On Tuesday, Shasta County Supervisors Will Consider A Plan To Count Some Votes By Hand

The Shasta County Board of Supervisors will turn their attention the County’s voting system again on Tuesday, March 28, when Board members will discuss whether to implement a limited hand counting system for the next election. They’ll also discuss whether to contract with a vendor that provides an electronic voting machine system.

In January, Board members voted 3/2 to end the County’s contract with Dominion Voting Systems, Inc. for electronic machine voting services. Assuming they don’t choose to rescind that vote, on Tuesday, they’ll have two more voting machine options to choose from: Hart Intercivic or Election Systems & Software. Either choice must be paired with a lease of Democracy Live’s accessible remote by mail software, to provide remote voting options for those with disabilities.

They’ll need an electronic voting system because federal and state law requires every polling place to include at least one electronic voting system to accommodate the needs of those with disabilities.

But choosing to count some of Shasta County’s votes by hand is legal, if the process to do so is approved by California’s secretary of state.

It’s an option that Supervisors have voted to explore, so on March 13, the Shasta County Clerk and Registrar of Voters, Cathy Darling Allen met and discussed with proponents for hand counting as well as Supervisors Patrick Jones and Kevin Crye and staff from the County Administrative office and County Counsel.

That group met again two days later to discuss the legal requirements for procedures, processes, and systems that would be needed prior to a full hand count of Shasta County’s votes. This time they were joined by representatives from the California Secretary of State’s office.

What emerged from those meetings was a tentative plan to alter the County’s administrative policy to ensure a hand count of all the votes from either one or two races in each of Shasta County’s future elections.

Under the potential policy, hand counting of one random race during each election would occur automatically. Supervisors would also appoint a “Manual Tally Selection Committee,” composed of five citizen commissioners who would hold a public meeting shortly after each election to consider whether to also manually count votes from a second race of their designation.

The push for hand counting election votes has been spearheaded by Supervisor Patrick Jones, who has repeatedly claimed without evidence that the majority of Shasta County voters don’t trust the local elections process. His efforts to eliminate the County’s use of electronic voting machines has been strongly opposed by Supervisors Mary Rickert and Tim Garman.

Supervisors Chris Kelstrom and Kevin Crye have supported Jones efforts. In February, Crye told the public that he had discussed Shasta County’s voting process with Mike Lindell, the CEO of MyPillow, and a vocal proponent of unproven claims about election fraud. According to Crye, Lindell has offered support for the County’s move towards a manual election process by promising funds in case of legal action against the County.

Few specifics about Lindell’s offer have emerged, but on February 28, the same day Shasta County Supervisors voted to end the County’s contract with Dominion, Lindell spoke about Shasta County on his podcast, saying “we can’t have electronic voting machines” because “one (system) is as bad as the other.”

Making a series of statements that indicated his lack of knowledge about federal voting rights law, disabilities, and the variety of supports provided by electronic voting systems, Lindell said those who oppose hand counting votes are just “using the handicapped.”

“Let me tell you about the handicapped,” Lindell remonstrated, “There are so many different kinds of handicaps. You know you have [blindness], you can’t hear, maybe both and you’re missing limbs . . . the list goes on and on and on.”

“If your handicap is so bad,” Lindell continued, “that you can’t see, you can’t hear, all this. Well then you better have a loved one that has to help you because there’s no device ever that could get through to that.”

Vaguely referencing an unnamed federal law, Lindell falsely claimed that if a jurisdiction doesn’t already use electronic voting machines, it’s not required to implement them for anyone, not even for voters with disabilities. 

Fred Nisen, a Managing Attorney for Disability Rights California (DRC) says Lindell’s statements are not only untrue, they’re deeply offensive. He says a series of state and federal laws, including the federal Help America Vote Act (HAVA) require that all Californians, no matter their disability, have the right to vote privately and independently; a requirement that cannot be met without access to electronic voting systems.

Nisen’s organization is one of a group of seven nonprofit advocates that sent a letter to Shasta County Supervisors on March 23. It’s the second time the group has engaged with the Board in hopes of ensuring continued voting access for all after the cancellation of the County’s contract with Dominion.

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DRC hopes the letter will provide Supervisors with “additional facts that we hope will clear up what appears to be confusion and gaps in understanding about the fundamentals of computerized voting systems and how they are used in election administration.”

Information in the letter clarifies election voting system specifics, including details about how ballots are created, marked, and counted and how access for those with disabilities is facilitated through electronic voting machines and remotely accessible vote-by-mail. 

The nonprofits also use the letter to fact-check a number of claims made in recent Board meetings about the vote-counting processes in other jurisdictions, including Missouri and Nevada. They conclude that none of the examples cited by the Supervisors offers an approach that could be successfully emulated by Shasta County for its elections in general.

But DRC and other voting-access advocates also clarify in their letter that they don’t oppose all hand-counting of ballots. 

“To be clear,” the nonprofits write, “we are not advocating that there be no hand-counting of ballots. Hand-counting plays an important role in post-election audits of computerized ballot tabulation. We simply are trying to correct misinformation that seems to be circulating in Shasta County’s deliberations about computerized voting systems and proposals about hand-counting, as well as to emphasize the infeasibility of accurately hand-counting all Shasta County ballots in a timely manner for any election but a small special election.”

You can find the full letter from DRC and other nonprofits here. Shasta County’s Board of Supervisors will meet Tuesday, March 28, at 9 am, to discuss Shasta County’s voting systems.

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