In summary
Shasta County supervisors hired an inexperienced elections director months before the election. He is already losing support.
They were companions Wednesday as Shasta County Voter Registration Office workers busily sifted through already cast ballots.
A group of nine people stood in the hallway, holding clipboards and taking notes, watching through wired glass as officials removed ballots from envelopes. Across the hallway, another group of observers remained on computer screens, watching a live video feed of workers checking signatures in the room. These self-proclaimed election observers spent their days looking for evidence of stupidity.
One woman wasn’t satisfied with monitoring election administration through a reinforced window. She wanted to be in the room while they scrutinized the ballots.
“It’s not transparent,” said a woman named Elizabeth, who declined to give her last name. “To be transparent, we have to be able to hear their voices.”
So far, these observers don’t seem to have unearthed any evidence of fraud, but they are having an impact. The assistant clerk set up a rope to prevent the guards from entering the break room to ask questions about the workers. Offices also had to be locked, as guards opened the doors to see what was going on inside each office. This comes after election officials across the country received death threats after the 2020 and 2022 elections, fueled by former President Donald Trump’s false claims that the elections were stolen. is.
Shasta workers are quitting. Tanner Johnson signed up as a public accounting clerk because he wanted to help protect democracy. “I felt called to do this work,” he said. But after working at the registrar’s office for just over a year, he resigned on Wednesday.
Voters are legally allowed to enter offices and observe the election process. But Mr Johnson said many of them were feeling tingly and “very angry”. “They want to see through our lies, so they try to trick you into saying something,” he said. “In many cases, they secretly videotape or record you.”
He said 10 of the 21 registrar employees have retired. Many of those who remain are working on their first election. “There are a lot of people who quit just because it wasn’t worth it,” he says. “My wage is $19.64 an hour. I’m not going to be a martyr for $19.64 an hour.”
The most high-profile election conspiracies are coming out of battleground states like Michigan and Georgia, but the battle for democracy continues to rage across California. Most Republicans in California’s Legislature will not commit to certifying the results of the presidential election. And in Shasta County, the epicenter of the state’s election refusal movement since 2020, a fight over the once-mundane bureaucracy of the Registrar of Voters threatens to tear the community apart.
Amid heightened tensions, longtime voter registrar Kathy Darling Allen retired in early May after being diagnosed with heart failure. To replace her, the county Board of Supervisors fired Joanna Francescato, Darling Allen’s longtime No. 2, and hired a prosecutor with no election management experience in June, just months before the presidential election. did.
New Registrar Tom Toller has impressed Republicans on the board by expressing his willingness to stand up to the California Secretary of State’s office. But just three months into his role, one of his bosses, Patrick Jones, has already shown hostility toward him, according to the Reading Record Searchlight.
Jones said at a recent oversight meeting that he met with Toler to observe testing of voting systems and claimed he witnessed election law violations and mistakes.
Mr. Toller had initially agreed to meet Mr. Calmaters on Tuesday, but when reporters arrived he was out feeling unwell.
Johnson said Franciscat will remain as his deputy and handle much of the day-to-day operations of the office. “He’s been really busy dealing with the political aspects,” Johnson said. “People aren’t happy with him. County supervisors come all the time.”
Francescato said staff departures only add to the pressure. “This is a very stressful job, even when things are going well, when things are going smoothly, when you have staff trained,” she said.
“Nobody goes to school and says, ‘I want to be an election official.’ There’s no formal training for it. It’s a lot of on-the-job training and on-the-job experience,” Franciscat said.
Darling Allen was worried about leaving. “It’s very unfortunate that during this time, there are people who are so upset and so concerned for their own safety that they’re trying to leave,” she said. “But that’s not worth anyone’s life. And you know, election officials are not employed as first responders, and of course they’re not trained as first responders, and as first responders.” I haven’t received any salary.”
Darling-Allen said other election offices, including Yuba County, received mail containing fentanyl and had to start stocking Narcan (a drug that reverses drug overdoses) in their offices. Ta.
She called Shasta a microcosm of what’s happening nationally. “You know, this is happening all over the place,” she said.
