Riverside County sheriff’s investigators obtained two search warrants for registrar of voters’ data in 2023 and 2024 — years before getting warrants to seize more than 650,000 ballots from November’s election, unsealed search warrants show.
The warrants, unsealed by a court order Tuesday, April 7, also show that investigators wanted to preserve the county’s Proposition 50 ballots before what they said was a state-imposed deadline to destroy the votes.
RELATED: California Supreme Court temporarily stops Riverside County sheriff’s election investigation
Riverside Superior Court Judge Gail O’Rane granted a request filed last week by a coalition of news media outlets, including the Southern California News Group, that sought access to the paperwork. Attorneys for the alliance argued that the public’s right to know outweighed any reason to keep the documents private.
On Wednesday, April 8, the California Supreme Court halted the probe by the department of Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, who is running for governor, in response to a request from California Attorney General Rob Bonta.
In a Riverside Superior Court filing on Wednesday, April 1, media attorneys wrote that the public’s right to know more about the probe outweighs any argument to keep the warrants and other documents under seal.
A Riverside County Sheriff’s Department spokesperson said last week that the department supported the unsealing and noted that the documents were initially sealed “to protect the integrity of the evidence” before serving the warrant.
Media outlets in the coalition include the California Newspapers Partnership, a Delaware company that includes this publication and dozens of others throughout California. Others were ABC News, CalMatters, CBS News, Fox Television Stations, KCRA/KQCA in Central California, the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, USA Today and The Riverside Record.
The investigation has been on hold “because of the politically motivated lawsuits and court filings,” Bianco has said.
Bianco’s probe began after a complaint by a watchdog group called the Riverside Election Integrity Team. Led by Greg Langworthy, the organization audited the election and said it discovered an approximately 45,000-vote gap between ballots cast and ballots counted in the county during the election.
Riverside County Registrar of Voters Art Tinoco, however, has disputed the group’s conclusions, saying the actual gap between ballots counted and ballots cast is 103 votes and within the acceptable margin of error set by the state secretary of state.
Despite Tinoco’s assertions, the sheriff obtained search warrants from Riverside County Superior Court for the county’s Proposition 50 ballots and related election materials. The first of three warrants was sought Feb. 9, one day before Tinoco gave a presentation to the Board of Supervisors refuting the election group’s allegations.
In the warrant, Investigator Robert Castellanos sought “all ballots pertaining to the 2025 Special Election including but not limited to digital capites, physical copies, of ballots both counted and disqualified for any reason.”
In his affidavit, Castellanos noted that a judge in January 2023 signed a search warrant “for information regarding double voter information” from the registrar.
Another warrant, signed March 6, 2024, “related to possible mail-in ballot fraud at the Riverside County Registrar of Voters,” Castellanos wrote.
He wrote that he spoke with Yvette Anthony, who told him she submitted public records requests “regarding elections in several counties.”
Citing postal service and registrar’s records, Anthony said there was a 35,784-vote gap between ballots mailed by the post office and ballots the registrar reported receiving through the mail for the June 2022 primary.
“It appears there is more information available through the audit logs to prove or disprove any voter fraud related to the 2022 Primary election,” investigator J. Merrill wrote in the 2024 search warrant.
“The large number of Vote By Mail ballots for this election does not seem to be close to what the (postal service) is reporting.”
The 2024 warrant sought audit logs “to help prove or disprove voter fraud,” Merrill wrote, according to Castellanos.
In the Feb. 9 warrant application, Castellanos wrote he had been “in regular contact” with Langworthy “about various issues of potential election fraud.”
In a later warrant, Castellanos wrote: “Mr. Langworthy reported that the last four elections have had similar discrepancies that were not explained by (registrar), which are consistent with our concerns in our earlier investigations.”
He cited a 2022 memorandum from the California Secretary of State, which oversees state elections, requiring state and local elections materials to be retained for six months and then destroyed, meaning the county’s Proposition 50 ballots would be destroyed in April 2026.
“Due to the timeframe regarding the ballots being destroyed and the large discrepancy between the numbers from (Langworthy’s team) and the official (registrar’s) count, I am requesting to seize and search the ballots from the 2025 Special Election,” Castellanos wrote.
“I believe that in doing so it is the only way to prove or disprove and (sic) fraud.”
Castellanos sought another search warrant Feb. 23. In it, he said Tinoco and an assistant told him there were about 150 pallets of Proposition 50 election material.
However, the registrar’s office “would only release the ballots from the 2025 Special Election and would not release any other material without an additional search warrant ordering the release of the material,” Castellanos wrote, adding that the registrar was only willing to turn over 13 pallets.
“I believe this additional warrant is necessary to effectively seize ALL OF THE MATERIAL related to the 2025 Special Election. In addition, (Tinoco’s assistant) stated multiple times the (registrar) was mandated to destroy the election material after the six-month timeframe.”
The third warrant, sought March 19, asked the court to let investigators start counting ballots under the watch of a court-appointed special master ‘in an effort to avoid any potential appearance of impropriety,” Castellanos wrote.
As of March 5, investigators had opened 22 boxes of seized materials and counted “at most” 12,561 ballots, according to Castellanos.