Meet Joanna Francescut for Shasta County’s clerk and registrar of voters 

Editorial Note: This story is part of Shasta Scout’s citizen-powered election coverage. We’re conducting long-form, in-person interviews that last about an hour each. Candidate responses have been curated and paraphrased for this format.

Tell us briefly about yourself. What’s your current role? What background experiences or concerns led you to run for county clerk and registrar of voters?

I grew up in Washington, Idaho and Montana. My dad was a forester and had to start his career over when my mom was pregnant with her eighth child. I learned a lot of resilience from living in a large family and from how my parents handled moving. I met my husband in Wyoming, where I played volleyball at a junior college. In 2007 we moved here, where we decided to raise our children.

I took a job at the elections office in 2008, as extra help. My very first job was verifying signatures on petitions. It gave me a sense of purpose and passion. This role, as minor as it was, helped me both become a better mother and serve the community. I quickly fell in love with the work. At the time, we were
“the happy office.” People came in to get passports and marriage licenses and vote. All of those really drew me to the work. At the time, people loved elections, and we were heroes in the community. It was a great feeling and a really great experience for me as I learned the work from the ground up. 

For 17 years I worked in the Shasta County Elections Office, until I was terminated last year by the newly appointed county clerk and registrar of voters. Now I’m working at the Trinity County Elections Office as a program manager, helping train their brand-new elections team. I’m helping them understand how the election process works from the ground up. I’m really grateful for the opportunity. It’s helped me remember why elections are fun.

I’ve never wanted to be a politician. I just wanted to stand behind other people and lift them up. I’m running for office for my children, because this is their home and I want them to live here. And for our community because they deserve to know the truth and there’s so much misinformation about elections out there.

If I don’t win this election, the impact on the community is going to be significant. We’ve had strong leaders in the office for the last 60 years. Cathy Darling Allen was in the office for 20 years; before that was Ann Reed, and prior to that, Richard Brennan. It takes four years for one staff member to learn how to do the work of elections from the ground up. If I don’t win this election, it’s going to take at least 16 years for our staff to get back to where they were, to the knowledge base they had. That’s a big deal, and it will be expensive.

Sometimes we forget the role of county clerk and registrar of voters has two halves to it. I think people are pretty familiar with the elections part of it, but what does a county clerk do?

There’s some history there with how the role has changed over time, but in Shasta now, the county clerk role is broken down to very specific duties. One is to be the commissioner of civil marriages. So if someone says, ‘I’m going to go to the courthouse to get married,’ they’re actually going to the county clerk’s office. Any marriage license that’s issued in Shasta County is issued at the county clerk’s office. We also do other professional filings, including notary and unlawful detainer assistant filing processes, passport applications, and fictitious business name filings. And we issue oaths of office to county employees and notaries. 

The county clerk’s side of the office has ebbs and flows similar to the election side, and we have to manage staffing around those. People most often come in and get passports in January and February, for example. That seems to be when they’re making their trip plans: spring break, summer break and mission trips. Similarly, October seems to be a very busy time for marriage licenses. And one of our busiest wedding days in Shasta County is April 20, for some reason.

When I first started at the office, there were only 11 staff, but now there are up to 19. More staff has meant we’re able to separate the county clerk side from the elections side a little more, and get more specialization in each, but really everybody has to know many things because during election cycles we are all hands on deck. When you start working in that office, it’s like a fire hose of information coming at you, knowing the different laws and code sections. Almost all the work we do is outlined by state law and we have to follow those laws consistently. We don’t make up any of this, how passports are filled out or how marriage licenses are filled out or how we manage elections. It’s all found in the law, which is something we have to know and understand.

It sounds like the county clerk and elections office is managing details related to a variety of central forms of identification and documentation, not only for voting, but for many parts of life?

Yes. One interesting example is how the process of obtaining a marriage license has changed over time and how that’s impacting people now who are trying to obtain their Real ID now. Prior to 1995, the state required a blood test to obtain a marriage license. The loophole was that you could pay for a confidential marriage license and skip the blood test. A lot of people did that and maybe some of them didn’t really know or didn’t really remember that they did. And now they’re having trouble accessing those confidential marriage licenses, which they need to get their Real IDs. 

It’s really detail-oriented work, all the time. You really need to know where to focus and how to follow the code. 

As an election official, you have to follow the law while building trust with diverse community members. How would you work to increase transparency and accountability in the ROV process?

Over the six years from when I became the assistant county clerk to when I was no longer the assistant county clerk, I increased transparency every single election. We want people to have access to observe and we also need staff to be able to be focused so we can get the job done as efficiently as possible. That’s always a tricky balance. 

What I’m not seeing right now is accountability, and that’s really important to build trust in elections.

