California Republican sheriff halts inquiry into alleged voter fraud in Prop 50 election | US news

Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco has halted a contentious investigation into alleged voter fraud that drew opposition from the state attorney general.

The move marks a major comeback for Bianco, a prominent Donald Trump supporter who is one of the two top Republican candidates running for governor of California.

“We are on hold due to politically motivated lawsuits and court applications,” Bianco said in a statement. According to ABC 10 News.

Bianco had been leading the lone wolf investigation for months into allegations that votes were illegally cast in last year’s election, which resulted in the passage of Proposition 50.

The proposal, backed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, would allow the state to flip congressional districts in favor of Democrats, in response to similar changes in Republican-majority states like Texas.

A group of local residents called the Riverside Election Integrity Team says there is a difference of 45,896 votes between hand-written records of the county’s hand-counted votes and the final vote tally.

local election officials dismissed voiced these concerns, saying he misunderstood how the citizen group would be interpreted raw dataThis includes the lack of precision of hand counts. According to state officials, real difference There were only 103 votes.

Bianco confiscated more than 650,000 ballots from recent elections over the objections of state officials.

California attorney general Rob Bonta asked the state supreme court on Friday to halt its investigation into Bianco, arguing that Bianco did not have the legal authority to seize the ballots. Petition He told about the seizure as “an unprecedented constitutional emergency,” according to the Los Angeles Times.

Bianco’s ballot seizure and maverick investigation also faces a lawsuit from UCLA’s Voting Rights Project.