Breaking: Thirty-Five Days Before an Election, Shasta Supervisors Seek Expanded Citizen And Board Authority Over Process
If approved, an ordinance on the Board’s October 3 agenda will solidify a just-formed citizen advisory committee into law, giving it more oversight and power. The County’s own legal counsel says the proposed ordinance is legally insufficient and unenforceable.
A photo inside the Shasta County Elections Office on November 8, 2022. Photo by Annelise Pierce.
On Tuesday the Board of Supervisors will vote on whether to approve a new county ordinance that would bolster the role and power of their freshly formed Citizens Elections Advisory Committee (CEAC). The board approved the five person committee on September 12, and appointed the first committee members last Tuesday, September 26.
One committee member was appointed by each of the five supervisors. They include Dawn Duckett, Susanne Baremore, Lisa Michaud, Bev Gray, and Ronnean Lund. All have been vocal public speakers over recent months with Duckett and Baremore often opposing the board majority on elections changes and Machaud, Gray, and Lund all supporting changes and expressing concern about election fraud.
Less than a week after approving the committee members, the board is looking to modify and expand CEAC powers by codifying its role into law with a local ordinance that would allow it to “provide oversight . . . over all elections related activities in Shasta County.”
The ordinance appears to also remove the committee’s previously-stated end-date and give members the power to access records, make copies of public records, observe all election-related activities, and receive “timely” answers of members’ questions from all election officials. The new ordinance would also give the board’s chair, currently Supervisor Patrick Jones, authority to request and serve subpoenas. The committee’s powers seem to be limited to providing the board with information and asking the board’s permission to request subpoenas. It is unclear if the committee will need to agree in order to exercise those powers, or what the board will be able to do with the information gathered.
According to Tuesday’s agenda packet, the county’s newly-seated legal counsel has “reviewed the proposed ordinance” and “found it legally insufficient and unenforceable” but it has nevertheless been moved forward by Chair Jones for the board’s vote this week.
If passed, the ordinance would take effect immediately. It will be voted on just 35 days before the county’s next scheduled election on November 7 for a local school board and fire safety district board. It will also be voted on the same day that the board should respond to certified signatures by calling a special election for the potential recall of Supervisor Kevin Crye, which must occur some time between January and March of 2024 according to state law.
It’s unclear to what extent this ordinance is intended to give the Board a greater role in the upcoming certification of a recall election for Supervisor Kevin Crye. The ordinance does specifically mention the certification of attempted recalls and this recall attempt specifically, saying that, “the recall validation process is precursor and is part and parcel to the entire special election process.”
Signatures for Crye’s recall election were just certified to move forward by elected County Clerk and Registrar of Voters, Cathy Darling Allen, earlier this week and will be presented to the Board later in the same meeting this week. Speaking to Shasta Scout by phone today, Crye said he will meet with County Counsel Monday to determine whether or not he should recuse from the agenda item on the elections committee. He says he definitely plans to recuse from the second agenda item regarding the certification of his recall process.
Earlier this year, on January 24, Shasta County’s Board voted to cancel the county’s contract with Dominion Voting Systems for electronic voting equipment. While the board dumped Dominion machines in order to implement a manual count of election ballots, the action was taken without having a legally approved system to manually tally votes in place.
At the end of March, the board instructed the Elections Office to develop a plan for the upcoming November 7 special election, leaving Elections Clerk Darling Allen with 8 months to create and submit a new system to the California Secretary of State for approval, implement state suggestions, perform any needed testing, make necessary system changes, and conduct the election.
Darling Allen still does not have access to a state approved system to run elections, which will occur in just over a month. She did submit a hand tally plan, which the Secretary of State provided suggestions on. The Elections Office has also scheduled an October 5 open house for members of the public to observe a mock election using the hand tally process.
Meanwhile, AB 969, which would make hand counting ballots in elections where there are over 1,000 eligible, registered voters illegal, has been passed by the California house and senate and is sitting on California Governor Gavin Newsom’s desk to be signed into state law. He has until October 14 to sign, approve without signing, or veto all remaining bills.
“As an independently elected official, I’m going to continue to do the job that voters elected me to do.” Cathy Darling Allen, the elected County Clerk and Registrar of Voters told Shasta Scout on September 8 in response to questions about the original resolution. “The Shasta County Clerk’s office is a nonpartisan entity dedicated to making sure that every vote is counted and every voice in our community is heard,” she said.
This is a developing story. You can find the draft ordinance and staff report here for the Citizens Election Advisory Committee here. The staff report regarding the certification of recall for Kevin Crye can be found here.
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Let me understand, we have a group of county officials that feel that elections have been altered but by who or what and how seems to be more of a dream (or nightmare) BUT no one has been able to produce irrefutable proof of anything that was done wrong, in fact these same Chicken Little types who are claiming that the elections were tampered with were also voted into office from the same election and the people who were voted on by the people to oversee them and make sure that nothing was done that was illegal in any way. So maybe they are right and their being elected to office is proof. But doesn’t it seem that putting a group of people in charge of, well it appears that they will be able to get into records or anything there wicked little leader wants to see is exactly what Mr.Jones and his foot soldiers are accusing others of doing. And this so called commission won’t be put into power by ANY vote or decision of the general population just the whims of a majority that to a lot of us appear to be controlled by one person who rules as if he was King, or Dictator, but then if you realize who his god is that isn’t anything we didn’t already know. Their own attorney has informed them that their entire committee isn’t legal and anything that they want to do or change isn’t going to be legally binding anyway. So if is it just me or is this just another attempt by a group who has accused several different people and groups of misusing their power to throw away County funds without any kind of approval other than they want to do it their way? Well people this ain’t Burger King and you have to put it in front of the people of the entire population, not just a self appointed leader who is trying to put through a election committee to do what he’s accusing the other side of doing. We don’t need a fox in the henhouse, what we do need is a government that does what the people decide on by a simple election.
