Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, who is a leading Republican candidate for governor, has seized more than 650,000 ballots from last November’s election and is investigating whether they were fraudulently counted.

“This investigation is simple: Physically count the ballots and compare that result with the total votes recorded,” Bianco said at a news conference Friday.

The unusual probe drew a sharp rebuke from California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, who said in a statement Friday that it is “unprecedented in both scope and scale” and appears “not to be based on facts or evidence.”

  • manxu@piefed.social
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    132
    ·
    4 days ago

    Anything to sow doubts about the election! Tax payers are funding this, of course.

    • youcantreadthis@quokk.au
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      8
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      3 days ago

      Its really sad that killing cops would not meaningfully fix any of our many many problems, because it would be so easy.

      • MinnesotaGoddam@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        3 days ago

        I have the stupid and cannot follow your logic. Why or why not? Easy, duh, we have numbers, but like my brain says short term it causes way more problems than it might solve

  • tristynalxander@mander.xyz
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    45
    ·
    3 days ago

    Does California not have state troopers? Shouldn’t they be arresting the guy? For tampering with evidence if it’s a real investigation. For stealing public records otherwise.

  • ghostBones@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    29
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    3 days ago

    There needs to be a law that candidates cannot do their own election investigations or seize anything whatsoever or in any way tread upon the election process, it belongs to the people not the candidates. They can and will use established methods for challenging elections or suffer the consequences of becoming a felon.

    • Not_mikey@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      17
      ·
      3 days ago

      They already sort of are and that’s a good thing. The way some elections work is there’s a representative from both parties observing and counting the ballots. Then they can both check each other’s work and make sure everything’s above board.

      This is why the whole election denial stuff is even more bullshit, they have official observers in there who can blow the whistle if they see anything but they never do. So they just rely on “reports” of other outside observers who think every truck moving around a polling spot is full of fraudulent ballots.

      It probably shouldn’t be just election workers as they’re just selected by whoever applies to a temp job for a day or two, and it wouldn’t take much for all those people to just happen to be partisans

      • AA5B@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        3 days ago

        That works during the election but what about this investigation? What keeps this guy from manipulating the evidence? He’s clearly neither objective nor trustworthy

    • Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      3 days ago

      I say we make copies of all the ballots and just make them public record. Anyone can access and do recounts or analysis or whatever.

  • cøre@leminal.space
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    100
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    4 days ago

    Normalizing actions like this so when he loses he can seize the ballots and claim what he wants as the election result

  • VitoRobles@lemmy.today
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    79
    ·
    4 days ago

    If you call 911 for BS, you may end up in legal trouble and have to pay a hefty fine for wasting resources.

    Why the hell are these GOP cucks continuing to call every election they lose a fake and waste resources on this?

  • FlyingCircus@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    8
    ·
    3 days ago

    So now the fascist GOP knows how 600k Californians voted? I guess we better hope that the guy in charge isn’t vindictive about people not supporting him.

    • Warl0k3@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      3 days ago

      As I understand it (have friends that deal with this data), the ballots are anonymized so they can’t back-associate the voting records to real ids. So at least there’s that.

  • stoy@lemmy.zip
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    37
    arrow-down
    4
    ·
    4 days ago

    I know this isn’t really the right time for this, but the US desperately needs a proper census system, the fact that there is a debate if a voter is properly registered or not for a general election is insane.

    • beelzebum@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      41
      ·
      edit-2
      3 days ago

      there is no real debate, just like there is no real debate that climate change is happening.

      It is a ruse, a “big lie” repeated over and over again as a long-term strategy to gain authoritarian control.

      there has never been any evidence of unregistered or unpermitted voters casting ballots beyond a few dozen isolated cases over the last 25 years - a vanishingly small occurrence among the billions of votes cast. Almost any method to “fix” those few dozen occurrences wipes out hundreds of thousands to many millions of valid voters; an intended result of the disenfranchisement strategy.

      • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        5
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        3 days ago

        So if someones ID expires and the “save” act went through, I’m curious if they would actually accept a birth certificate. It’s not like a birth certificate even could have a photo ID on it. I believe it or not have grown about 200lbs since then. So the picture would be useless anyways. Then obviously people point out that a birth certificate is useless for anyone with a name change unless they are bringing the name change paperwork (marriage certificates or the like) just to prove they are that person. Half the country doesn’t have passports do to cost and the fact that they expire as well. Drivers licenses aren’t held by everyone, cost money, and also they can be legally suspended or taken for driving infractions which do not have anything to do with whether or not you are legally allowed to vote. Not to mention they expire as well.

        The only way the save act would make sense is if everyone was provided free identification that was valid and you didnt need any other identification to acquire it. You don’t have to own a house to vote, you don’t have to be on a lease to vote, your name doesn’t have to be on a electric bill or such to vote. So none of those documents would make sense to ask for.

        There is no easy way to do a system that is better than what is currently in place and as far as the majority are told, there is no evidence of it being tampered with enough to change it.

    • this_1_is_mine@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      23
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      4 days ago

      They don’t want an accurate account so that way they can make up whatever number they want…

      • MinnesotaGoddam@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        3 days ago

        they’re going to bungle it intentionally so they can point to inaccuracies and claim california’s 2026 vote is fraudulent. let me tell you how i know: they did not hire qualified auditors. you want this done right, Ernst&Young or KPMG are the only folk for the job. hell, pwc would do it honorably and the republicans and them have a history.

        also they are republicans, but like, there are professional, unbiased reasons too why this is pure partisan poppycock

        edit: fuck deloitte

    • MinnesotaGoddam@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      3 days ago

      there is no debate. it’s done properly and thoroughly. the whining comes from republicans, who are the same people who whine that you must have rolled the dice wrong and you need to reroll (so they can really have one more turn) when you just won the game you were playing

  • null@lemmy.org
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    37
    arrow-down
    3
    ·
    4 days ago

    The funniest thing that could happen in CA is voters have to choose between two Republican governors and they both argue about the other rigging the election.

      • justalittleguy@lemdro.id
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        7
        ·
        3 days ago

        There would be a recall 3 seconds after they take office lmao

        One would hope CA realizes they need to change their voting system to stop being garbage after this. Jungle primary with top 2 (or top 4) advancing is fine, but there needs to be approval or ranked voting in the first round.

        • MinnesotaGoddam@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          3 days ago

          I just find it so funny that the dem field is so dilute that gop is potentially leading right now in California. Like, Dems just need to choose Porter, Swalwell, and one or two more, but they’re scared to because it will smell like choosing kamala and hillary (with good reason).