Sheriff Bianco’s ballot grab is a campaign stunt

By Brian Gustafson, especially for CalMatters

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I spent my career in law enforcement. I served as Chief of Standards for the California Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST), the agency that sets the bar for every sworn officer in the state. I was the Chief of Police and was elected Sergeant Major of the California State Assembly.

I now teach public safety and justice at the University of Virginia. I know how legitimate investigations are done. What is Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco doing with confiscated ballots is not legitimate.

In California, specialized personnel are trained to conduct special investigations. POST exists because politicians recognize that competence requires more than good intentions and a badge. The commission has specific training standards for investigating homicides, auto thefts, domestic violence, and more.

Investigations require expertise, not just authority.

Election administration is no different. California law assigns oversight of elections to the Secretary of State and enforcement through the District Attorney and/or Attorney General, who has concurrent jurisdiction over election crimes. The Election Code establishes procedures for counting, recounting, and the preservation and storage of records.

None of these authorities or processes go through county sheriffs.

What if we extend Bianco’s logic? Would a sheriff confiscate tax records from the county assessor because a group of citizens thought too much or too little tax had been collected? Would he confiscate medical records from a hospital because a neighborhood association suspected malpractice?

No. Specialist investigators at the Franchise Tax Board and the Medical Board at the Department of Consumer Affairs are trained in exactly these scenarios.

A sheriff with a warrant and a hunch is funny. Yet when it comes to ballots, we should treat excess as a virtue.

Bianco says his deputies “know how to count.” Secretary of State Shirley Weber noted that the claim is admirable, but the problem is not the count. Ensuring an appropriate election result requires specialized expertise.

And perhaps the clearest evidence that Bianco lacks experience is in the orders themselves. According to Attorney General Rob Bonta’s filings, the affidavits underlying Bianco’s search warrants failed to identify a specific crime or a particular person believed to have committed a crime. These details are required.

Any serious investigator would know that the first step is to identify the crime you believe has been committed. Bianco obviously couldn’t.

To be clear, this is not a criticism of the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department. It is a professional organization with capable public servants.

It’s about Chad Bianco’s political theater. Let’s not pretend it is nothing to do with the gubernatorial race. Bianco is a candidate in a crowded primary. His “investigation” reflects the election denial game that has been running rampant since 2020.

According to San Francisco Chronicle. Four years. Zero prosecutions.

And he can’t name the crime he’s investigating.

Bonta recently filed an emergency petition with the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals to halt the Bianco investigation. The court rejected, but not on the merits. The three-judge bench dismissed the petition saying that should have been taken to another court. It has not been considered on its merits.

Predictably, Bianco declared victory and announced that his deputies would resume the count. It was a Machiavelli trap. Bianco turned a procedural decision into a headline for the courts that sided with him. They are not.

However, the investigation and recount have been suspended pending resolution of the legal challenges.

Bianco’s rhetoric does not qualify as a constitutional crisis, but his actions do. Every day the ballots remain in his evidence locker cements the precedent of his overreach.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.