UPDATE: Judge orders Riverside County to preserve 2024 and 2025 election records, granting restraining order
RIVERSIDE, Calif. (KESQ) A Riverside County judge has ordered the county and Registrar of Voters Art Tinoco to preserve records from the November 2024 general election and the November 2025 Proposition 50 special election.
Judge Daniel Ottolia granted a temporary restraining order Tuesday afternoon, according to a minute order obtained by News Channel 3. Neither side appeared in court. Ottolia canceled a hearing set for Wednesday morning and ruled based on the written filings alone.
As News Channel 3 first reported Tuesday, the nonprofit Election Accountability Project, Inc. sued Tinoco and the county this week, asking the court to block the destruction of records from both elections and to order the registrar to explain ballot-accounting discrepancies the group says have never been resolved.
The lawsuit centers on two audits by the Riverside Election Integrity Team, the citizens group whose claims helped prompt Sheriff Chad Bianco's investigation into the 2025 election. The audits claim county records could not account for 33,888 of the ballots counted in 2024 and 45,896 in 2025. The petition expressly declines to allege fraud, illegal voting or intentional misconduct, and acknowledges the discrepancies could have an innocent explanation. It asks only that the records survive long enough for a court to sort out whether the numbers can be reconciled.
County officials have forcefully disputed the group's math. In a February presentation to the Board of Supervisors, Tinoco said the group relied on incomplete data and raw, handwritten field forms prone to human error, and said the actual variance in the 2025 election, according to the county's election management system, was 103 ballots. Attorney General Rob Bonta's office has said the discrepancies were explained by election officials, and said Sunday it has seen no evidence of election crimes in the six months since it intervened against the sheriff's investigation.
The timing drove the emergency request. Records from the 2024 election reach the end of a 22-month federal retention window the petition says closes Sept. 5, after which some categories become eligible for destruction. The sealed ballot packages from the 2025 special election and their six-month retention period expired in May, and the petition argues they exist today only because the California Supreme Court ordered them preserved in April while it reviews Bianco's seizure of roughly 650,000 ballots.
The justices heard arguments in those cases Monday in San Francisco, with a decision expected by late November. When they rule, the interim preservation orders lapse, and state law would direct prompt destruction of the 2025 ballot packages.
Election Accountability Project says it is a stranger to those cases and takes no position on them. Its restraining order is designed to keep the records intact no matter how the high court rules.
The group's application asked the court to bar the county from destroying, deleting or overwriting records tied to ballot receipt, accounting and tabulation in both elections; to require any remaining sealed ballot packages to stay sealed, unopened and in official custody; and to require a sworn inventory of preserved records within 10 days.
The minute order confirms the restraining order was granted, but the signed written order spelling out the exact terms had not yet been posted as of Wednesday morning.
Judge Ottolia also granted an order to show cause, meaning the county must return to court to argue why a longer-lasting preliminary injunction should not keep the preservation requirement in place while the case proceeds. A date for the hearing had not yet appeared in court records. The county can also ask the court to dissolve or modify the restraining order.
News Channel 3 reached out to the Registrar of Voters' office Wednesday morning for an interview and was told the office's schedule was booked for the day. "Our office will follow all laws and guidance issued," the office said in an email.
News Channel 3 has also reached out to the group's attorney, Alexander Haberbush of the Long Beach-based Constitutional Counsel Group, and is awaiting a response.
This is a developing story. Stay with KESQ News Channel 3 for updates.
