Ahead of Monday’s Supreme Court showdown, election group hopes justices let Bianco’s ballot investigation continue

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. (KESQ) The California Supreme Court hears arguments Monday morning in the fight over Sheriff Chad Bianco's seizure of roughly 650,000 Riverside County ballots. Ahead of the hearing, a member of the group whose claims sparked the investigation is speaking out.

"We just hope the Supreme Court allows this investigation to continue," Greg Langworthy told News Channel 3 in an interview Friday. "We believe it's the duty of the sheriff."

Langworthy is a member of the Riverside Election Integrity Team. The group alleges election workers' own records from the November 2025 special election on Proposition 50 account for about 611,000 ballots, while machines counted about 657,000 votes.

"It's not a number we came up with," Langworthy said. "It's what the records of their own election workers show," he said.

County officials strongly dispute the group's math. Registrar of Voters Art Tinoco told the Board of Supervisors in February the group relied on handwritten documents, and the actual variance in the special election was 103 ballots, well within the state's allowed margin.

Asked why voters should believe his group's numbers over the county's, Langworthy pointed to the source material.

"Our numbers are based on the records that we've been able to get through public records requests," he said. "What Art is basing his number on is the machine count of those ballots, but not a hand count of the ballots."

The group also claims a gap of about 34,000 more votes than ballots in the November 2024 general election. The county has rejected the group's discrepancy claims.

Bianco's deputies seized the ballots under three search warrants between February and March. Attorney General Rob Bonta ordered the sheriff to stand down, arguing he overstepped his authority and interfered with election officials' custody of the ballots. The state's highest court halted the investigation in April and ordered the seized materials preserved.

The justices hear arguments Monday at 10 a.m. in San Francisco. The court will take up Bonta's case against Bianco along with a companion petition from four Riverside County voters seeking the return of the ballots to the registrar. Bonta will argue on both fronts.

The central question: how much power the attorney general holds over an elected county sheriff. The justices will also weigh a new state law, signed in May, restricting law enforcement's ability to take ballots from election officials' custody.

Bianco, who lost his bid for governor in the June primary and remains Riverside County's sheriff, has defended the investigation as his duty. His campaign raised money off the court fight this week, calling the attorney general's petition an attempt to shut the probe down.

Langworthy said the sheriff wants to settle the dispute by hand-counting the seized ballots in public view.

"The sheriff wants to do the same thing, have the count in public, count the pieces of paper," he said. "If you destroy the ballots before counting, right. That's what's going to cause doubt in the minds of many voters."

A ruling is expected within 90 days of Monday's arguments. News Channel 3 will carry coverage of the hearing and bring you reaction Monday.