Riverside County sheriff investigates 2025 special election, citing discrepancy in number of votes

RIVERSIDE, Calif. (KABC) — Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco has launched an investigation into a potential discrepancy in the number of ballots cast in last year’s special election.

On one hand, the Riverside County registrar of voters said the number of ballots counted by machines numbered more than 657,000.

But an independent investigation by a group of concerned citizens shows the number of handwritten logs filled out by various elections officials and poll workers showed just more than 611,000 votes cast.

“I’m not saying anyone is lying, or there’s a series of mistakes,” said Bianco at a news conference Friday morning. “I’m saying I don’t know.”

“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.

Sheriff’s investigators recently served searched warrants at the Registrar of Voters, seizing multiple boxes of ballots from the 2025 special election.

Bianco said a superior court judge recently ordered the appointment of a special master to supervise sheriff’s investigators as they count all of the ballots.

“The purpose of this investigation is just as much to prove the election is accurate, as it is to show otherwise. We will not know until the count is complete.”

At a recent Riverside County board of supervisors meeting, Registrar Art Tinoco stood by the machine count of the ballots, saying the handwritten logs were completed by people working long hours, who might have made mistakes.

“Those documents are completed by temporary employees that are out in the field collecting them, and working at these sites,” said Tinoco at the meeting. “So those forms, again, may come back and the counts may be imprecise, because again, it’s humans completing the document.”

California Attorney General Rob Bonta released a statement denouncing Bianco’s investigation.

“I was surprised and disappointed by Sheriff Bianco’s statements in his press conference this morning. In light of the misleading statements he made, I want to clarify my office’s role,” Bonta said. “We were concerned to learn late last month that the Riverside County Sheriff’s Office planned to execute warrants to seize approximately 1,000 boxes of ballot materials pertaining to the November 2025 Special Election.

“Sheriff Bianco’s investigation is unprecedented in both scope and scale – and appears not to be based on facts or evidence but on unfounded allegations that have already been refuted by the Riverside Registrar of Voters,” Bonta added.

Bianco said that Rob Bonta sent him two letters over the past month asking him to stop his investigation.

“The outrage that an investigation was happening was extremely concerning to me,” said Bianco.