Some voting rights advocates have called on the Secretary of State, Shirley Weber, to oversee upcoming elections in Shasta County.
It’s the latest development in the ongoing political war surrounding county elections, following the board of supervisors decision to cancel its contract with Dominion Voting Systems earlier this year.
NSPR’s Alec Stutson spoke with Annelise Pierce, managing editor of the nonprofit news outlet Shasta Scout, who has been covering the story.
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
On the letter sent to California’s Secretary of State requesting Shasta County’s elections be monitored
There is sort of a coalition of organizations that are all nonprofit, nonpartisan organizations that have influence in California.
They include the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, Disability Rights California, the California Voters Foundation, the League of Women Voters, California Common Cause and Verified Voting.
They sent a letter to the Shasta County Board of Supervisors and also to California Secretary of State Shirley Weber, along with Attorney General Rob Bonta and a few others, asking that the Secretary of State monitor the elections in Shasta County, both this fall during the Nov. 7 election and also during the upcoming March election next year.
This is about the third time this coalition of organizations has gotten involved or had a statement in Shasta County elections this year.
On the issues and reasons for the request for oversight
After the board originally canceled their contract for Dominion Voting machines, and then made the decision that they wanted to hand count the vote, this prompted a whole series of actions, including the Secretary of State beginning to work on a process for a hand count that would be state certified because no elections processes can happen in the state without certification.
They were working with Shasta County’s registrar of voters, there was ongoing communication back and forth between all the parties. But then a new state law passed, AB 969, and was eventually just a few weeks ago signed into law by Governor Newsom.
AB 969 really was developed as a response to Shasta County's decision. It says they can't hand count the vote here because there are more than 1,000 registered voters who are registered to vote in the elections this fall. Hand counting is no longer allowed under state law.
Shasta County Registrar of Voters Cathy Darling Allen responded to AB 969 by saying, 'That's great, then we'll count with machines, no problem, we're prepared to do that.’ But the Board of Supervisors Chair, Patrick Jones, said, 'We're gonna push back, we're gonna fight this, the state shouldn't be allowed to do this.' He had a bunch of different statements about Shasta County being grandfathered in because the decision to hand count was before AB 969 passed. He's really given a lot of pushback to the idea of following state law this fall.
Some of his statements about the county's new voting machines being unauthorized and some of his statements that he will not comply with the law essentially, have concerned these organizations who believe that there is a chance that free and fair elections will not happen due to some interference, either from public officials or community members.
On the current voting plan for next week’s special election in Shasta County
Shasta County Clerk and Registrar of Voters Cathy Darling Allen had put in place a plan to hand count the vote and also to machine count the vote because the certified equipment that they're using to scan and serialize the ballots also has that capability of counting those votes.
That's really where Patrick Jones has been frustrated. He thought they were getting rid of the machines that could count the votes. But it turns out the new contract still allows those votes to be counted.
We've spoken to Cathy Darling Allen, and she says the plan is to follow state law and to machine count the vote. As always, they will hand count a small random sample of those votes, a 1% sample, which is statistically used to validate the machine counting.
On the community response to the situation
It’s been very vocal. As always, the vast majority of the county probably doesn't even quite know what's happening. But as far as people have become active and vocal at public meetings, on both sides of the issue, whether people support hand counting or oppose hand counting countywide, the feelings are extremely strong. Very significant amount of public statements and public meetings, hours of comments.
And there are still a significant amount of comments about Dominion Voting machines and any voting machines being unsafe, being hackable, vote flipping things that there is no credible proof of, but there is quite a lot of anecdotal evidence offered at public meetings.
Again, this is one of the reasons that advocates are really concerned, these organizations, is that they feel that there's rampant disinformation being disseminated not only by community members but by public officials like Chair Jones, and that that really leads to people not being able to trust the system even if the system works.
