Come meet me Friday! CalMatters is on the road this month, heading to 16 cities with our Voter Guide. This Friday, we’ll be at the Greater Riverside Chambers of Commerce boardroom in downtown Riverside, from 5-8 p.m. The address is 3985 University Ave., 92501.  We’re providing tacos from Tio’s Tacos. 

CalMatters’ Dan Hu, director of partnerships, will be leading the discussion. Daniel Eduardo Hernandez, reporter at the Riverside Record, and Stephanie Hastings-Miranda, editor of Community Forward Redlands, will be there. I’ll be present in a dual capacity as CalMatters’ Inland Empire Reporter, and editor of Inland Empire Law Weekly. Attendance is free. I hope to see you there.

If you want to throw your own VotingMatters event among friends, CalMatters is offering our resources. We’ve prepared a slide deck, tips, marketing materials and more. If you’re interested, email Sonya Quick at sonya@calmatters.org.

If you have friends or family outside the IE, we’re hosting events in Los Angeles, Bakersfield, Fremont, Vallejo, San Francisco, Davis, Merced, Fresno and Modesto. For the full list, check out the announcement page: Join CalMatters at our VotingMatters events for the 2026 California primary election.

Students across UC Riverside, Cal State San Bernardino, and universities across the nation were locked out of their online learning accounts last weekend after the software was hacked. The hackers threatened to release private data if their ransom wasn’t paid. 

As of Monday, the company behind the software, Instructure, reported that the private data had been returned, and that the hackers’ copies were destroyed. 

CalMatters’ Colin Lecher and Mikhail Zinshteyn wrote about the experience of UCR students on Monday:

Esther Mejia and Kelly Merchant had a question Friday afternoon for their professors: Where were you?

The UC Riverside public policy students were among the likely hundreds of thousands in California who lost access to the all-important academic software Canvas when it was brought down by a hacker group Thursday afternoon. Losing Canvas meant losing assignments, tests, and required reading material along with a way to communicate with instructors. The timing was especially bad for UC students, who were hunkering down for midterms or finals.

Read the full story: California colleges went big on online learning tools. Then the worst happened

Foaad Khosmood, a Cal Poly San Luis Obispo professor who works with CalMatters on its Digital Democracy database, wrote about his experience as a faculty member, and the inherent dangers with storing data offsite.

“The risk of having millions of student records and multiple terabytes of data in one place is rarely even contemplated by decisionmakers. Experts have warned about these vulnerabilities for well over a decade,” Khosmood wrote.

Read the full article: Canvas hack exposes cybersecurity flaws across California’s universities.

The Assembly Elections Committee advanced Sen. Sabrina Cervantes’s (D-Riverside) election integrity bill on May 6. Senate Bill 73 would further limit law enforcement and military presence at voting sites, and would make it a felony to remove signed ballots from the registrar of voter’s custody. The bill has an emergency clause that would cause it to be active by the June primary, if it passes.

In her speech to the committee, Cervantes mentioned Riverside Sheriff Chad Bianco’s seizure of Riverside ballots as a reason for the bill.

“In April, (Bianco) told the press that he would gladly, gladly seize ballots again, including the ballots from the June primary where he is on the ballot,” Cervantes said. 

Cervantes compared Bianco’s seizure to President Donald Trump’s admission that he regretted seizing voting machines in the 2020 election, and the FBI’s seizure of ballots from the Fulton County, Georgia election office.

The bill passed 6-1, with Assemblymember Natasha Johnson (R-Lake Elsinore) not voting.

Johnson’s bill to simplify police intervention for trespassers passed the Assembly 63-0, with 17 not voting, on May 7. Assembly Bill 1632 would remove a requirement for property owners to file a notarized request with the police to act on their behalf every year. Under the bill, the request would not have to be notarized. A separate element of the act, which said the request would be active for three years instead of one, was removed from the bill. The bill is supported by the City of Riverside.

“When a letter lapses, law enforcement is legally unable to proactively protect that property, leading to potential public safety hazards. Unauthorized occupants of vacant lots and buildings is the leading cause of structural fires, especially wildfires here in California,” Johnson told the Assembly.

The Assembly also approved a bill from Johnson that would eliminate a procedural roadblock in county governance. Board of Supervisors currently delegate authority to their treasurers every year. Assembly Bill 2080 would give delegate authority to treasurers until it is revoked by the Board of Supervisors. The bill passed 69-0, with 11 assemblymembers not voting.

“In many cases, simple scheduling delays or agenda backlogs can cause this one-year period to lapse, putting the county in technical noncompliance with the law,” Johnson said.

The Senate Revenue and Taxation unanimously approved Sen. Rosilicie Ochoa Bogh’s (R-Redlands) bill that would eliminate taxes on tips on May 6. If passed, Senate Bill 984 would expire on Jan. 1, 2029.

“Tips aren't regular income despite the fact that existing tax laws treats them as such. Tips are not guaranteed, they're not consistent, and they're not enough to make ends meet,” said Ochoa Bogh.

The bill is supported by the California Restaurant Association and the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers’ Association. 

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