Chad Bianco of Riverside county obtained warrants to seize ballots cast for state’s successful redistricting referendum

A California sheriff’s decision to seize about 650,000 ballots based on specious allegations of fraud has raised considerable alarm bells that similar efforts to undermine confidence in the electoral system could materialize this fall.

The episode underscores how sheriffs and other officials can transform shoddy claims about voter fraud into law enforcement actions. Executing a warrant to seize ballots disrupts the chain of custody that is critical to maintaining ballot integrity, and also plants the idea in the public’s mind that a crime has occurred.

Chad Bianco, the sheriff in Riverside county, California, obtained warrants in February and March to seize the ballots related to a special election last year in which voters overwhelmingly approved a referendum to redraw California’s congressional districts. The warrants remain sealed, but Bianco had said he was investigating claims by a citizen activist group that there was difference of 45,896 in the number of ballots cast and counted. The referendum, Proposition 50, passed by nearly 30 points statewide. In Riverside county, which stretches from just east of Los Angeles to the Arizona border, it passed by more than 82,000 votes, a nearly 13-point difference.