Reorganization of Market Street Election Office creates new space for ballot filming
An open house to show off the new set up at the Shasta Election Office revealed more of what ballot processing will look like under Registrar of Voters Clint Curtis. November 2025 will be his first time running an election. He’s hoping to use ballot filming and new temporary staff as a means of increasing transparency and trust.
Shasta Election Commissioner Patty Plumb greeted the trickle of visitors arriving at the Election Office for a tour on Saturday, Sept. 20. Pointing to parts of an observation area in the newly reorganized downstairs of the Market Street building, Plumb described the public-viewing area to a Shasta Scout reporter as a “Tina Peters’ dream,” referencing an Arizona woman who is currently incarcerated for felony charges related to her misconduct as an election official.
“We do a hand count first, and we do a hand count after,” Plumb said, “and then the machines in the middle … so it should be satisfying to everybody.”
Information shared by Registrar of Voters (ROV) Clint Curtis later clarified that the ballots will be shown to a camera first and then machine-scanned before being shown to cameras again. No hand counting is currently planned.
In addition to being a member of the county’s Election Commission, Plumb is also the local chair of the New California State movement, which protested in efforts to invalidate Shasta’s last election results. On Saturday, she said she was helping at the Election Office as a volunteer. But her good friend Curtis told Shasta Scout that he’d hire her if he could. He also confirmed that he’s already hired Laura Hobbs, an activist who has sued the Election Office twice since she lost her election for county board in the March 2024 primary.
Asked if hiring Hobbs could present a liability for the Election Office, Curtis demurred, saying her civil rights as an observer may have been violated in past elections and emphasizing that he’s trying to “cure all this bad blood” related to local elections by hiring her and others who represent polar opposites on the ideological spectrum.
His dream scenario, Curtis indicated, includes pairing Hobbs with Benjamin Nowain, a local activist who has led protests against Curtis’ hiring. Curtis said he’d like the two to drive around the county together doing ballot pickups during the next election. Nowain told Shasta Scout he’s aware Curtis is interested in hiring him but doesn’t yet know if he’ll take the job.
Pairing ideological opposites is one theme for Curtis’ approach to administering elections. In the downstairs of the Election Office, he opened previously private space to create a ballot processing area that’s accessible to observers, who will be allowed to utilize cushy chairs set up in a small lounge area.
Curtis said there will also be a stool behind every group of four temporary staff members actually doing the ballot processing, so observers can provide over-the-shoulder supervision of ballot handling, if they choose.
Full-time paid election staff won’t be involved in ballot processing, Curtis said, in part because of issues related to safety that have been a sticking point for their union, something Shasta Scout has not yet confirmed with labor organizers.
Instead, while temporary staff processes ballots downstairs, long-term election staff will remain upstairs to manage other parts of the election process. Curtis said he’s relocating security fencing that used to block off the stairs to the upstairs hallway in an effort to ensure staff feel safe. He said he’s also adjusted the facility elevator so it can only be summoned from the upstairs.
Downstairs, temporary staff will work in the aforementioned groups of four, Curtis explained, with the first person standing at the head of the group and handing each bag of ballot material across the table. The second individual will open the bag and turn over the ballot pages, allowing an overhead camera to view how the individual bubbles on the ballot have been filled by the voter. They’ll then place the ballot into a scanner in the middle of the group. The third individual will pull the scanned ballot out of the machine and once again turn over the pages for a camera overhead to view before rebagging the ballot and handing it off. The goal of the whole exercise is to allow the public to compare the ballots before and after the machines scan the vote count, thus, Curtis believes, confirming electronic results.
Any ballots with extraneous marks on them will not be processed under the cameras, Curtis emphasized, in compliance with state law and in order to avoid identifying voters. Vote by mail ballots will also be opened away from cameras to prevent names and signatures from being linked to individual voters.
On Saturday, the ballot processing space was still only sparsely equipped. With about six weeks to go until California’s November election, Curtis still lacks key equipment needed to implement his proposed solution, including the necessary cameras, computer monitor screens and ballot scanners. He’ll go before the county board again on Tuesday, Sept. 23, to seek a budget amendment for the third time in a month. He was turned down the last two times.
He also still needs temporary staff. So far, Curtis said, he hasn’t had that many responses to his calls for people to sign up to process ballots, but he’s “still working on it.”
During the approximately hour and a half Shasta Scout was on site for the open house, only a few dozen people were seen at the Election Office. Almost all of them were members of a small group of activists connected to both Plumb and Hobbs. Several sat behind staff desks during the open house event. Curtis and his right-hand man, Assistant Registrar of Voters Brent Turner, were the only official staffers working on site.
They offered tours of the downstairs. Many of Curtis’ talking points focused on criticizing Shasta’s previous election officials, telling members of the public that before his regime the election office was in a state of “controlled chaos” worse than anything he’s seen in “third-world countries.”
“Usually there’s a big chain of custody process, and there was none here,” Curtis claimed.
Former Registrar of Voters Tom Toller responded to Shasta Scout’s request for comment about this accusation by laying out the complex chain of custody procedures used on site during his administration of the Election Office beginning in 2024.
“Mr. Curtis,” Toller said, “has been badly informed.” Toller also said Curtis new approach to election administration is “a solution looking for a problem that doesn’t exist,” adding that it “creates added complexity and demands on staff without adding any additional security against ballot tampering.”
