Riverside Sheriff Seizes 650,000 Ballots in Vote Probe

Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco ordered the seizure of more than 650,000 ballots from the November 2025 special election last weekend, launching an investigation into an alleged discrepancy in the vote count for Proposition 50. The move, authorized by search warrants at the county registrar's office, aims to verify the accuracy of the results in California's fourth most populous county.

The investigation stems from claims by the Riverside Election Integrity Team, a citizen group, which reviewed handwritten logs from poll workers and found they recorded about 611,000 ballots cast. In contrast, voting machines tallied more than 657,000 ballots, creating a gap of roughly 46,000 votes. Bianco, speaking at a news conference on Friday, described the difference as significant. "We're not talking about ten, we're not even talking about a thousand. We're talking about the difference between having a perfect count and a 45,800 vote difference. That's massive," he said. He emphasized that the review is not a formal recount of the proposition's outcome but a physical count of ballots to compare against recorded totals.

Proposition 50, which passed statewide and in Riverside County with...