Something we’ve noticed as we’ve reported on four different people managing that office over the last few years is that the work of elections always requires a certain amount of trust from the public. No one is ever able to watch the ballots all the time as they move from the printer to the election office and the election office to the post office and then back to ballot drop boxes or poll places before they return to the election office for counting. 

The community is actually what builds trust in elections. It takes a community to make elections happen, and it takes a community to keep them secure, and we all need to step up together and do that.

We each have a role in our democracy, this constitutional republic. We have to self-govern, that’s the point of the election process. So we all need to step up and participate. And when it comes to ballots, we all need to do the right thing. That includes checking to make sure your voter information is accurate before election day, so your ballots can be mailed to the right mailing address. It means updating your signature on file, so we can count your ballot as quickly as possible. For some it means serving as a poll worker. It takes hundreds and hundreds of poll workers every election day to keep ballots secure, to be the ambassadors of the office, and to serve the public well. 

How would you work to reduce conflict between the public and the election office and also within the election office itself?

When you work as a team, there will always be some conflict. Election work is a particularly intense kind of work, and when it comes to election season, everybody is busy at the same time. It’s a highly stressful environment, even when things are going well. We’re traditionally under-resourced, we have to get the job done with limited staff and limited resources, and those high demands can cause staff to get maxed out easily. So I always made it very clear to my staff that they would be more likely to be written up or advised on how to behave if they were creating drama in the office than they would if they actually made a mistake. Drama and conflict within the office destroy our trust with each other, and it also impact trust with our community, and that’s not fair to the people who are counting on us as they cast their ballots.

The bottom line is that building trust within the office is the best way to also build trust with the community. The people who work in the elections office have passion for their jobs, they really care, they want to show up well and serve the public. The community should feel that when they walk through the doors.

But it also seems like an environment where mistakes, or a lack of clear communication between staffers, could have really big consequences. How do you ensure accuracy and accountability within the office? 

Absolutely. Something I would often tell staff within their first week is that they should always tell me if my pants are unzipped. What I meant by that is that they should never fail to provide me with direct communication about what I need to know, whether they think I want to hear it or not. Tell me in a very direct way what’s happening, why it’s happening, and what you think we need to do. 

Election administration is complex and requires a very diverse skill set, so I need all my experts in various parts of the election system process to know their jobs well, work together and communicate clearly, promptly and directly with each other and with me. Small choices in the election office can have big impacts, including how we develop the voter information guide and how we design the ballot. So we have to work as a strong team.

Let’s talk a little bit more about poll workers. Why are poll workers important? And how do foundational steps, like poll worker training, increase voter access and security?

Shasta County is very large, so we have more than 50 poll locations, incorporating more than 60 different precincts — some poll places have two precincts at a single site. For each precinct, we need to train five community members to run the poll place. They have to be able to follow directions and do it correctly, otherwise their mistakes could impact the will of the voters. It’s a highly technical process, and poll workers accomplish it while working long days from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. Along with administering the election, they serve as ambassadors for the county clerk and are a reflection of the office. 

Given the demands of the role, building trust with the poll workers is something that is key to being successful in an election. One reason you need to do so is because poll worker retention is imperative. This year there are three elections, and we’ll need poll workers for each one. The June primary is the hardest to recruit poll workers for. That’s because it occurs at the same time as vacations and weddings and isn’t as exciting as a general election, so it’s harder to get poll workers who want to show up for such long days.

When it comes to poll worker training, there’s a lot we need to be keeping in mind and getting right. For one, federal law requires us to ensure every polling place is compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act. That process starts with how we choose our polling places. The staffer who does our poll place recruitment is trained by both the Department of Rehabilitation and the California Secretary of State to conduct ADA surveys of the space. One thing they have to do is make sure that someone in a wheelchair can get from a bus stop to the parking lot, and from the parking lot to the polling place, and then navigate inside the polling place in their wheelchair. That’s problematic in some of our polling places, so then we have to mitigate the space by adding additional parking spots, making sure the ramp is in place and other things to ensure they’re set up according to ADA law. The way we set up a polling place can have a really big impact on people’s ability to participate in elections. So it’s very important.

Ninety percent of our Shasta County voters still choose to vote at home using a vote-by-mail ballot, but they must have the option to go in and vote independently and privately if they choose. We ensure that with ADA-compliant devices that allow them to, for example, listen to their ballot or make the font larger. If poll workers don’t know how to set that up and use that device correctly, then it can impact the ability of the voters to vote independently and privately which is their right under the law. Poll workers cannot just assist them to mark their ballots, that’s not legally compliant. 

The poll workers have to know and understand that, and be able to step up and serve every diverse voter that walks in the door. And we have to train them to do that, because that’s also required by law. The Secretary of state produces requirements for poll training which we have to follow. There’s also the Election Officer’s Digest, and it’s required by law to make sure the poll workers have access to that, because it has all the laws that poll workers are supposed to follow.

