ROV Curtis claims scheduling issues are preventing him from complying with state law to shred November 2024 ballots

Ballots from the November 2024 election, which were supposed to be destroyed earlier this month, are scheduled to be shredded on Sept. 30, said Shasta County Registrar of Voters Clint Curtis.

State elections code explains that voted ballots from federal elections are required to be destroyed or recycled 22 months after the election occurs. For the November 2024 election, the retention period ended on Sept. 5 — but the ballots are still intact. 

Curtis acknowledged in a press release yesterday that the ballots should’ve been shredded on the fifth but claimed a scheduler didn’t arrange for them to be shredded until nearly a week after the deadline, on the 11th. 

On Sept. 9, litigation was filed to delay the destruction of the ballots, so Curtis said he contacted Shasta County Counsel and the Secretary of State’s Office to see if he should hold off on shredding the documents.  

Around noon on Sept. 11, he told a reporter he had not yet received advice from county counsel or the secretary of state and had already contacted the shredding company to tell them to hold off on shredding the ballots.

In the press release, Curtis explained that he did not learn until later that afternoon that legal counsel was instructing him to move forward with the shred as planned. When he contacted the shred company, he allegedly was told there was no record of the scheduler setting up the appointment to shred the ballots, and the next available shred date wasn’t until Sept. 30.

Curtis did not acknowledge in the press release that the state-mandated retention period for the November 2024 ballots ended almost two weeks ago, something county attorney Joseph Larmour pointed out during a county board meeting on Tuesday, saying “every day past the 22 months that those documents exist is a violation of law.”

Instead, Curtis opined that he is “a little surprised that so many people are in such a big hurry to shred the election.” He’s made unsubstantiated claims this year that there were irregularities with both the November 2024 election and the June 2026 election, and he’s said that he wants federal authorities to investigate both sets of ballots.

“If the 2026 [ballots] show up to be bad, then they might have a nexus to look at the 2024 [ballots],” Curtis said during an interview last week. “If the 2024s are shredded prior to that, then they don’t.” 

Curtis received a subpoena about a week ago to testify before a federal grand jury on Sept. 24 and bring with him tens of thousands of voted ballots from the June 2026 election. That’s a week before Curtis is now slated to shred the ballots from November 2024. Both sets of ballots are allegedly locked in the same room at the Market Street elections office.

Curtis said in an interview last week that the subpoena was an outcome he was hoping for, aside from the fact that he now has to figure out how to safely transport an abundance of election-related materials to Sacramento. 

The litigation that attempted to delay the destruction of the November 2024 ballots, which was filed by an election activist named Arne List, has failed in court after a second hearing yesterday, the county confirmed today. 

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