How Chad Bianco Got Orders to Seize CA Election Ballots

Sheriff of Riverside County The Chad Bianco Investigators they had no inside informants, no witnesses and no independent forensic analysis when they went to a local judge and asked to take the unprecedented step of seizing hundreds of thousands of ballots.

Instead, the evidence they showed Judge Jay Keel were claims by a group that one independent election expert described as the equivalent of “flat-earthers” alleging possible voter fraud. The county’s top election official says their claims of miscounted ballots are based on faulty and incomplete data.

like, whom Bianco approved when he ran for judge, he still signed the search warrants, allowing the sheriff to take the highly unusual step of seizing 650,000 ballots from California’s 2025 election. during his own gubernatorial campaign.

Until this week, the warrants were secret, with Bianco, a Republican, saying they reflected “normal law enforcement” and Kiel keeping them under seal.

That changed Wednesday when another judge in Riverside County and the California Supreme Court ordered them open after CalMatters and other news organizations petitioned for their disclosure.

After reviewing the documents, experts had mixed opinions about whether Bianco’s investigators had enough evidence of probable cause to justify the raid. Some said the lack of evidence in investigators’ affidavits raised troubling questions about how easy it was for Bianco to seize the ballots under the guise of judicial oversight.

Christine Soto DeBerry, a former prosecutor who runs the nonprofit Prosecutors Alliance Action, said she was troubled by how much the sheriff relied on an activist group’s claims without trying to verify them before getting the warrants.

“This whole course of conduct worries me,” said Soto, whose group advocates for criminal justice reform. “Elections are a sacred institution in this country. We haven’t seen sheriffs take away ballots in this country until 2026, and it’s being done in a very sloppy, procedural way, instead of the care that I would expect us to use around something this important. And I think that goes for everyone who’s been involved here.”

Carl Luna, director of San Diego State University’s Institute for Civic Civic Engagement, criticized the civic group that lawmakers cited in the warrants and questioned Bianco’s integrity.

“They are the political equivalent of flat earthers who refuse to look at any facts that do not support their unsupportable views,” Luna said in an email to CalMatters. “The fact that Sheriff Bianco, an elected representative of the people of Riverside County, is using this group’s baseless allegations of fraud as what amounts to a campaign stunt is … evidence that casts doubt on his fitness to lead the state.”

But Paul Pfingst, a former San Diego County district attorney and past president of the California District Attorneys Association, said he believes the information presented in the affidavits is sufficient to address probable cause.

“I think it goes way beyond that,” he said, pointing to court filings that say the county clerk of voters did not respond to an activist’s questions.

“In the absence of an explanation from the registrar of voters,” Pfingst said, “unless someone can explain how … such a large discrepancy could occur, it is reasonable for law enforcement to determine whether the discrepancy is the result of election fraud or ballot fraud.”

Pfingst said sheriff’s department investigators don’t need to get an explanation from county election officials before requesting the warrants.

Art Tinoco, the county’s registrar of voters, publicly rejected the activist group’s claims. He told county supervisors on Feb. 10 — before Kiel signed the last two of the orders — that the activist group making the allegations didn’t understand the data they were reviewing.

“Did the Nov. 4, 2025, special election have a statewide discrepancy of 45,896 ballots between ballots cast and counted?” Tinoco told supervisors, according to Riverside Press Enterprise. “The answer to that is no.”

A Riverside County Superior Court spokesman said Kiel could not comment because of rules prohibiting judges from discussing pending cases.

Bianco said in a text message that he was on a flight Thursday and was not immediately available for an interview.

The court suspended Bianco’s investigation

The search warrants were unsealed Wednesday, the same day the California Supreme Court halted Bianco’s ballot investigation, which he previously characterized as a “fact-finding mission” designed “as much to prove the election was accurate as to show otherwise.”

That decision was in response to legal challenges from Attorney General Rob Bonta and the UCLA Voting Rights Project, which contested the recall and recount.

In the lawsuits, Bonta argued that Bianco failed to show that there was probable cause or evidence of a crime, a step required to obtain a search warrant. He called it an attempt to undermine public confidence in the election

Bonta’s office responded to an interview request Thursday with an emailed statement saying the office is working to “prevent the misuse of criminal investigative tools for guerilla fishing expeditions.”

“Our focus is on the sheriff’s responsibilities under the law — to provide sufficient evidence of probable cause to obtain search warrants, to allow (the) Riverside (registrar of voters) to retain physical custody of the ballots as required by the election code, and to follow the attorney general’s lawful directions, all of which he failed to comply with,” the email reads.

Claims from an outside group

Recently released records show the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department was in contact with a group of citizens who believed they had discovered possible voter fraud after discovering a discrepancy of about 46,000 votes between the number of ballots cast and the number of certified ballots, according to Riverside County Sheriff’s Department Investigator Robert Castellanos in an affidavit.

The last of the three warrants signed by Keel was filed March 19, roughly three weeks after the state Department of Justice ordered the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department to cease operations and share any information that might substantiate its concerns. So far, the sheriff’s department has already counted 12,561 ballots, according to Castellanos’ affidavit.

Castellanos’ affidavits were not signed by a prosecutor in the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office, suggesting prosecutors may not have reviewed the sheriff’s warrant requests. It’s common practice in California for a deputy district attorney to review local law enforcement search warrants to make sure investigators are on sound legal ground before presenting their evidence to a judge. The DA’s office did not return a message from CalMatters on Thursday.

In an interview, Greg Langworthy said he was not a conspiracy theorist and insisted that his group, which calls itself the Riverside County Election Integrity Team, had found enough evidence of vote counting irregularities to warrant further investigation based on the registry of voters’ own records.

“There is no doubt that there is a discrepancy and that is borne out by his own records,” he said. “That’s why we say the sheriff has a duty to investigate. I think they all have a duty to investigate.”

Allegations of voter fraud in the Trump era

Groups like Langworthy’s are increasingly common as president Donald Trump and his Make America Great Again movement spread baseless claims of widespread voter fraud.

Across the country, there is “a growing appetite to seize materials just for the sake of seizing materials,” said Stephen Richer, the Republican former recorder of Maricopa County, Arizona. Reacher was running his district’s election office in 2020 when Trump lied accused him of overseeing “rigged elections,”, leading to death threats.

“I have a lot of experience with independent election fraud hunters, and they almost everywhere have no experience in election administration,” he said. “I think it’s also important when you ethically and responsibly file a probable cause affidavit that you evaluate the credibility of the witnesses.”

Leonard Motti, former Redding police chief and Republican supervisor of Shasta County, where similar allegations of election impropriety have become commondescribed the orders as “pretty light” after reviewing them at CalMatters’ request.

He said he would like to see a more specific charge with supporting evidence in the warrant before taking the matter to a judge.

Instead, the orders focused on allegations by activists.

“Statements don’t really mean much, especially with this issue where people on both sides are saying what they want,” Moti said. “I would like to see some actual evidence that the votes were not counted.”

Kayla Michalovichs California Local News contributor.

CalMatters Deputy Editor Adam Ashton contributed to this story.