MONDAY SHOWDOWN: California Supreme Court Decides If Riverside County Election Results Can Be Examined (Similar to Fulton County, Georgia)

Riverside investigators were stopped after examining only 12,561 of more than 650,000 seized ballots. California has a documented Homeland Security precedent for an independent technical review.

By Christine Bish

On Monday, August 24, the California Supreme Court will hear two cases that could determine whether Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco may complete his investigation of the November 2025 special election – and whether Attorney General Rob Bonta had the authority to stop it.

The hearing comes as the FBI continues holding hundreds of boxes of ballots and election records seized from Fulton County, Georgia.

In Georgia, federal investigators obtained a warrant, seized the physical evidence, and were permitted to retain it. In California, Bianco’s investigators obtained search warrants, seized more than 650,000 ballots, and began examining them. The California Supreme Court stopped the investigation after only 12,561 ballots had been reviewed.

The court is not being asked to decide whether election fraud occurred. But beneath the legal arguments remains one unanswered factual question:

How many ballots were actually cast in Riverside County?

The Disputed Riverside Count

The Riverside County Election Integrity Team reviewed handwritten ballot-receipt records. It calculated 611,426 ballots after rejected ballots were deducted, compared with 657,322 ballots in the certified count – an alleged difference of 45,896 ballots.

Registrar of Voters Art Tinoco disputes that conclusion. He says the handwritten records were preliminary and excluded categories such as confidential voters, conditional registrations, and provisional ballots.

Tinoco says the county’s voter-management system recorded 657,219 eligible ballots while its voting system counted 657,322 – a difference of 103 ballots.

The Riverside Record independently confirmed those two official numbers. But the Secretary of State reportedly cautioned that the voter-participation report does not directly correlate with the voting system’s ballot count.

The citizens’ calculation does not prove 45,896 fraudulent ballots. But the registrar’s explanation is not the same as a completed physical reconciliation.

An allegation is not proof. An administrative explanation is not a forensic examination.

What the Court Will Decide

In Cervantes v. Bianco, the court will consider whether the ballots must be returned to the registrar because their seizure allegedly violated California election law.

In Attorney General v. Bianco, the justices will examine AG Bonta’s authority to supervise a county sheriff, order the investigation stopped, and challenge the search warrants. Both cases are scheduled to be heard beginning at 10 a.m. Monday.

The Fulton County Comparison

In January, FBI agents seized hundreds of boxes containing Fulton County’s 2020 physical ballots, ballot images, tabulator tapes, and voter records.

The supporting affidavit cited missing ballot images, alleged repeated scans, inconsistent totals, and questions about the preservation of election records.

A widely circulated post from The SCIF highlights one entry labeled as a military absentee batch reporting 950 votes for Joe Biden and none for Donald Trump. Another military entry reports 130 for Trump and none for Biden.

Those entries are not proof of fraud. They are evidence of why investigators must compare summaries and spreadsheets against the physical ballots and underlying records.

Fulton County demanded the return of its election materials. A federal judge ruled that the Department of Justice could retain more than 600 boxes while the investigation proceeds.

California’s Homeland Security Precedent

California has already recognized the need for outside technical examination of county election systems.

The Sacramento County Civil Grand Jury’s 2019-2020 report, “Election Security in Sacramento County,” found that vulnerability scans and penetration testing were not being performed consistently.

The Grand Jury requested the results of a CyberDefenses review and a Department of Homeland Security election-security audit by September 30, 2020.

According to a July 21, 2021, email obtained through a public-records request, the Homeland Security assessment was still outstanding. Remote and on-site testing were not scheduled until August 2021 – after the presidential election.

The Sacramento precedent was a technical security assessment, not a ballot recount. But it establishes that outside Homeland Security examination of California election infrastructure is not unprecedented.

The Solution

Riverside does not have to choose between protecting voter privacy and determining what happened.

Qualified examiners can compare physical ballots with the certified count, mail ballots with their return envelopes, in-person ballots with check-in and signature records, and ballot batches with scanner logs and tabulator records.

A separate examination of the equipment, software, audit logs, removable media, network activity, and system security can be performed before the November election.

If ROV Tinoco is correct, the reconciliation should prove it. If the citizens misunderstood the records, the examination should identify precisely what accounts for the alleged 45,896-ballot difference. And if the records do not reconcile, voters need to know before the same systems are used again.