Five Candidates are Vying for Shasta’s Top Election Job. Here’s What You Need to Know.

On Wednesday, April 30, at 11 a.m., County Supervisors will hold a series of public interviews for a highly contested role: Registrar of Voters (ROV).

The position is typically determined by an election. But for the second time in a year, County Board members will fill the position by appointment instead. They’re replacing ROV Tom Toller, who is stepping down for health reasons after being appointed last July. Toller was appointed to finish the four-year term of elected ROV Cathy Darling Allen, who also stepped down mid-term to preserve her health.

Toller’s appointment last year came as a disappointment to many in the community who hoped for someone with more experience. The former prosecutor had never worked in an elections office before being appointed as the County’s chief elections official.

This time around, 20 individuals applied for the ROV position. Only five made it past the initial screening process, which was facilitated by an ad hoc committee that included Shasta County Board Chair Kevin Crye and Supervisor Allen Long. 

Information about the five candidates was released to the public this week, on April 22. They include Shasta County’s current Assistant ROV and long-term election worker Joanna Francescut, three other election officials from across the country, and Clint Curtis, a former computer programmer and New York-based attorney who specializes in election law.  

Returning Applicants Curtis and Francescut 

Both Francescut and Curtis also applied for the position last June. Before the final vote to select Toller, the Board was briefly deadlocked between two Supervisors who wanted Francescut —- Mary Rickert and Tim Garman — and two who wanted Curtis — Patrick Jones and Chris Kelstrom. Board Chair Kevin Crye was the deciding vote last year, telling Kelstrom and Jones if they didn’t support his choice to appoint Toller, he would vote for Francescut.

Like Toller, Curtis has no experience in running elections. He also doesn’t appear to meet the basic requirements set by the Board for applicants during this year’s appointment process.

Shasta Scout reached out to Supervisors Crye and Long and County Director of Support Services Monica Fugitt yesterday, April 23, to clarify how Curtis qualifies for the role given his lack of experience in an organization that runs elections. While neither Crye nor Long have responded, Fugitt wrote by email that she was “not going to address a particular candidate’s application and why they do or do not meet qualifications”. Fugitt directed Shasta Scout to video of the Board’s meeting during which Crye makes a statement after the vote indicating that “election experience” will qualify a candidate.

What Supervisors agreed to by majority vote was that four years of experience “in an election or ROV office or in elections” was needed to qualify a candidate. That vote is summarized in minutes from that meeting and in the agenda for next week’s interview process as “four years of leadership experience in an organization that included performing county clerk or elections functions”.

Curtis has no professional experience in an elections office, but his legal practice includes election law. He also claims to have an extensive elections-related consulting background and has famously made highly disputed claims about computer software being linked to election fraud. During a speech to the Shasta County Board of Supervisors in March 2023, Curtis claimed the Deputy California Secretary of State, California’s chief election official, had provided the public with “massive misinformation”  claiming she had “made up” information about error rates related to hand counting ballots. He provided no evidence to back his claim.

Curtis’ application this year includes clearly contradictory statements, saying both that he is the right person to get the community to align behind “fully hand counted ballots” — something that would be illegal in Shasta County — and also that he is committed to following all state and federal elections laws.

In contrast to Curtis, Francescut, the current Assistant ROV of the Shasta County Election Office, has 16 years of experience in elections, including having served in every role in the Office. In November 2023, she took charge of running the Elections Office when Darling Allen went on unexpected medical leave and in March 2024 successfully ran Shasta County’s primary election on her own, without commensurate pay, as Darling Allen continued on medical leave. 

A lawsuit over the 2024 election Francescut ran was later lodged by local election activist Laura Hobbs. That case was thrown out by a Shasta County Superior Court judge last year due to a “profound” lack of evidence to back Hobbs claims. In statements during that ruling, Judge Stephen Baker said Francescut, who endured hours of cross examination he characterized as “argumentative,” “misleading,” and “undignified,” had competently and professionally performed her duties as the county’s acting top elections official. To say otherwise, the Judge concluded, was “pure speculation”.

Here’s Who Else Has Applied for ROV 

While Curtis and Francescut are likely to generate the strongest levels of public comment, they’re not the only ones interviewing for the role next week.

Other applicants for Shasta’s top ROV role include DeNay Harris, who’s been the Director of Elections for Charles City County Virginia (population 6,600), since 2021. She is working to obtain her bachelor’s in legal studies and has five years of election/county clerk professional experience. Prior to working in elections, Harris was a paralegal for the Richmond-based Federal Public Defender’s Office, according to her resume.

Elle Leigh Sharpe, a subject matter expert for the Nevada Secretary of State Election Division, has also applied for the role. Sharpe has been working in elections since 2007 and formerly ran the Elections Office in Douglas City, Nevada (population 50,000). Her professional history also includes a role as a Senior Deputy Elections Official for Placer County, California. Before working in elections she was a corporate finance auditor for Bank of America.

The final candidate is Robin Underwood, the Deputy City Clerk and Director of Elections for Eastpointe, Michigan (population 34,000). She’s worked in that role since September 2022. She previously served as a Deputy City Clerk in Romulus Michigan (population 25,000), a position she took in 2019 and held for less than a year. In 2014 she took a role as Deputy City Clerk for Detroit. She held that position for less than 18 months. 

Were any of these three to be appointed to the local ROV role, Shasta County (population 180,000) would be the largest election jurisdiction, by far, that they’ve been given the responsibility to oversee. 

Parsing between County and State requirements for ROV

In contrast to what the County has laid out for ROV requirements during this appointment process, there are few legal requirements at the state level. Under California law, individuals must be registered to vote in Shasta County, but only at the time of their appointment. That means anyone could be chosen by Supervisors then move to the County and register, before actually being appointed to office. California law also does not allow collections attorneys or collections agents to hold the ROV office.

On a County level, the additional rules that Shasta County Supervisors have established include limiting who can hold the role to individuals with a bachelors degree in public administration, business administration or a related field — although experience can be substituted in on a year-for-year basis. The individual holding the role must also have at least four years of experience in an office that performed either county clerk or elections functions.

When will Shasta have a new ROV? How Long will they Hold Office? 

Next Wednesday, April 30th, Supervisors will be given five minutes per candidate to ask each candidate any questions they choose. Those questions may or may not follow a list of suggestions included in the Board packet for the meeting. Last July, questions asked by Supervisors largely focused on ideology, rather than experience or qualifications for the role. 

Board members will also fill out ranking sheets which are supposed to be shared publicly prior to a vote — a process that was improperly completed last time around when four out of five Supervisors did not turn in their ranking sheets at all. During last year’s process Supervisors Crye and Jones never even clearly ranked candidates, contributing to uncertainty from the public after the vote. 

If Supervisors vote to select one of the five applicants during next Wednesday’s special meeting, that individual would first have to pass background screening before being formally appointed to the role, likely within one month.

As far as how long they would hold the role, California law allows Supervisors to appoint either through the end of the vacant term, or until the January after the next election. Because the next election is in June 2026, the newly appointed elections official this time around will serve until January 2027, regardless.

That’s in contrast to last July, when Supervisors had a choice of whether to appoint Toller for the rest of Darling Allen’s term or just until the January after the next election. Had they done the latter, Shasta County voters would have had the opportunity to choose their own ROV last fall who would have taken their seat in January 2025. 

Instead, Supervisors voted to appoint their choice of ROV, Toller, through the end of Darling Allen’s elected term, an additional two years beyond what’s required by the law. That decision is what leaves the choice in Supervisors’ hands again, now that Toller has unexpectedly resigned. 

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