Riv. Sheriff's attorney accidentally released election investigation documents

Some documents from the Riverside County Sheriff's Office's investigation into county elections have inadvertently been released by their attorney, Robert Tyler.

In a court filing, Tyler included a working link to a public OneDrive folder which held some of the evidence into Riverside's elections held by the Riverside Sheriff's Office. Tyler removed public access to the OneDrive after being contacted by Inland Empire Law Weekly, but was unable to immediately provide a comment on behalf of the Sheriff's Office.

REIT's document

The information includes REIT's summary recount of the ballots. One spreadsheet indicates that REIT's initial recount was wrong.

REIT member Greg Langworthy said the spreadsheet was incorrect, and that the group sticks to the claim of 45,896 ballots being counted that were not delivered to the Registrar of Voters. The spreadsheet was part of a review that another REIT member was doing—but the group eventually decided it was wrong, Langworthy said.

A spreadsheet with the date Feb. 13, 2026, indicated REIT were off by 18,000, because they did not count ballots collected at the drop box at the Registrar of Votes. The actual difference in ballots cast vs counted, according to the spreadsheet, was 28,000. "Not included in original analysis," the page says in reference to the ballots from the drop box.

Update 3:42 p.m.: Jim Niederecker, who made the spreadsheet, said its he disproved its conclusions after further review.

"That spreadsheet is worthless," Niederecker said.

REIT's spreadsheet is available below:

Prop 50 audit reconciliation calculationsProp 50 audit reconciliation calculations.xlsx21 KBdownload-circle

The data breach

In a court filing, Tyler included a working link to a public OneDrive folder which contained some of the evidence into Riverside's elections held by the Riverside Sheriff's Office.

The OneDrive folder included seven reports on the office's investigation into county elections made by Riverside Sheriff's Investigator Robert Castellanos in 2023. Due to the sensitivity of the documents, Inland Empire Law Weekly is not publishing most of the documents or including the names of some of the county employees who spoke with Castellanos.

The link was originally sent in an email to the California Department of Justice. A copy of the email, including the link, was submitted in the court document. The Department of Justice had asked for all information on the election investigation that the Riverside Sheriff's Office had. Riverside Sheriff Chad Bianco said at a press conference that his investigation into November's ballots was due to a recount done by Riverside Election Integrity Team (REIT), a group of Resident residents.

"As for the records requested, the Sheriff’s Department is still gathering the documents. However, attached is a shared folder on One Drive that includes documents the Sheriff’s Department received from REIT (the Riverside Election Integrity Team). There is a significant number of documents. If you have any problem accessing the documents, I may have to send you a thumb drive," Tyler wrote, before including the link.

"As stated previously, the investigator assigned to this case has not yet prepared all of his reports and all the other documents requested are being gathered. However, please understand that as I am forced to respond to the plethora of briefing by you (sic) office, it simply delays the ability to respond to the document request."

Sheriff's 2023 investigation

The seven reports from Castellanos in the folder are from July 2023 to October 2023.

On July 3, 2023, Castellanos asked Jim Smith, Chief Information Officer of Riverside County Information Technology (RCIT), to set up interviews with employees who have interacted with voting machines.

On July 11, 2023, Castellanos interviewed a former support technician for RCIT, who at the time of the interview worked for the Riverside District Attorney's Office. The technician was familiar with the Riverside voting systems.

Castellanos asked the technician if the Dominion voting machines used by the county were connected to the internet. The technician said no. The voting machines did not have modems, and the server used to process ballots is unable to connect to the internet.

Castellanos asked about wireless networks being present at voting stations. The technician said the networks were for laptops used to gather information about voter status, not for counting ballots.

Castellanos asked about routers being in the voting sites. The technician said that the devices referred to by Castellanos were not routers. They were APC Smart-UPS power terminals, used to supply the voting machines with power.

Castellanos asked about whether the voting machines or server can be remotely accessed. The technician said no. A person would have to physically connect to the server to allow remote access. The security measures, including access card, video surveillance and a physical key, would prevent the server from being remotely accessed, the technician said.

Castellanos asked whether the voting machine's software updates were compromised. The technician said that all software updates are approved by the Secretary of State before being provided to Riverside County.

On July 17, 2023, Castellanos interviewed a Riverside County Information Technology IT Manager, who had been with the county for 17 years. She said that the cellular routers at the vote centers cannot connect with the voting machines, and that the voting systems equipment cannot be remotely accessed.

On July 21, 2023, Castellanos interviewed another RCIT technician, who had been employed with the county for twenty years and who managed the voting machine servers. He said that during the 2020 Presidential Election, there were technical issues with providing data to the Secretary of State. Due to the problem, personnel with Dominion, the company that made the voting machines, would be given access to the server remotely.

On Oct. 8, 2023, Castellanos interviewed another former RCIT employee. That employee had no interactions with the voting machines during the 2020 Presidential Election.

On Oct. 28, 2023, Castellanos interviewed then-Assistant Registrar of Voters Art Tinoco and then-Registrar of Voters Rebecca Spencer. Tinoco is now the Registrar of Voters.

Castellanos told Tinoco and Spencer that the investigation was into 17 people who had possibly voted twice. Spencer said she would need to talk with County Counsel before releasing information on one suspect. Castellanos "showed two potential ballots" for a second suspect. Spencer said that voter only voted once, according to her database.

"I asked her how someone if (sic) caught trying to vote twice. Spencer said they are connected to a state database, VoteCal, part of their job to look at voter registration and find potential double registrations. Spencer said the ROV receives this information almost daily, ROV will look into it further and tell VoteCal if the person is a double voter or not. She said once someone is recognized as voting twice, their voter ID's are consolidated and their they vote twice, only the first ballot is counted," Castellanos' report says.

"Spencer then explained the double ballots that were sent out to voters. She explained that although double ballots were sent out, each ballot was identical, having the same barcode and unique voter ID. She said the barcodes would not allow people to double vote. We then discussed how dead voters and double registrations are removed from the voter registration rolls," Castellanos' report says.

Spencer said she was going to talk with County Counsel before releasing more information.

Neither of the two suspects identified in Castellano's report have been charged with election fraud. Riverside Sheriff Chad Bianco said that the Sheriff's Office referred election fraud allegations to the Riverside District Attorney's Office. Bianco did not know if the referrals resulted in prosecutions or convictions. The DA's Office is gathering information on election fraud cases to determine if any of the referred cases were prosecuted or convicted. The OneDrive folder included folders about eight elections since November 2022.

The OneDrive also included vote-by-mail collection forms and vote-by-mail tally spreadsheets.