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.
Except, that’s not how it will play out.
They need x number of ballots to overturn the will of the people. They will then look through all of the ballots and find “anamolies” that they will point to as fraudulent like a circle not fully filled in (see “hanging chads”) and use that as the basis to throw that ballot out.
Rinse and repeat until x number of ballots have been tossed out, and oh would you look at that, they won! Pretty fucking convenient!
And just like Florida in 2000, when the ballots in question are being relooked at by a neutral party, some douchbags in collared shirts and khakis start rioting outside the facility and “oh no, for safety of the people inside the count has to stop” by court order passed down from a judge; the same judge that signed this warrant in the first place.
And on up to the Supreme Court it goes, which guess what happens there. Check out the Brooks Brothers riot, and look at some of the familiar faces in there.
Fuck that, challenge this in courts before it gets to that point. Then vote this sheriff and judge out as soon as possible.