Clint Curtis, an Outspoken Opponent of the Use of Voting Machines, Has been Selected as Shasta County’s Next Top Elections Official

After hours of public interviews yesterday afternoon, April 30, Shasta County’s Board has selected a new Registrar of Voters (ROV). Clint Curtis is a Florida-based attorney with no ties to Shasta County and no experience running elections.

He’s also an outspoken opponent of the use of voting machines who highlighted his connection to MyPillow CEO and election conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell during his interview. 

Curtis will replace ROV Tom Toller whose resignation became official on April 29th. Toller, who was also appointed by supervisors, held the role for only eight months before stepping down for health reasons.

Supervisors Kevin Crye, Chris Kelstrom and Corkey Harmon cast the deciding votes for Curtis late afternoon after interviewing a total of four candidates. Curtis was the only one of the four with no previous experience in elections management.

Other candidates included long-term Shasta County election staffer and Assistant Registrar of Voters Joanna Francescut; Elle Leigh Sharpe, a staffer at the Nevada Secretary of State’s Office with previous experience at the Placer County Elections Office; and Robin Underwood, a City Clerk based in Michigan. The fifth candidate invited to interview for the position did not appear.

Board Chair Crye made the motion for Curtis’ appointment, saying while he doesn’t believe there are any significant issues with Shasta County elections, it’s “time for change” in a “direction that may be unknown” to do things “way out of the box.”

“I think now is the time to do things differently and lead in a different way,” Crye continued, without further explanation.

What Curtis plans to do differently, he told supervisors, is film the entire Shasta County elections process, a step he says will allow the community to see for themselves if voting machines are accurate. He provided no details about the practicalities of such a plan including how much it would cost, whether and how he’d adjust current state-regulated election processes to implement it, or how exactly the public will be able to use what’s filmed to verify accurate election processes. 

Nevertheless, Supervisor Kelstrom immediately seconded Crye’s motion to select Curtis. He said he had no concerns with the work of Assistant ROV Francescut, who has 17 years of experience in the local Elections Office, but wanted to go with Curtis instead. 

This is the second time Francescut has applied for the position in a year. She was passed over both last year and this year, despite strong support from a majority of the vocal public. She’s faced a litany of accusations from a small but vocal group of locals who believe widespread election fraud is occurring across the United States, many of whom are associated with New California State, a secessionist movement that hopes to separate from the “tyrannical” California government.

Harmon, who provided the swing vote on the decision to select Curtis, expressed support for Francescut but told Shasta Scout after the meeting that he agrees with Crye that a new approach to elections is needed, saying what’s at stake is bigger than Shasta County. 

“It’s about election integrity across the country,” Harmon said. “California-wide, country-wide…  Everybody knows there’s issues with elections. And I think there’s stuff coming (federally) that’s going to change some things, for the better.” 

The idea that the Trump administration’s recent executive order might impact local elections was a recurring theme throughout interview questions and Board conversations. In response to questions from Supervisor Crye about whether they’d follow the will of the Board or the will of the state when it comes to elections, all four candidates emphasized that they would follow election law, which is currently set primarily at the state level.

Curtis’ selection was strongly opposed by Supervisors Allen Long and Matt Plummer, who both raised concerns about Curtis’s work history and qualifications for the role. Curtis has long been a controversial figure. He’s a former computer programmer who claims he wrote a code that could be used to flip election machines, then later blew the whistle saying he didn’t know what the code was intended for when he wrote it. He told supervisors yesterday that he wanted to work in Shasta County elections to atone for his mistake in writing that code decades ago.

While Curtis has previously claimed publicly to have been fired from one of his former jobs, he wrote in his ROV application that he’d never been discharged or forced to resign from a position. When asked about that discrepancy by Supervisor Crye during his interview, Curtis defended himself, saying he wasn’t technically terminated from his former employment because he was a contractor, not an employee.

Faced with a similarly tough question from Plummer about how many election cases he’d won as an attorney specializing in election law over the last twelve years, Curtis first said none then hedged saying he thinks he won a small one once, “but nothing much.” 

Curtis’ lack of success in the courtroom, along with his four unsuccessful runs for Congress, prompted Plummer to refer to Curtis as not having a track record of success, adding that it would be unwise to appoint someone whose goal is to address alleged illegalities at the elections office that have never even been documented. 

Supervisor Long spoke similarly, saying what Shasta County needs in the ROV role is experience, qualifications and stability — not an outsider with new ideas on how to change election processes in order to address unsubstantiated claims of fraud.

Long said he didn’t believe Curtis met even the basic qualifications that had been set by the Board for the ROV appointment, making a motion that Curtis be eliminated from consideration based on his lack of qualifications for the role — the motion did not receive a second.

Curtis’ application was screened by an ad hoc committee that included both Long and Crye. Speaking to Shasta Scout after the meeting, Long said he originally approved Curtis for the interview process because he and Supervisor Crye were told by Shasta County’s Director of Support Services Monica Fugitt that Curtis met qualifications for the role. 

It was only after checking the video of the Board’s vote on qualification requirements and reviewing details of the agenda packet, Long said, that he became convinced Curtis didn’t actually qualify to be interviewed. Fugitt told Shasta Scout last week that she would not comment on whether Curtis met qualifications for the role.

During a fifteen-minute speech to the Board in an attempt to dissuade them from choosing Curtis, Long also addressed concerns about various aspects of Curtis’ work history, as reported by Orlando Weekly. Neither Crye nor Kelstrom offered any response, but Harmon summoned Curtis to the dais where he offered difficult-to-follow rebuttals to Long’s concerns, saying Long should have done better research and recommending he read a specific blog for accurate facts.

The meeting was briefly disrupted when community member Christian Gardinier called out from the chamber floor for the second time, after a first warning. In response to Crye’s commands to leave the room, Gardinier held his ground saying he was willing to be arrested. Chair Crye called a meeting recess and asked everyone but the press to exit the chamber before calling on the two Sheriff’s deputies in the room to assist Gardinier to vacate the room. After a few moments, in response to a request from Long, Gardinier chose to leave on his own. He remained outside the chamber for the rest of the meeting.

After being selected for the ROV role, Curtis offered brief comments to the press. He took a cavalier tone, delivering mostly vague answers to questions about how he intends to run the Elections Office. During his interview last year, Curtis said that he might want to “start over” with fresh staff at the Elections Office. This year, he said he’s going to wait and see before making a decision. Asked specifically about maintaining the employment of Assistant ROV Francescut, Curtis said he might be able to work with her, “if she was telling the truth during her interview.”

Francescut has worked in Shasta County elections since 2008 and held the Assistant ROV role since 2018. She has administered over 30 elections and ran the March 2024 primary on her own while ROV Cathy Darling Allen was out on medical leave.

She told supervisors yesterday that she was willing to continue in her role as Assistant ROV if not selected for the lead role. Speaking to Shasta Scout after the meeting, she expressed respect for the Board’s decision to choose Curtis. Within a few hours of the Board’s decision, she issued a press release publicly announcing her candidacy for the ROV role in 2026.

“Shasta County deserves experienced and trusted leadership in the elections office,” Francescut wrote, “I’m committed to this work that I’ve done locally for 17 years and I’m running to bring stability, experience, and integrity to the role at a pivotal time for local elections.”

Now that Curtis has been selected, he must pass a background check, move to Shasta County, and register to vote before he can legally become Shasta County’s next ROV. If appointed, he’ll hold the role until at least January 2027. That’s when the winner of the June 2026 election would take their seat.

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