As Observers Scrutinize, Shasta County Elections Official Defends Staff
Registrar of Voters Tom Toller reassured the public that his team will facilitate a free and fair election – despite unexpected obstacles. Both elected officials and members of the public have taken the initiative to observe the process. Toller says he welcomes observation but won’t allow his staff to be intimidated.
Shasta County Election staff were joined by about a dozen personnel from other parts of the County today, November 4, as they continued to process ballots affected by an ink overspray issue. During a midday press conference, Registrar of Voters Tom Toller said that current numbers show about 50% of ballots are being rejected by machine scanners due to the printing issue.
Early voting began on October 7 and continued in person today at the Market Street Elections Office, where staff and volunteers were busy throughout the day advising people on how to cast their vote.
A Tense Atmosphere at the Elections Office
Among those who visited the Market Street Elections Office were a number of observers who said they were there to keep an eye on the process – including Patty Plumb, a Shasta Elections Commissioner, who’s also part of a secessionist movement known as California New State.
Plumb sat side-by-side with former Elections Commissioner Bev Gray for hours, copying the results of the ballot scanning process, including how many ballots were being rejected by the scanning machine, in handwritten notes.
During a Shasta Elections Commission meeting this afternoon, Plumb and Gray both shared their observations on the ballot scanning process. Their numbers varied considerably. Plumb claimed the machines were rejecting 80% of ballots while Gray put the figure at about half the ballots, or 50%. Toller’s official numbers match Gray’s estimate.
Supervisor Kevin Crye also made an appearance at the Elections Office, something he’s pledged to do every day he’s in town for the next month “just to be available”.
He told Shasta Scout he has “100% trust” in the current local process. When asked how he thought Toller was performing, Crye, who pushed for his appointment, called him “honest” and said “he’s doing the job I knew he would do.””I think there are good people who work in this office,” Crye continued. “Phenomenal people.”
His statement stands in stark contrast to the claims of Tanner Johnson, who told the media a few days ago, after resigning from his position on the Elections Office staff, that Crye has been intimidating during visits to the Elections Office.
Asked by Shasta Scout about those allegations today, Crye responded with laughter.
Toller’s Message to the Public
Toller responded to the allegations against Crye more directly, saying he had found Johnson to be “a great worker and a reliable person, so I expect people to take him at his word.” He said he was aware of some issues related to the Supervisor and Elections staff but didn’t know the extent to which his staff had concerns, or how often instances have reportedly occurred.
“It’s certainly something I’ll look into in greater detail, and it may be the subject of some policy changes, but it’s premature to say that right now,” Toller said.
Meanwhile, he said, Supervisors will face the same response as any other observer if they choose to intimidate staff. That includes a three strikes rule that culminates in losing access to the Elections Office.
“I recognize that (Supervisors) stand in a special relationship,” Toller said, “but as an independent holder of an elected office, they have to respect my responsibilities and duties as well.”
“And you know,” he continued, “If they wanted to descend to the level of punishing me for doing my job by, say, pruning my budget, that would be a really disappointing thing, and I think that would be something that the voters of Shasta County would take very seriously.”
“I’m a fighter,” he explained. “My background is as a trial attorney. I draw a line, and if anybody wants to step over it, I’m ready to go. So I don’t care who it is, they’re going to respect the process. They’re going to help me produce a fair and impartial election and that’s all I ask.”
Toller went on to say that his biggest concern right now is that his staff feels safe and not threatened.
“We’re trying to do everything we can to support my team, because they’re doing such a wonderful job in a high stress situation . . . I would ask everyone to recognize that these are human beings. They’re very passionate about doing a great job in providing a fair, impartial election for voters here in Shasta County, they don’t deserve to be really put down or harassed or harangued in any way.”
He thanked members of the community who brought his staff lunch today, saying it was a great morale boost. Asked how they’re doing, Toller said that he and his staff are all “very tired and stressed” saying when everyone casts their vote tomorrow is when the real work will begin.
“We certify the election on December 3,” Toller said, “and it’s safe to say that we’re going to be busy right up until that day.”
Defective Ballot Processing
Shasta County has about 116,000 registered voters. About 43,000 ballots have been received by the Elections Office so far. Toller said he expects the precincts to be busy tomorrow, November 5, and encouraged the community to vote in whichever way they’ve planned, despite the ink overspray issue.
“All the modalities will work”, Toller said. “Voting by mail, voting by drop box, voting here at our Market Street location or voting at the precinct.”