What’s your commitment to accessibility for observers? Do you think it matters to the democratic process? And how are you balancing that with security?

There is a tough balance between access and observability and getting the job of elections done. From what I’ve observed of my opponent’s work in the office, access and observability has actually decreased. There’s been less access for observation of signature verification and logic and accuracy testing. And the new observer room is not ADA-compliant when it comes to the path of travel. He’s also claimed he would film every ballot. That’s something he can’t actually do by law. He’s not offering more transparency; he’s offering a different kind of transparency. 

It’s important to remember that the point of observation is to observe the process, not to be able to look at the voters’ ballots. It’s very direct in the constitution: voters have the right to a secret ballot. My commitment has always been, first and foremost, to the voter and their right to cast a ballot independently and privately. When it comes to observers, they have the right to observe and look at the process. They don’t have the right to touch ballots and they don’t have a right to direct staff on how to do their work, or impede in the process. That was what was happening over the last number of years, since 2020.

When we have put up boundaries between staff and observers in the past, it was because of how observers’ actions had impacted staff’s ability to get the job done. And as we added boundaries to protect the process, we also added accessibility for observation. For example, we added monitors so people could see what was happening on the tabulation machines without being directly behind staff. We closed some doors at the election office, and that angered people. But they actually had a closer view, and they still had the right to observe the processes, which is what the law requires.

Observers are a great part of the process, and they can be a great truth-teller, but when you come in with your own bias and not an open mind, your observations can be meaningless.

It’s important to note that the Market Street building is a real challenge for access and observation. We’ve been saying that for years. We have had to “play Tetris” every election, adjusting supplies and moving things for each part of the process. We don’t have the space that is needed in the office to do things efficiently. But with the millions of dollars it will take to acquire the right space, it’s going to take a while to get there while balancing the budget.  

Does the job of an election official also include safeguarding staff? 

Yes, and it’s always tough to balance that with observation. At one point, I had to stop operations because observers were directing my staff in a way that made them cry. We couldn’t do a process we needed to do that day because things were so heated after that interaction. Talk about impeding an election. So there’s a real balance between allowing observers close and providing space for staff. 

I like to compare it to when you have your grandmother and your mother both in the kitchen sharing a family recipe that they’ve both modified, so they’re telling you how to do it two different ways. 

Something I struggled with in my role was trying to meet everyone’s expectations and wishes. When people asked questions or made suggestions, I would try to adjust our processes to please them. When it got to the point where we had to hold boundaries and say ‘here’s the line you can’t cross,’ people really pushed back. The boundaries were put in place to protect staff, to protect voters, and to protect the ballots.  

The current registrar of voters says recording images of voted ballots on livestream during the election process increases transparency for the public. Do you agree? Why or why not?

My biggest concern with filming the ballots is the federal law which requires election officials to seal ballots after the election is certified. I’m also concerned that he’s stating that he’s filming all ballots, which is not true, about 10 to 20% of the ballots were filmed. He also claims that people can use the livestream recordings to look at all the ballots and do their own count but you really can’t do that because they weren’t all recorded on the livestream. It’s also a very costly process. I think he spent $100,000 last election to set the system up, and he’s gonna have to spend that much again this election.

The most important thing that we can do for transparency is to allow our voters to vote to tabulate their own ballots by feeding them into a machine at the polling place. The machine takes a picture of their ballot and makes a noise indicating that the ballot was scanned. It’s secure and, importantly, it also feels secure to the voter. That’s what we used to have before the county cancelled our contract with Dominion.

My opponent likes to talk about writing code to flip voting machine votes. But he’s talking about a system that we haven’t used in California for years. It’s called a direct reporting device. California got rid of that type of voting system in 2007, and we’ve been using a hand-marked paper ballot system with machine counting of votes since then. We test the machine-counting system before the election, and we also confirm the machine count numbers after every election by using a 1% manual tally audit. When that work is done appropriately, voters can trust the results. The truth is that we need machines to help us with the complex work of vote counting in areas as large as Shasta. And we have systems in place to ensure they work and work accurately. 

Like many local offices, the role of ROV is nonpartisan in nature. Is your intent to remain nonpartisan? If so, why does this matter to you?

My intention is to always remain nonpartisan, probably for my entire life, whether or not I’m a registrar. The voters need to trust that the person in charge of elections is making sure their vote is counted. One of the ways I can increase that trust is by not sharing my own political beliefs. Like everyone I have my own political beliefs, but I am deeply committed to not sharing them publicly, as a way to maintain trust in the position I wish to hold. This is a ministerial role, not a legislative role. Legislators are the ones that make the laws, and it’s my job to follow them.

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