Chad Bianco, the Riverside County sheriff and a leading Republican candidate for governor, has seized more than 650,000 ballots from last November's election to determine whether they were fraudulently counted, according to the L.A. Times.

Bianco held a news conference Friday, where he declared, "This investigation is simple: Physically count the ballots and compare that result with the total votes recorded."

His actions drew a sharp rebuke from California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, who said in a statement that it is "unprecedented in both scope and scale" and appears "not to be based on facts or evidence."

Critics, meanwhile, said Bianco's ballot seizure is a threat to democracy and another attempt by Republican election deniers to disenfranchise voters.

"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.