Shasta election official Clint Curtis presents to Riverside County board

Yesterday morning, Shasta County supervisors briefly discussed alleged misconduct by Registrar of Voters Clint Curtis. The allegations arose after Curtis led a tour at the elections office for gubernatorial candidates from other parts of California, claiming to them that Shasta’s former election officials — which would include his campaign opponent — engaged in criminal acts.

That concerned Shasta Supervisor Allen Long, who said he felt Curtis might have been campaigning on county property, something prohibited by both state law and county policy. But Long, along with other supervisors, decided to take no further action yesterday after County Counsel Joseph Larmour advised the board that Curtis’ remarks were only “incidental” and didn’t rise to the level of a violation of county policy. 

Meanwhile, Curtis was hundreds of miles away in Riverside, touting his election approach to the county board of supervisors there. 

Curtis spoke to Riverside supervisors after Riverside Registrar of Voters Art Tinoco delivered a presentation related to his county’s local elections. Tinoco’s presentation was given in response to what he referred to as an audit by a local advocacy group which allegedly showed a discrepancy between the ballots that were cast in Riverside and those counted. 

Tinoco, who was appointed by the Riverside Board in 2023, attempted to assuage community members’ concerns by explaining the process of ballot counting for Riverside’s 1.4 million voters. Afterward, Curtis added his own thoughts, that Riverside should implement an approach like the one he’s put in place in Shasta County, where he counted 65,000 ballots this last election, so that everyone will trust elections. 

Stating that Shasta County uses “forms and paper” to count ballots, Curtis told Riverside officials that while he can’t say what’s the right approach, Shasta puts no stock in computers. 

“Essentially, what is going on is that you have someone who believes computers and someone who wants to do forms and paper,” Curtis opined about disagreements over approaches to elections. “I can’t tell you which is right. We do forms and paper and people in Shasta County.

“We count better in Shasta County, I guess,” Curtis continued, “because ours come out dead even. Now, if you run it through the little computer thingies … it might say something different. But we hold no stock to that. We’ve actually counted our ballots and counted our voters so our voters match perfectly.”

It was unclear what process Curtis was discussing as he did, in fact, use voting machines to count the ballots in Shasta County’s election last November, the only election he’s ever run. The results Curtis turned in to state officials came from that machine count. Curtis responded only to a single question for this story.

He explained his ballot counting methods to Riverside supervisors by describing the video livestream process he’s set up in Shasta to film ballots before and after they’re run through machines. “Now this video, by itself, does nothing unless it’s checked,” Curtis said, a statement that seemed to mean that the video only records images, without counting anything. But, he added, “if you check the video, you can find out whether the results match.  

“Now we have a video of what’s going on before it ever hits the machine, and it was accurate,” Curtis said. “Does that mean it will be accurate every time? No, it’s going to be accurate if you check the video, but if you stop checking the video and you start trusting machines, that’s when it goes bad.”

But Curtis has never checked the video he took in November against his machine count, something he confirmed for Shasta Scout by text today, saying the video is only for the public’s use.

Before concluding his remarks in Riverside, Curtis also bragged to supervisors there that he had solved Shasta’s conflicts over elections with his new methods, saying the county used to be “a war zone” with “everybody yelling at each other and fighting” but “that’s all gone.” 

Then, in an interview conducted by The Riverside Record and shared with Shasta Scout after the meeting, Curtis blamed Shasta community members for causing conflict. 

“We’ve got some morons up there that like to complain about everything,” Curtis said. “I call them my little socialists, and so they’re up there complaining, trying to always do stuff.”

Referring to Shasta supervisors during that same interview, Curtis at first called them “idiots,” before noting that while the board reviewed the allegation against him regarding his remarks during the gubernatorial tour — statements he claims were not problematic — no further action was taken.

“I got three of them that like me,” Curtis said, referring to Shasta supervisors, “one that’s cold, and another that, you know, not a chance to get anything good out of him.”

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