California Sheriff’s Ballot Seizure Spurred By Local Election Integrity Group, Documents Show

A California sheriff’s controversial move to seize ballots and other materials from the 2025 special election was spurred by a conservative election watchdog group, newly released documents show.

Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco’s criminal investigation into last year’s election jolted California politics and launched a high-stakes battle with state Attorney General Rob Bonta, who alleged Bianco’s office failed to meet legal standards when it sought warrants allowing law enforcement officials to seize ballots and related election materials.

The California Supreme Court on Wednesday halted the Republican sheriff’s probe in agreeing to hear Bonta’s appeal. In a statement, Bonta accused the sheriff, a GOP candidate for governor, of having “willfully defied my direct orders, seized 650,000 ballots, misused criminal investigatory tools, and created a constitutional emergency in the process,” calling Bianco “a rogue Sheriff.”

Affidavits released to POLITICO and other news organizations show the investigation began in February after a local activist with a group called the Riverside County Election Integrity Team contacted the sheriff’s office alleging discrepancies in how Riverside County officials counted ballots in a 2025 vote on a statewide gerrymandering ballot initiative, Proposition 50.

An investigator said in a sworn affidavit that he had been “in regular contact” with the Riverside County Election Integrity Team member, Greg Langworthy, who reached out to a Riverside sergeant who had pursued previous election fraud allegations. Langworthy said the group’s estimate of ballots cast in the 2025 election differed from the official count by tens of thousands of ballots.

“Langworthy has said the last four elections have had similar discrepancies that were not explained by the (Registrar of Voters),” the affidavit says. “In order to prove or disprove any criminal conduct, I am requesting to seize and conduct a review/aduit (sic) the ballots from 2025 special election.”

A representative for the registrar of voters referred a request for comment to Bianco’s office, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment. At a February board of supervisors meeting where Langworthy made a similar argument — and a few days after Langworthy reached out to the sheriff’s office, according to the affidavit — Riverside County Registrar Art Tinoco said Langworthy’s group had misunderstood election data.

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

Bonta’s office has contested the grounds for the warrant to be issued, saying in a prior filing that the warrant application was “so facially insufficient that it failed to meet even the most basic constitutional and statutory standards.” The judge who signed off on the request has also praised Bianco, saying the county was “lucky to have him.”

The links between Bianco’s office and the group stretched back years, according to the affidavits. An officer had previously been in contact with a pair of conservative activists who had alleged similar improprieties in prior election cycles and filed public records act requests. One of them led a local conservative group’s election integrity arm, and another regularly raised fraud allegations at local board of supervisor meetings.

Similar groups have proliferated in recent years as President Donald Trump and other Republicans have hammered baseless accusations of widespread voter fraud.

Election integrity could also be before California voters in November: A ballot initiative that would require identification to vote has submitted more than a million signatures, buoyed by cash infusions from prominent conservative donors. Elections officials will announce in the coming weeks if it has qualified.

The court released the affidavits supporting the warrants after POLITICO and other news organizations formally petitioned for their release. In an April 2 letter to a judge requesting the documents be unsealed, Bianco wrote that “sunlight is the best disinfectant.”

“We desire to ensure the public has confidence in lawful elections,” Bianco wrote. “It is likewise important for the public to have confidence in the integrity of this investigative process and the outcome.”