Close to 2 p.m. Saturday, Supervisor Kevin Crye — who voted to appoint Curtis despite his lack of prior election experience — arrived at the open house, taking a quick look around the downstairs ballot processing area before announcing, “Anybody that’s against this is against democracy.”
Do you have information or a correction to share? Email us: editor@shastascout.org.
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So if you don’t want your ballot filmed, you just need to put “extraneous marks” on it.
I’d like to encourage “Not Saying” to be sure to vote this election! That’s how we keep democracy alive. The way the current ROV plans to handle it may not work, but we help him if we don’t cast a vote for Joanna Francescut and if we decrease the number of ballots they have to actually process properly. Our vote is critical, so please don’t give them the satisfaction of withholding yours!
No Confidence! this is how our right to vote is being taken away. The people who have the most to gain are on the committees. The rest of the county doesn’t count.
So, a bunch of entrenched conspiracy theorists and a dude who has never run an election in his life are now in charge of the cornerstone of local democracy? And Crye thinks this is competent leadership? Yikes.
Nice write up, Annelise – thank you. Will Elections staff be doing a mock-up/test run of this new process? A run-through would be helpful to identify potential snags, issues, and so on, even if all of the equipment is not yet in place. And I assume that all volunteers and extra-help employees have gone or will go through the standard background check? I also hope that previous volunteers will do so again to share their experience and help keep an eye on things.
So…you are saying that the people trained to do these jobs won’t be involved? Some of the people in our elections office have years of experience in running elections. I have zero confidence this new system will work. How does Mr. Curtis plan to get the ballots to the stage they are ready to count without the current full time staff? Doesn’t this also open him up for potential legal action from their union for essentially giving away their jobs? I trust the full time staff who have had many many many elections under their belts and I do NOT trust Mr. Curtis one bit.
Excellent article. I would encourage any concerned reader to send a short note with a link to this article and the article titled In conversation with Shasta Election official Clint Curtis, to:
The Senate Elections and Constitutional Amendments Committee https://selc.senate.ca.gov/members or by snail mail to the Senate Elections and Constitutional Amendments Committee, 1020 N Street, Room 533, Sacramento, CA 95814.
And to the California Assembly Elections Committee https://aelc.assembly.ca.gov/members Snail Mail 1020 N Street, Room 365, Sacramento, CA 95814.
And to The California Secretary of State Shirley N. Weber, Ph.D.
https://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/contact/email-elections-division
Or by snail mail to The California Secretary of State, Elections Division, 1500 11th Street, Sacramento, California 95814….
Clint and his assistant ROV are doing a lot of interesting stuff, including videotaping us, hiring election deniers who are members of a neoconferderate sessionist movement that clearly states it rejects democracy, and working with people who have sued Shasta County over elections (and lost 3 times in court, at a cost of over $107,00O dollars of TAXPAYER MONEY) and cooperating with the Trump DOJ, as in possibly turning over all Shasta County Voter Information, IDs, driver licenses and Social Secerity informationion, to Trump and his cronies. Let’s see what happens when the BOS Gang of 3 and Clint try to call the HOBBS Ballot Initiative law, should it pass by the voters in the June Primary…. MANY MILLIONS could be spent, as the Shasta County Counsel already made it clear, the Hobbs Initiative is clearly illegal…. Just think, all the Hobbs money could have gone to give first responders, L.E., or in-home healthcare providers a salary raise… But, nope… Hobbs comes first in the Gang of Three’s opinion.
“Full-time paid election staff won’t be involved in ballot processing, Curtis said, in part because of issues related to safety that have been a sticking point for their union, something Shasta Scout has not yet confirmed with labor organizers.”
Maybe…just maybe…that would be because staff would be forced to work with some of the very same people who have tried to threaten and intimidate them in various ways in the past?
Unreal.
This election will be a disaster. Hope the State steps in. Zero confidence in Clint.
He hasn’t done anything except spread lies, badmouth the previous staff, AND still keeps asking for money! I’ve worked the elections for years but I won’t under this jerk. Him and Kevin Crye needs to be gone.
So… our ballots are going to be counted by election deniers like Plumb and Hobbs? What could possibly go wrong?
There is no way I am voting in the upcoming election. Once we make it out of here we can start voting again. No secret ballot, no vote.
I have yet to hear Mr. Curtis tell us what he has planned for the precincts, which is where the votes are initially processed. As for his comment about a lack of chain of command, that is certainly not my experience as a poll worker. The ballots were fed (by the voter) into the Hart machine. The votes were not counted until they reached the elections office. Once voting ended, the workers checked to make sure that the number of voters checked in matched the votes in the machine. There were lots of checks to make sure all was secure, and then the machine and any ballot boxes were secured and sealed to be delivered. 2 vehicles took the ballots into the elections office, the one following the first to make sure no ballots fell out or were tossed. Pretty intense chain of command, if you ask me. And Patty Plumb and Laura Hobbs; 2 people who, through their misguided (and fanciful) lawsuits have already cost Shasta county a lot of money…No thanks.
As someone who worked in the upstairs during November, the only changes I see is taking down walls that literally had full size windows, and keeping the “viewing distance” the same distance, and now unless I’m mistaken, the stools for “over the shoulder” viewing violates state law, where they aren’t allowed to be that close, AND it’s led by the worst people in the county on the matter? Shocking he can’t find any volunteers
I have zero confidence that my vote will be counted properly.