The 2020 Elections were surrounded by controversy after former President Donald Trump made accusations that the election was rigged. This “Big Lie” was an idea perpetuated by certain media outlets and broadcast to an unprecedented degree. It preceded the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol that threatened the lives of this nation’s representatives as they worked to certify the election results. Perpetuating the threat of voter fraud is a trend that continues to persist nationally and right here in Riverside. The Riverside County Sheriff, Chad Bianco, had started investigations into voter fraud in the county in a plainly pointless overreach by a local Sheriff’s department.
Fox News is responsible for some of the most egregious journalistic malpractice in recent memory after asserting that Dominion, a company that supplies voting machines, was responsible for widespread voter fraud. As a result of this conspiracy, voting machines in Riverside came under fire, and a petition was circulated calling for their removal. Among the signees was Bianco. These demands are based on a blatantly incorrect assertion that voter fraud is a widespread problem. A comprehensive report by the AP found less than 475 instances of voter fraud nationally. A civil probe grand jury in 2020 found no evidence of election fraud by individuals who ran polling stations and vote counters. To be clear, there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud, and at this point, there is no grounded evidence that suggests the need for an investigation by law enforcement. Fox News paid a nearly $800 million settlement for the defamation case.
Recently it was reported that the Riverside County Sheriff’s investigators have been trying to gain access to voter registration records and interviewed election workers as a part of a criminal investigation. To start, this investigation is an abnormality as no other Sheriff’s department in Southern California engages in this kind of investigation. Experts have said that this investigation is incredibly unprecedented as these investigations are typically done by the DA’s office or the Secretary of State. While public trust in these offices might not be airtight either, they are certainly more equipped to handle the investigation.
This has created concerns that their investigation will discourage Riverside residents from voting and working as elections staff. While Sheriff Bianco has claimed that this will make people feel that their votes are “safe and secure,” law enforcement typically fails in that regard. A 2020 Gallup poll found that trust in law enforcement was at an all-time low of 48%. That number sank again to 45% in 2023. In California, 2020 polling showed that the majority of Californians favored police reform. It’s unclear how an investigation by an increasingly distrusted entity would make anyone feel safe or secure.
There are concerns that this could serve as a voter intimidation tactic. Law enforcement investigations represent an aggressive approach that includes the use of guns and tasers. Having paper pushers in the District Attorney’s and Secretary of State’s offices investigate voter fraud fits the crime, while having an organization that regularly uses force, intimidation, violence and coercion to get results is a gross overreach and an abuse of power. Voter fraud is a non-violent crime that does not warrant the type of investigation tactics the Sheriff’s Department offers.
It is illegal to order troops or armed forces to a polling place. It is also illegal for officers to interfere in elections through intimidation of voters. That is federal law. Law enforcement officers already need boundaries to keep them from injecting themselves into the voting process. The government has already seen the need to protect the voting process from law enforcement, and the Riverside Sheriff’s investigation represents a violation of those concerns.
Sheriff Bianco’s motivations, especially as a public official who is subject to elections, are muddled. He was a dues-paying member of a militia group whose leaders were indicted for charges related to the Jan. 6 Insurrection, and during the most recent election, he defended the group. Furthermore, the Sheriff’s Department does not have the resources, skill or intelligence to carry out an investigation such as this.
The concept of the private ballot and privacy is breaking down, too, as the Sheriff’s Department asked for the unredacted voter registration forms and vote-by-mail ballot envelopes, which were mostly investigated since many of them were biologically related and had the same name. These forms were investigated and passed onto the DA’s office. The fact that the Sheriff’s investigative team decided to start an indiscriminate investigation that required a breach of privacy based on no tangible evidence is shocking to no one, though it is heinously reprehensible.
It might interest the Sheriff’s Department to spend their time and resources investigating actual crimes and trying to solve actual problems. In the last year, there was a 15% increase in the homeless population in Riverside. In a county that is primarily composed of white residents, somehow, ethnic minorities make up almost 70% of the defendants in criminal cases. Maybe the Sheriff’s Department should consider doing their own jobs before trying and failing to do someone else’s.