Ballots that are unable to be scanned due to the printing problem discovered last week, now have to be put through an additional process which requires adding an identifying number to the ballot and duplicating it onto a new ballot with a matching identifying number. Three different elections staff will then double check that the duplication of votes from one ballot to the other is correctly recorded. The duplicated ballots can then be rescanned by the machine and join the official voting record.
Toller said the original damaged ballots are being placed in a secure storage facility where they’ll remain for the next 5 years. Federal ballots that have been duplicated, he said, are required to be retained longer than most election materials, which are kept only 22 months.
The additional labor required to duplicate so many ballots has raised the cost of this election. But Toller told the press that he expects that additional cost to be covered by either the printing company, Runbeck, or the company that makes Shasta County’s machine, Hart Intercivic, or both.
“I don’t expect this to cost the taxpayers of Shasta County anything additional,” Toller explained. “But of course, this all remains to be seen. The goal right now isn’t to pass out the dinner check before the dinner gets served. We’re going to bring home this election, and then we’ll settle on what the tab is.”
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Tanner Johnson is telling the truth!
My estimates:
turnout: 80,000 (69%)
same day voter: 10,000
vote by mail/drop box: 70,000
70k vbm ballots * 50% barcode failure rate = 35,000 ballots needing to be remade
They’ve remade 5,000 ballots in 4 business days (1,667 ballots/day) suggesting it will take 18 additional business days (~Nov 29) to remake the estimated 30,000 remaining ballots. So Toller’s “busy right up to December 3” sounds about right.
How long it took to count ballots in the March primary:
24 hours: 42% votes counted
day 3: 74% votes counted
1 week: 92% votes counted
day 10: 97% votes counted
day 17: 99% votes counted
day 23: 100% votes counted
These are the same yahoos that scream at little league coaches, thus teaching their children that it is more important to win at any cost that to put in effort and win fairly.
This is California, not the Gulag. Go home and let election workers do their job. All you’ve accomplished is to drive experienced, ethical, dedicated, democracy-driven workers out, necessitating their replacement with new, inexperienced hires… which means voting irregularities are *more* prone to happening, not less. So you’ve essentially undermined the process, rather than shoring it up.
Nice job.
David: We have edited your comment to remove language that might be considered threatening.
In an age where the election process is under increased scrutiny and the public is losing confidence in that process, you would think that the people involved would have taken extra steps to ensure a seamless 2024 election. I can’t for the life of me comprehend why they didn’t test-run ballots to ascertain they’d be machine-counted accurately. And a turnover in staff when the rubber hits the road indicates lack of proper hiring, training and communication. When we lose confidence in our election process, we’re toast. Finger-pointing and excuses won’t solve the problem.
Robert: The required pre-election testing did not catch this ink overspray issue.
We have learned over the last few years that voting is much more complicated than we thought. The overspray issue should have been caught by the printing company and probably by the county as well after it received the ballots.
While I have lost confidence that elections are being conducted across the country in according to the law that is not necessarily a bad thing. Sure some people have given up but many are fighters and have made this election much more secure than the last.
You are right to question training and communication. Perhaps there is no current procedural way to check all the blank ballots received to verify that the ballot providers print the ballots correctly.
On a different issue, I received my ballot packet, affidavit form and ballot link in an email from Shasta.gov that ‘gmail’ sent to my SPAM folder. I have received emails from Shasta.gov for over 11 years. I frequently get correspondence from Shasta County so this was odd.
I had to make 4 calls to the registrar to sort that out. I don’t think Google did that by
‘mistake’. So our issues are much bigger than we can imagine.
Thank you Shasta Scout, Mike, Brad and of course Toller and Joanna, as well as all the staff and volunteers at ROV!
Democracy is under attack by local and national MAGA. MAGA has direct empirical correlation to white nationalism, conspiracy theory, christo fascism, belligerent intimidation, attacks on the press, attacks on the Right To Vote, authoritarianism, hate, lies, violence.
Locally, Bethel Church leadership, Supervisors Jones and Crye use all of the above as tools for social-political power. The behavior is exemplified by both local and national MAGA leader, trump.
Jones, Crye, Hobbs, Plumb and Plumb’s two cohorts on the election commission have tried their best to obstruct the vote of Shasta County Citizens, as directed by MAGA leaders. So far, they are falling. And a primary reason for their failure is the Freedom of The Press, who MAGA, Jones and Crye and trump call “The Enemy of The People.”
I hope all who read Shasta Scout, contribute what they can financially to support the First Amendment. Freedom of the press is not exactly free, it takes money to make the world go around.
Without the First Amendment, Representative Democracy just might be killed by the abuse of the Second Amendment. And please understand, without democracy, The American form of government, Representative Democracy, would become authoritarianusm if not fascism.