Shasta County Board Declares Election Results

On Tuesday, April 2, Shasta County’s Board of Supervisors moved quickly to declare the results of the March 5 primary election. 

With little discussion, and against the advice of a number of the usual public commenters, the Board voted four to one, with Supervisor Patrick Jones dissenting, to declare election winners, including Allen Long, who avoided a runoff  by only 13 votes.

Doing so was their “ministerial duty,” according to a staff report provided by Assistant County Clerk and Registrar of Voters Joanna Francescut. Her boss, the elected County Clerk and Registrar of Voters Cathy Darling Allen, officially certified election results on March 28. The California Secretary of State’s office confirmed similar information for Shasta Scout a few weeks ago, saying that a failure of the board to declare election results wouldn’t change the outcome. 

During board discussion, Chair Kevin Crye acknowledged the legality of the matter, telling his fellow supervisors that some things aren’t within the supervisors control. Crye, along with Supervisor Chris Kelstrom, supported the declaration of results, while expressing ongoing concerns regarding California’s elections process. Supervisors Tim Garman and Mary Rickert both also expressed support for the work of local elections official Francescut.

In contrast, Jones who lost his race for District 4 to political newcomer Matt Plummer, opposed the board’s decision to declare the vote. Jones said his vote not to support the declaration of election outcomes had nothing to do with that loss while continuing to express concerns about the use of electronic voting machines for ballot counting. He also repeated statements he made at the last board meeting about what he claimed were six errors he observed during the manual tally of Crye recall votes. 

In response, Francescut read from the official Statement of the Vote for the March 5 primary, which has been submitted to the California SOS’s office. The Elections Office review found only three discrepancies between the manual tally and the electronic ballot count, Francescut said, and all three were found to be due to human error. 

Reading from the report, Francescut said the first error was found to have occurred during adjudication, when team members were reviewing ballots with special issues including those with under votes (where neither yes nor no was marked on the recall issue) and over votes (when both were marked.) One of those ballots was incorrectly marked as an over vote during adjudication, Francescut said, when a review of the ballot during the manual tally showed it should have been marked as a no on the recall. 

The second variance occurred when a batch of ballots put through the machine jammed and staff did not follow appropriate procedures to discard that ballot count reading and re-run the batch through the machine. That issue also caused a one-vote error, Francescut continued.

The final discrepancy occurred with a ballot that included a dash across the voting bubble, rather than a filled-in bubble, Francescut explained. While that dash was not picked up as a vote by the machine count, it was considered a valid vote during the hand count, Francescut said.

She emphasized that the three variances between the machine count and the manual tally did not have an effect on any election outcomes.

Have questions, concerns, or comments? Reach out to us: editor@shastascout.org.