An inside look at Sheriff Chad Bianco’s ballot seizure in California

Using years of internal emails, reporters Anat Rubin and Jessica Pischko traced the development of the 4-year case that ultimately led to the unprecedented seizure of 650,000 ballots by Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco in March.

The emails show that:

• The case began when a group came to Bianco with a string of allegations of election fraud in 2022. One of the sheriff’s senior investigators looked into the allegations and quickly concluded there was no evidence of a crime. He closed the case.

• After being contacted later that year by the constitutional sheriffs movement, Bianco said he reopened the investigation. The movement pushes unproven election conspiracies and claims that elected sheriffs are the highest law in the land, more powerful than the president or the courts. It is central to Bianco’s career.

• But the emails show the sheriff had misgivings about the civilian detectives filing the claims. “This is absolutely ridiculous,” Bianco responded after the group’s leader suggested county supervisors were complicit in election fraud and may have ties to drug cartels. “Just because ‘someone’ believes something doesn’t make it real.”

• In three years of investigating the case, the sheriff’s office produced no evidence of its own to support the case. In the information provided to the courts to justify his order, Bianco’s investigator focused almost entirely on information provided by citizen groups.

The emails “reveal that his extensive investigation was based on the flimsiest of evidence and raise concerns about how the November election could be derailed by unsubstantiated claims by fringe groups and ideologically-minded officials,” according to Anat and Jessica.

Bianco’s connection to the constitutional sheriffs movement underscores his refusal to cede control of the investigation to California Attorney General Rob Bonta, even though the state constitution gives the attorney general “direct supervision” over sheriffs.

“The state’s initially lukewarm response and its inability so far to get Bianco to return the ballots raises concerns about how officials here will be able to protect future elections,” the reporters wrote.

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Uber is required under Proposition 22 to allow rideshare drivers to appeal their deactivation when they’re kicked off the platform. But some drivers say the company does not complywrites CalMatters’ Levi Sumagasai.

In 2020, voters approved Proposition 22, which allows Uber and other companies to classify their workers as independent contractors rather than employees. While that allows Uber to provide more limited workplace benefits, the company must create “mandatory contractual rights and appeals processes,” according to Prop 22’s text.

But in a lawsuit filed Monday, a group of drivers that says it has about 20,000 members in California accuses Uber of violating that provision.

Many disabled drivers report that when they try to appeal their deactivation cases, they are directed to chat bots and then to agents who read from scripts and operate from another country.

• Mirwais Nuridisabled Bay Area driver who said Uber kicked him out of the app in 2024: “I’m the only one with an income. It turned my life upside down.”

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Audit finds popular Internet websites flouting California law requiring them to comply with instrument prohibiting them from selling or sharing personal information of visitorsCalMatters’ Colin Letcher reports.

Global Privacy Control is a tool that online users can turn on through a setting in their browsers that tells the websites they visit not to sell or share their user data. California’s Consumer Privacy Act requires companies to recognize GPC and not track users who use it.

But big companies may be flouting the law, according to researchers from webXrayprivacy analytics platform: Google continued to track users in 86% of cases despite receiving the GPC signal, Meta in 69% and Microsoft in 50%.

The tech companies deny any wrongdoing. But if the California Privacy Agency fines all websites found to be in violation of the law, it could result in billions of dollars in penalties, according to webXray.

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Former California state inspector Betty Yee said Monday she is ending her campaign for governor. Yee was one of the earliest candidates to join the race, but during her run she never garnered the support of more than about 3% of likely voters. Said Yee: “Even some of my former supporters just felt they had to move on too.” Read more by Jeanne Kuang of CalMatters.