Supervisors will discuss legal petition filed over election ballot initiative
The petition seeks to stop a proposed ballot initiative that, if approved by voters in June, would amend Shasta’s charter to implement local election policies. Supervisors will discuss the petition in closed session on Feb. 20.
2.20.26 1:02 p.m.: Update after the Jan. 20 special closed session board meeting
The Shasta County board of supervisors met today in closed session to discuss the legal petition. After supervisors returned from closed session, the county attorney reported out that they had voted 4-1 to “take no position on the lawsuit and allow the court to make the decision based on the filings.” Supervisor Kevin Crye was the only dissenting vote. The board’s decision followed public comment by about a dozen people, most of whom offered arguments in support of the ballot initiative. One of them, Laura Hobbs, speculated about who the Jane Doe who filed the legal complaint might be, saying she suspected it might be “our very own Dolores Loser,” a reference to community member Dolores Lucero, a frequent public commenter. Hobbs, who was hired by election official Clint Curtis last year, is also one of the five election activists behind the ballot initiative.
A legal petition against election official Clint Curtis and the Shasta County Board of Supervisors, was filed by a Jane Doe this week.
Supervisors will discuss the petition tomorrow, Feb. 20, during a special closed session meeting organized in response to the legal filing. Jane Doe’s complaint, which was filed without legal representation, demands that a ballot initiative known as the Voter ID, Hand-Counted Ballots, and Absentee Voting Limits Initiative be removed from Shasta ballots in June.
The initiative is currently slated to be placed on ballots for the mid-year election after sufficient signatures were gathered by proponents last year. It will allow Shasta voters to choose whether to implement new local voting rules that contradict state election law, including voter ID requirements.
The Doe complaint, which was filed Feb. 17, outlines a number of legal violations that the ballot initiative appears likely to trigger if approved, including the California Voting Rights Act and AB 969, which outlawed hand counting in a counties of Shasta’s size a few years ago.
Doe also notes in her complaint that the wording of the ballot initiative contradicts state law and recent court precedents, including a case in Huntington Beach. In that case, voters’ decision to pass a ballot initiative that required voter IDs to vote triggered a successful lawsuit from California Attorney General Rob Bonta that struck down the law before it could be implemented.
Shasta’s proposed ballot initiative was championed by election activists closely connected to the county’s Registrar of Voters. They include Laura Hobbs and Richard Gallardo — who were hired by Curtis to help administer the Nov. 2025 election. Over recent years, Hobbs has herself filed two unsuccessful lawsuits against the county after failing to win a supervisor seat in the 2024 election. Gallardo, a member of the Cottonwood Militia, has unsuccessfully run for office multiple times in Shasta, and is campaigning for supervisor this year.
Doe says in the complaint that removing the proposed initiative from the ballot is “necessary to prevent an irreversible and unlawful waste of public funds.” She references estimates of manual tally costs presented to the board in 2023 under Shasta’s prior Registrar of Voters, Cathy Darling Allen, indicating that moving to a hand count election system was likely to cost millions over a period of years.
The petition’s demands call for the court to issue a writ of mandate stopping the county from placing the initiative on voters’ ballots in June, an injunction to prevent the county from spending further funds on the initiative, and a declaration that the initiative is legally void.
The county itself has already tried to stop the ballot initiative from moving forward based on similar concerns. Last March, before signature gathering for the ballot initiative began, County Counsel Joseph Larmour asked the court to issue a definitive ruling on whether the county should continue to expend taxpayer funds to process and prepare a ballot measure with clear legal conflicts. He argued that taxpayer dollars should not be spent on a measure that would eventually be overridden by higher legal authorities. The suit indicated that the ballot initiative was intended to implement election policies that Larmour believed would violate the United States Constitution, the California Constitution, and the federal Help America Vote Act or HAVA.
Like Doe, Larmour asked the court for expedited action on his request, saying that if the court didn’t take action quickly, he would need to approve a ballot title and summary to meet state election law demands despite his concerns. When the court ruled against the request for expedited action, the county dropped its lawsuit. That allowed ballot proponents, including Hobbs and Gallardo, to successfully recruit the nearly 7,000 signatures needed to place the initiative on ballots this year.
After a random sampling of those signatures was verified by Curtis’ office, supervisors voted to plate the initiative on the ballot last November.
But in yet another legal twist, those signatures — which supported an initiative that would amend the county’s charter to allow new election laws to be implemented locally — were gathered before Shasta officially became a charter county at all. Whether, or to what extent, that might affect any legal action against the ballot initiative is still to be determined.
Supervisors will meet tomorrow, Feb. 20 at 9 a.m. in closed session. We’ll update this story with any reportable action.
Do you have a correction to share? Email us: editor@shastacout.org.
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Regarding the reference to Huntington Beach: “Doe also notes in her complaint that the wording of the ballot initiative contradicts state law and recent court precedents, including a case in Huntington Beach. In that case, voters’ decision to pass a ballot initiative that required voter IDs to vote triggered a successful lawsuit from California Attorney General Rob Bonta that struck down the law before it could be implemented.”