Well said!
So: I’m just going to gently back into this one.
DEMOCRACY VIA COUNTY CLERKS BEING ELECTED OFFICIALS:
—24 states in the US require county clerks to be elected.
—Two states leave it up to to the discretion of the county: California and New York.
—The other 24 states? Whoever runs the county appoints the clerk, I assume. I stopped reading, TBH. Appointing someone who runs the elections: The would actually seem very “ewww, I don’t know….”, even to me.
BUT: we’re not one of those counties! We don’t have this problem. We have an democratically elected county clerk who oversees the administrative portions of election processes. Maybe people will say the clerk getting elected was fraudulent. For 20+ years? Please. Who’s going to fraud their way into being a county clerk? Seriously. It’s not like being president. So: Yay! We elect a very good county clerk.
IN OTHER WORDS:
—Shasta County, flexing its fair, logical and pleasingly tanned democratic muscles decided—back in the day—to have an elected county clerk. Other California counties opted to have an appointed clerk. Not Shasta. We’re all up in our democracy, have been for decades.
—Also; In Shasta County, we happen to have a gem whose been doing an incredible job for 20 plus years. Along with her awesome stripper name (no offense, but real talk—it’s perfect and I’m no spring chicken but I feel like I could make a little extra change using that on the weekends), Cathy Darling has 20 plus years in a highly technical profession: No scandals, no flubs, a lot of heavy lifting. For decades. And. We. Elected. Her. Each. Time: We did! We gave her the job, everyone! Done deal, going well. I don’t know if she’s all muscle-y and tanned, but she absolutely is good, and elected by the people, people.
THEREFORE, WE HAVE REDUNDANCY: Having an appointed board to oversee elections while we have an elected official who oversees elections. Yeah, stop right there. If I can’t get potholes repaired on front of my house, I don’t want one tiny penny o’ my local taxes going towardsecond guessing a respected professional (the county clerk, Ms. Darling). Stand back and let her do her job: We hired her, for Pete’s sake. Spend that money on my potholes: I have back problems! And I don’t want a cent of my tax money to go toward electricity or snacks or paper or admin time for a redundant elections oversight board who’s going to try to do a better job than Cathy Darling. Y’all, with all due respect; You can’t! She’s the GOAT in a highly technical field. That’s why we elected her for the past bazillion years. Spend it on education. On business development. Not this.
MY GUESS ON WHY SHASTA COUNTY IS BEING SO EXTRA ABOUT THIS. Anxiety. Yep. Anxiety. Life is too expensive, no doctors, no jobs, all this freakin’ crap you do on a phone, not being able to make a living straight out of high school working in a mill, wondering if social security is going to cover jack. There’s people living in the streets everywhere, we don’t know how to handle it. We’re all anxious. But Americans don’t say, “I’m really worried.”
Nope. We say “f you” and get all “the moon landing was a hoax” and “California [the state we all live in without being forced to, BTW] has laws that suck so we not going to follow the laws of our state!” We are anxious, but show anger because that’s being all tanned and muscle-y.
Do we know how much all this Freudian angst costs? How this county, with four times the state poverty level & gets the majority of its funding from the rest of the state, should maybe work with Stare officials? I was always taught you don’t punch a gift horse or sugar daddy in the mouth: Everyone raised here knows that, dang. That’s common sense right there.
Just stop. Breath. Let Ms. Darling do her job, fix my dang potholes, and if you hate California and it makes you super angry-anxious, move to another frontier if you think it’s going to be better. Seriously. Ain’t no shame in that game: It’s very American, and Idaho is a lovely state.
Imagine being a liberal in Idaho (they’re the majority in Boise, the other college towns, and the ski towns) and having waves of our worst MAGA Christo-fascists moving into the state.
I like Idaho. Move to Mississippi, Trumpsters. It’s the most poorly educated state in the nation—y’all will fit right in.
I would encourage interested residents to look up the HTML board packet with the list of duties. It is terribly overreaching. It will impede disturb and interrupt our ROV with no boundaries! And guess who is charge if attacking Cathy through his authorized agents? PJ! That’s right kids. Our kindness-deficient local neighbourhood autocrat here to pump you 👏 up. From Subpoenas to copying confidential info to full access of staff bathroom visits to ensure integrity of bowel movements this is yet one more insanely overreaching ordinance from the one who doesn’t play well with others.
This resolution does not have the endorsement of the Shasta County council. Clearly, there are provisions within the resolution that may indeed be illegal. Besides looking up the resolution online, I would encourage people that are concerned about this overreach by the J.C K. Cartel, to be at the board meeting and let them know. The Cartel knows the county will never secede via Jefferson State 51-get her done fairy tail / fantasy, but it’s working overtime to basically run Shasta County as a separate identity from California, as evidenced by their attempt to turn the county into a Charter County. We need more people to show up at supervisor meetings!