New Security Gates At The Shasta County Elections Office? Here’s Why.

Assistant County Clerk and Registrar of Voters, Joanna Francescut uses her key card to open a security gate at the Shasta County Elections Office on Market Street.

Since the last general election, the Shasta County Elections Office has implemented new security measures, including a tall wrought-iron fence at the Elections Office. Assistant County Clerk and Registrar of Voters Joanna Francescut explains what new security measures are in place, how they were funded, and why they were needed. Her responses have been shortened and paraphrased.

Scout: There are new gates up at the Elections Office? Can you explain why?

That fencing isn’t actually new. We just extended it from a half gate to a full gate after county supervisors voted to institute a manual tally in Shasta County. We needed a secure and observable space for hand counting those votes to comply with the supervisors’ directive. 

We already had a half gate up in that space and when we looked at options to create a more secure and observable space during the hand count, our options were to either put up a wall with windows or extend the gate upward. Since we only lease this space, we try to invest as little county funds into it as possible and putting in a wall with windows would have required moving the sprinkler system. So we went with the quickest, least expensive route, which was to change the fence from a half fence to a full fence. 

The fencing serves a dual purpose because it also helps us to better secure the voting system equipment on the second floor of our Market Street office, which aligns with recommendations made by the Department of Justice on increasing the security of our office. 

The Shasta County Elections Office lobby on Market Street during the November 8, 2022 election, when the lobby included both county clerk services and voter services. Note the half gate. Photo by Annelise Pierce.

Scout: How was that extension to the wrought-iron fencing paid for? 

The money for the security improvements came from the Elections Office budget, which comes from the county’s General Fund. We did not spend anything beyond the money that was allocated to our office by supervisors as either part of our regular budget, or the additional money approved due to the new hand count process. 

We are expecting to get a grant of Help America Vote Act (HAVA) funds to provide additional security measures for elections. If the board accepts that funding, we should be able to go back and refund our budget for the security upgrades we’ve already put in place.

Scout: Have you also implemented other changes to the security of the Elections Office?

We’ve added some additional cameras. After June of 2022, we started adding more security features every fiscal year. It’s our intent to try to make this office as secure as possible for our staff, and most importantly for the ballots that come into our office, while still staying within our budget. 

Scout: What happened in June of 2022?

During the June 2022 election, we had election observers who came to the back door of our office and began engaging in conversation with the Registrar of Voters, Cathy Darling Allen, while we were in the middle of processing the returning ballots that night. There were people we didn’t know walking in the Elections Office back door and that’s never okay, especially when we’re pulling and counting ballots. The situation was a huge distraction for our staff. It was threatening and it was problematic. 

That triggered new safety procedures, including our new policy of obtaining a permit from the City of Redding to close the back alley behind our office on election night. We’ve also added cameras and changed our processes for observers. Now they can watch what’s going on via a video livestream of the back alley, the warehouse downstairs, and in one secure area upstairs where we keep all observers. Putting the observers in one location with live videos that provide access to observation allows for the most efficient staffing possible during a very high-volume work time, so we can focus on processing ballots, which is the key thing we’re trying to get done. 

Scout: Some people say that limiting observers to a single space in the office with video feeds doesn’t provide enough access. Can you respond to that?

We value the role of election observers. They’re an important part of the voting process in our democracy, here in California. However, we still have to get this job done. We’ve set some boundaries around observers in the last two years to allow us to get the job done. Those boundaries still allow them access to everything that’s required by law. 

Observers often think they should have access to elections materials that the law doesn’t actually provide them. They can watch the process and challenge the process but they can’t, for example, challenge someone’s signature on a ballot, or challenge whether or not that vote is eligible in the county. That is our job as elections officials. 

Observers are not allowed to examine the details of each ballot. They’re not allowed to touch voting materials. They get the same access during signature verification that my staff has. We keep the ballots in secure cages at all times. We take an image of the envelope and the signature and that’s what observers get to view. It’s the same exact view my staff has as they do the signature verification.

Scout: How have disruptions to the elections process impacted you and your staff? 

Security threats have definitely had a huge impact on staff morale. I’m spending more time than I ever have making sure my staff’s mental health is okay. Part of that is making sure they are taking their breaks. I won’t hesitate to say that our department has the hardest working staff in Shasta County. You’ll never see me wearing heels because I never know when I’ll have to run to the back warehouse to move boxes or whatever, just to do the processes we need. 