HB voters approved Measure A on the ballot for the 2024 Presidential Primary Election, amending the City’s charter to allow the City Council to require voter ID. Measure A did not require voter ID. And, the City Council never adopted an ordinance requiring voter ID.
https://www.ocvote.gov/sites/default/files/elections/2024%20Primary/HBEA%201%20-%20LAYOUT.pdf
Voter ID makes common sense Duh!!
No voter ID makes nonsense Duh!!
You already showed your ID when you registered to vote, and it would be stupid to do it twice
If you want a snapshot of what’s holding Shasta County back, look no further than the latest election-law melodrama chronicled by Shasta Scout. Once again, enormous civic energy is being poured into symbolic fights over ballot mechanics—hand counts, imagined threats, procedural purity—while the county’s real problems wait patiently in the corner. Housing is scarce, healthcare access is fragile, wages lag, wildfire risk grows, and young families struggle to stay. Yet the political spotlight remains fixed on a familiar Boomer obsession: relitigating elections that already happened.
This is not about “democracy” in any practical sense. It’s about process theater—the comforting illusion that obsessing over voting mechanics somehow improves daily life. It doesn’t. No family pays rent with hand-counted ballots. No business opens because of a charter tweak. No wildfire stops because someone felt reassured by a new election rule. Even if these measures worked exactly as promised, their impact on the material well-being of residents would be indistinguishable from zero. They consume time, money, and attention while producing nothing a working household can use.
The deeper issue is generational power lag. Boomer-dominated boards and councils continue to govern as if symbolic control were the same as effective leadership. Having secured homes, pensions, and political influence decades ago, they now have the luxury of treating government as a philosophical hobby. That may be emotionally satisfying, but it’s a terrible way to run a county. Governance is not a nostalgia project. It’s a service job—and right now, the service is failing the people who actually have to live with the consequences.
Meanwhile, Millennials—now the county’s largest working-age cohort—can’t just sit back and roll their eyes. If you want fewer performative crusades and more housing, childcare, infrastructure, and economic stability, you have to show up. Vote, run, organize, and replace symbolic politics with outcome-driven leadership. Complaining about Boomer dominance without building an alternative only guarantees more of the same. Power doesn’t retire on its own; it has to be relieved of duty.
So yes, it’s time for a change. It’s time for those who’ve already had their turn to enjoy retirement—preferably without turning county government into a perpetual grievance machine. And it’s time for the generations who actually need this county to function to take responsibility for making it do so. Shasta County doesn’t need another crusade over ballots. It needs leadership focused on results. The rest is just noise—and we’ve had more than enough of that.
Glad board on Tuesday is revisiting topic of Clint Curtis campaigning in the election office during regular business hours. My guess is one or more Supervisors watched the entire video of the “tour” given to Republicans running for Governor then deciding County Counsel Lamour was gaslighting them into believing Clint’s conduct was nothing more than “incidental”, a nothing-burger. Clearly a censure or vote of no confidence is in order but Crye and Kelstrom can’t criticize their handpicked appointee as that would be fodder for their opponents in upcoming election.
The ROV needs to be at least investigated! But… this board seems more protective of Clint than any of his many poseable legal infractions; after all, Clint’s a Trumper.
Dang. I wanted this voter suppression measure to be on the ballot and pass, so I could sue the county for millions for voter disenfranchisement. My plans for a lavish retirement at taxpayers expense may be dashed by the board if they decide to keep this off the ballot.
Court case is on the 26th… It’s still on as far as I understand it. Crye desented….While Curtis was walking the halls, Hobbs called Delorse Jane Doe in the BOS meeting today….
These MAGAs are out of their minds.
I’ll join Brad!😂
I’ll class action this for sure, ha
” It will allow Shasta voters to choose whether to implement new local voting rules that contradict state election law,”. This is MAGA ‘leadership’ in action and we should be prepared for our 3 member MAGA BOS to follow the trail Richard Gallardo and Laura Hobbs are trying to take our county down. There is not a single case of certified voter fraud in Shasta County and yet these MAGA morons are dismantling our election system based entirely on their fake stories about fake stories of other fake stories. Are our citizenry truly so dimwitted that we will allow Rich Gallardo and Laura Hobbs to be pulling our strings?
They need only look to Huntington Beach to know this election suppression measure would be squashed by the courts if it ever passed. The county taxpayers have lost millions because board members Crye and Kelstrom gave these election deniers oxygen for many years now and it’s time they stop wasting our money supporting the Big Lie.
Yes.
Selah
Larmour told them not to do this, but onward they went, in profoundly careless fashion! They don’t care how much taxpayer money they waste doing idiotic things, and that’s why they all need to be voted out!!
Imagine if the board spent all their energy and our tax dollars on ways to improve the community? Boy, what a great place this would be. Ah well, just a pipe dream I suppose. Who needs fiscal responsibility anyways?
There sure seems to be a lot of tinkering going on with a system that heretofore worked pretty good. What ever happened with the philosophy of “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it?”
I WOULD like to see voter ID requirements but, that’s the only change really needed.
WHY, would you like to see voter ID?
And why do you think voter ID is a good idea?