Shasta County conducts 1% manual tally amid concerns about providing the public with advance notice  

Extra help election staffers waited for hours yesterday morning for the county’s 1% manual tally to begin. 

A few other community members were also on site to observe the process. It’s a procedure encoded in state law which is used to verify the accuracy of machine counting. Under California election code, 1% of the votes of a randomly-chosen precinct are hand counted and the resulting ballot numbers are compared against the machine count.

The results, including any discrepancies between the hand count and the machine count, are provided to the state and the public via a document known as the “canvas of the vote,” which is produced by the registrar of voters following each election.

Shasta Registrar of Voters Clint Curtis oversaw the 1% manual tally yesterday after presiding over a ceremony last week to determine which precinct’s votes would be randomly chosen for the audit. Breaking from what he said was the historical use of computers in Shasta to randomly select a precinct, Curtis implemented a different procedure using ping pong balls.

The balls were laid out in a row with precinct numbers marked on them and double-checked to ensure all precincts were included before being gathered up into a clear plastic bin. The bin was then shaken by election officials, during which it briefly broke open scattering ping pong balls across the facility floor, before a precinct was randomly selected by Curtis from the box.

A video reel showing excerpts of the ping pong ball process used Nov. 12.

Yesterday, 1% of ballots from the precinct chosen by that method were hand counted in a process that lasted only a few hours, according to Assistant Registrar Brent Turner. He said the results of the hand count of precinct votes matched the machine results for those precincts selected, with no errors noted.

“Quick, easy,” Turner wrote by text. “Reconciled perfectly.”

But the morning was not without issues. Observers of the manual tally raised concerns with Turner and Curtis about a delay in notifying the public of when the process would occur. A press release put out Friday, Nov. 14, indicated that the procedure would occur yesterday. But California law requires a five-day notice.

Curtis told a reporter he believes he followed the law, saying he provided public notification before the precinct-choosing ceremony which occurred last week and that yesterday’s manual tally was just a continuation of the earlier event. 

State law differentiates between the two events, saying that the official conducting the election shall provide “at least a five-day public notice of the time and place of the manual tally,” and differentiating that notification from a similar notification required for random selection of the precinct to be counted.

The California Secretary of State’s office has not yet responded to a request for comment on the legality of Curtis’ actions. 

It wasn’t clear what delayed the start of the manual 1% tally yesterday morning or why so many extra help staffers — 16 in total — were called in to participate when only a few were needed to conduct the procedure. Some of those extra help staffers left after it became clear how few were needed to conduct the count. 

Others stayed to watch, being paid to do so with Curtis’ blessing. He told Shasta Scout he wanted to make sure they all knew what to do for next time. 

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