So given how hard we work, and how intense our work is, having people watching my staff over their shoulders, questioning everything they do, and not listening to them takes a huge toll. I think the human element of the election process has changed in a way that deeply impacts staff morale. They’re not treated as humans, with dignity.  

Scout: Are you hoping to add additional security measures at the Elections Office?

We’re hoping to add key codes to each of our doors so we can keep a record of who moves in and out of every door in the office. We also want to add additional cameras, but we’re moving slowly, one at a time, with those because our internet access is a problem here and we don’t want to overload the system with more cameras than it can handle. 

Scout: It sounds like there are some limitations to your current office; tell me what’s going on with finding a more permanent, county-owned space.

During the first four months of 2023, we put in a lot of work as we prepared for a possible hand count of local votes, before AB 969 passed and made that illegal. Part of our preparation involved shopping for a new building to move into to ensure we could manage the extra space needed for additional staff and expanded hand-counting processes. But with only a few months to prepare, we couldn’t find a space that was available when we needed it and easy for the county to maintain.

So we took the quickest, most cost-beneficial process possible instead, splitting our offices into two spaces, this one on Market Street and our new one that houses our administrative activities. This building houses our voting system and the larger pieces of equipment we need to process the elections. This is where we serve voters on election day and where we will count the vote. 

Because we were able to move our administrative work to another building, we finally have a lobby to serve voters. If you remember from before, we were voting outside because we didn’t have an inside space. We would get a permit from the city to take over the promenade in front of our building and we would have lines going into the building. That worked well except when it rained, which made serving the voters appropriately really hard. Now we have an accessible place for people to come in and vote privately and independently, out of the rain.

Members of the Shasta County public vote in the rain during the November 8, 2022 election. Photo by Annelise Pierce.

Scout: Didn’t the Elections Office receive special funding for a new building recently? 

We did receive an offer of $1.5 million in grant funding from the Center for Tech and Civic Life, through their Alliance program. That’s a lot of money, especially when elections are typically under-resourced and underfunded at the national and state level.

We don’t historically have consistent funding for elections. For the federal elections, we’ll sporadically receive Help America Vote Act (HAVA) funding, which we used in 2002 to buy our new voting equipment at that time and which sometimes funds staff training and accessible polling places. But we don’t have consistent funding to maintain the technology needed to manage an election.

Cathy [Darling Allen] was very direct with the supervisors regarding these funds. She told them she wanted to use the grant for a county-owned building that was suitable for the work we’re doing. That kind of building would provide observers better access and keep our elections processes more secure. With a better building, instead of cameras, we could have a hallway full of windows where observers could watch everything. It wouldn’t provide a full aquarium view, but they could see more.

But supervisors didn’t want to accept the grant funds without specific changes to the grant language specifying that it could only be used for a building. We worked to renegotiate those changes with the funders, but when we sought the required signature we were told we’d have to bring it before the supervisors again to confirm their approval. At that point in time we were under immense pressure and time constraints with both the manual tally plan and completing the procurement of the new voting system. Going back before the board for grant funding that we would likely not be able to expend given the short timeline left was not business that we had the capacity to take on.

Scout: If people have concerns about local elections, what’s the best way for them to share those concerns?

They should call or email us at the Elections Office and ask for me, or Cathy [Darling Allen]. They can also contact the California Secretary of State’s Office with concerns, because that department oversees elections statewide. 

I do need people to understand that there are laws we have to follow in the local elections office, whether or not we agree with them. The decisions that we make in this office are not based on my feelings, most are based on state law and court precedent. I didn’t make those laws and I can’t change them. The California Constitution is pretty clear that changing those laws is the work of the California legislature. If you want to change state election law, you should contact your local state representatives for the California Assembly and California Senate. 

But having said that, we very much want to hear people’s concerns. Some of the concerns we hear are very valid, and people offer us great ideas that we can work towards implementing. I’ve worked in this office since 2008, and we’ve made really great changes and great progress over time. Some of those great ideas came from poll workers, observers, and prior staff who said to us, ‘hey, let’s look at this a different way.’ 

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