission.”
“This investigation is simple: Physically count the ballots and compare that result with the total votes reported,” he said during a press conference last Friday.
Secretary of State Shirley Weber said the allegations of discrepancies “lack credible evidence and risk undermining public confidence in our elections.”
“The fact remains that he and his deputies are not elections officials and they do not have expertise in election administration,” Weber said in a statement. “Investigations into election processes must be conducted by those with the appropriate legal authority and subject matter expertise. Similar claims raised in other states by individuals without election administration experience have been thoroughly reviewed and debunked.”
County elections officials also disputed Bianco’s claim, saying the machine count and the final count submitted to the state differed by about 100 votes. The Riverside County Registrar of Voters said it “will continue to comply with all lawful court orders and with all legal obligations applicable to election materials and election administration.”
“I hope we can all agree there is no acceptable error, small or large, in our elections, let alone a 45,000 vote difference,” Bianco said.
Bonta said his office has sent letters to Bianco’s agency over the last two months echoing Weber’s sentiment that his staff was not qualified to conduct a recount and that investigation sows distrust in elections.
“The Sheriff has not identified any particular crime that may have been committed by anyone — a necessary predicate to obtain a criminal search warrant,” Bonta’s Office said in a statement. “In his own words, this investigation is ‘just as much to prove the election is accurate as it is to show otherwise.’ There is a robust civil process, overseen by state and local elections officials, to request a recount or challenge the results of an election. That process has not been invoked here.”
Until March, most polls showed Bianco, a Republican, and conservative commentator Steve Hilton in the top two spots.
In the state’s primary system, only the top two vote-getters in the June primary will advance to the November general election. This has led to the crowded field of progressive candidates vying for the roughly 60% of the vote Democrats typically secure in statewide races. The plethora of candidates could end up locking themselves out of the race in November if too many of them divide the vote.
“The challenge could be that Democrats, in splitting up their 60% of the pie, split it up in such small pieces that you have candidates getting 8%, 10%, 12%, 14%, 19%,” political consultant Paul Mitchell said.
Two mid-March polls have Hilton and Democratic candidates billionaire Tom Steyer and Rep. Eric Swalwell consolidating their support.
According to the UC Berkeley-Politico poll, Hilton still holds the top spot with 19%, Steyer comes in at second with 13%, and the other candidates are trailing close behind:
- Swalwell, 11%
- Bianco, 11%
- Former Rep. Katie Porter, 11%
- Former State Attorney General and Health Secretary Xavier Becerra, 5%
A new Emerson College poll has similar results, with Swalwell and Hilton in the top two spots.
Bianco said the investigation had “absolutely nothing to do” with his campaign for governor.
“I have a duty to investigate alleged crime in Riverside County,” he said.
