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.”

“There is no indication, anywhere in the United States, of widespread voter fraud,” Bonta said. “Counts, recounts, hand counts, audits, and court cases all support this.”

According to Bonta’s office, Bianco’s department on Feb. 26 seized about 1,000 boxes of ballot materials in Riverside County related to the November election for Proposition 50, which temporarily redrew the state’s congressional districts to favor Democrats in response to partisan redistricting in Republican states, including Texas.

The sheriff said his investigators are looking into allegations by a local citizens group that “did their own audit” and found that the county’s tally was falsely inflated by more than 45,000 votes — a claim that local election officials have refuted.

President Trump, who remains fixated on his 2020 election loss, continues to amplify election conspiracy theories and has repeatedly called for the federal government to “nationalize” state-run elections to counter what he says is widespread fraud.

Bonta and California Secretary of State Shirley Weber, both Democrats, have vowed to fight federal interference that could affect voting in California, including efforts to seize election records, as the FBI recently did in Georgia.

Bianco is an outspoken Trump supporter who said in an endorsement video in 2024 that, after 30 years of putting criminals in jail, he figured it was “time to put a felon in the White House — Trump 2024, baby” — referencing Trump’s conviction by a New York jury for falsifying business records.

Bianco’s investigation, which includes all the ballots cast in Riverside County in November, raises questions about how he would handle the election denialism movement if elected governor.

A poll released last week by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies and co-sponsored by The Times showed Bianco and conservative commentator Steve Hilton leading the crowded field of gubernatorial candidates by slim margins, in a left-leaning state.

Last fall, Prop. 50 passed in Riverside County with 56% of the vote — a margin of more than 82,000 ballots.

A citizens group called the Riverside Election Integrity Team has said it performed an audit finding that 45,896 more ballots were counted than were cast.

In a lengthy February presentation to the Riverside County Board of Supervisors, Registrar of Voters Art Tinoco disputed that figure, saying it was based on a misunderstanding of raw data that had not been fully processed.

The actual discrepancy, Tinoco said, was 103 votes, a variance of 0.016% that was far below what he said was the state’s preferred 2% margin of error for certifying results.

Bianco on Friday said that there “is no acceptable error, small or large, in our elections.”

The sheriff did not name the Riverside Election Integrity Team, but his description of the allegations brought to him by “a group of citizen volunteers” matched theirs.

Bianco said the investigation was “not a recount” for the Prop. 50 contest and was “just as much to prove the election is accurate as it is to show otherwise — we will not know until the count is complete.”

Bonta said his office has “attempted to work cooperatively” with the Sheriff’s Department to understand the basis for the probe. The sheriff, Bonta said, “has delayed, stonewalled, and otherwise refused to work with us in good faith” and failed to provide most of the requested documents.

“We’re concerned that there is not sufficient justification for seizing every ballot that was cast in this very largely populated county,” an official in Bonta’s office said in an interview Friday night.

In a March 4 letter to Bianco, the attorney general cited Bianco’s plan to use sheriff’s department staffers, “who are not trained and have no experience,” to count the ballots.

“Let me be clear: this is unacceptable,” Bonta wrote. “Your decision to seize ballots and begin counting them based on vague, unsubstantiated allegations about irregularities in the November special election results sets a dangerous precedent and will only sow distrust in our elections. You are also flagrantly violating my directives.”

At his news conference Friday, Bianco fired back by calling Bonta “an embarrassment to law enforcement.”

A Riverside County Superior Court judge, Bianco said, has ordered the appointment of a special master to oversee the ballot count.

In a statement Friday, Secretary of State Weber said “the Sheriff’s assertion that his deputies know how to count is admirable. The fact remains that he and his deputies are not elections officials and they do not have expertise in election administration.”

You just established a settlement on an Earth-like planetary body far from our solar system. You did your evening chores after eating dinner, and you want to go out for the evening view, which consists of two setting stars, reminiscent of the infamous scene in Star Wars. However, there’s one major difference: a large planetary body is in the sky. As you were aware before arriving, you’re on an exomoon orbiting a Saturn-sized exoplanet, both of which orbits two stars.

While this incredible experience might be centuries away, this hasn’t stopped a large international team of researchers from announcing the discovery of a Saturn-sized exoplanet orbiting two M-dwarf stars, which are smaller and cooler than our Sun. The findings from this incredible discovery were recently published in the Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific and were made using a lesser-known exoplanet discovery method known as gravitational microlensing, or microlensing for short.

The researchers are designating the discovery as the microlensing event KMT-2016BLG-1337L, is located approximately 7,000 parsecs (22,800 light-years) from Earth. The researchers used a series of light curve models to ascertain the masses of the exoplanet, stars, and orbital distances for both.

While the first model estimated the exoplanet is estimated to be 0.3 Jupiter masses and an estimated distance from its host star of 4 astronomical units (AU), the second model estimates the exoplanet is approximately 7 Jupiter masses with an estimated distance of 1.5 AU. For context, the planet Saturn is approximately 0.3 Jupiter masses. Despite this disagreement of the exoplanet mass and orbital distance, both models were consistent in their estimates of the two M-dwarf stars that comprise the binary star system, estimated to be 0.54 and 0.40 masses of our Sun and separated by approximately 3.5 AU.

The study notes, “The event KMT-2016-BLG-1337L underscores the capability of microlensing to reveal planets in dynamically complex stellar environments, including systems that are inaccessible to conventional detection techniques. This expands the census of planets in multiple-star systems and contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of planet formation in such environments.”

As noted, microlensing is a lesser-known exoplanet discovery method, being responsible for confirming just over 250 exoplanets of the more than 6,100 confirmed exoplanets. As its official name implies, microlensing uses the gravity from one star as a lens to magnify the light from a background star when a planet passes in between both stars. Since a star’s gravity is so massive, it warps (or bends) the observed space around it, while also enabling light from behind it through this warped region and be observed from our point of view. This differs from the transit method, which is the most common exoplanet discovery method, as it detects a dip in starlight as a planet passes in front of it. In contrast, microlensing requires two stars for the method to be successful and for an exoplanet to be detected passing between both stars.

While this discovery is notable, KMT-2016BLG-1337L is not the only Saturn-mass exoplanet discovered using the microlensing method, as the researchers note that OGLE-2007-BLG-349L was the first confirmed exoplanet in a binary system, also being a Saturn-sized planet whose findings were published in The Astronomical Journal in 2016. The major difference between the two discoveries is KMT-2016BLG-1337L orbits one of the two stars while OGLE-2007-BLG-349L orbits both stars at once. KMT-2016BLG-1337L orbiting only one star also demonstrates how planets can survive form, evolve, and survive orbiting a single star without the second star influencing its formation and survival.

How many more Saturn-sized exoplanets will be discovered using the microlensing method in the coming years and decades? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!

As always, keep doing science & keep looking up!