Shasta elections official Curtis says he hopes to hire former opponent and ROV-elect Francescut as assistant ROV
In a surprise announcement, Registrar of Voters Clint Curtis shared the news during an interview yesterday. Curtis fired Francescut from the same position last year. His current assistant ROV hasn’t confirmed plans to vacate the role.
Shasta County Registrar of Voters Clint Curtis is looking to hire his former opponent and the current ROV-elect, Joanna Francescut.
In an interview yesterday, he said he hopes to hire Francescut as the assistant ROV — the same role he fired her from last year.
Such an offer could only occur if Assistant ROV Brent Turner left the role first. That’s something Curtis said he expects to happen in the next few months, although Turner declined to confirm today whether he has any plans to leave the role.
The idea to hire Francescut was an unexpected confession by Curtis, who lost to her in last month’s election. She’s slated to take his seat in January.
Over the last year, he’s made controversial claims about Francescut, including an unbacked claim that she stuffed ballots while working at the elections office and a debunked claim that the majority of her campaign donations came from San Francisco donors.
In May, Curtis implied in a Facebook video that if Francescut was elected, voters “will never be able to have a fair election in Shasta County again.”
So why hire her now?
Curtis said part of his reasoning behind wanting Francescut for the role — should it become vacant — is that elections office staff hired under former ROV Cathy Darling Allen would prefer Francescut’s leadership, saying, “she can deal with the people that love her.”
He said he fired Francescut last year because they had a completely different view on how to run the office, from observers to election processes to transparency. He also said she acted too much as the one in charge of the office rather than his assistant. He fired her less than a week after he was appointed.
Despite their differences — and their history — Curtis said he’s hopeful that they can work together if he ends up hiring her.
Francescut doesn’t appear eager about Curtis’ potential offer. She said in a statement to Shasta Scout yesterday that he has not yet approached her about the role, but that she’ll consider and analyze every fact and next step before making a decision, if it’s placed before her.
“Ultimately, I will ensure the decision I make will align with what’s best for both my family and the community we love,” she said. “I will need a clear and compelling reason to serve our community under his leadership.”
The elections office is currently working to implement Measure B, the ballot measure passed by voters in June that makes sweeping changes to Shasta’s election system, including requiring voter ID, same-day voting and hand-counting ballots. Several of the measure’s provisions violate state and federal laws, and the measure itself is currently being challenged in court by California’s Attorney General’s and Secretary of State’s Offices. The state is confident the measure will be struck down.
In the meantime, the Shasta elections office is making preparations for the measure ahead of the November general election. Curtis said nearly 930 poll workers will need to be hired and trained to conduct hand counting at precincts, and the number of polling places will need to be almost doubled to accommodate the influx of in-person voters that would be necessitated by the elimination of most mail-in voting.
It’s a hefty task for Curtis, who has only administered two elections. Francescut, who worked in the Shasta elections office for 17 years prior to her termination last year, said experience in the field is crucial to handling this situation.
“I would like to remind this community that it takes a working knowledge of election systems and processes to successfully implement any of the significant changes required by Measure B,” she wrote.
“This measure wasn’t just about voter identification … and if there isn’t a court order to stop the implementation, the office will be responsible to implement numerous changes.”
Curtis said the implementation of Measure B is another reason he hopes Francescut will step into the ROV role, if he offers it to her. He said for now, he doesn’t plan to leave the elections office early unless he gets “some great offer somewhere else.”
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Is Brent still working at the Election Office????
MAGA has been such a failure they are now hoping that Joanna will help them avoid further pain. I am sure Joanna is far ahead of any games they want to play and will only involve herself in their mess in ways that can actually correct it.
Do not accept, he will just fire you
HELL NO! IT’S A TRAP,
Good ole Clint. Wants to hire Joanna to help him implement Masure B if it is not overturned by the courts. Probably knows he and Brent can’t do it themselves. What Measure B demands. If it were implemented in the last election this is what it would have required – hand counting using tally sheets. What Measure B calls for is using the Linda Rantz Cause of America-Missouri, hand counting method, (rejected by Missouri in 2022). The Measure proposes hand counting concurrently with voting, on a tally sheet watched over by a four (4) member counting team. [Our county has 116,098 registered voters. Should they all vote at one of the 52 polling locations each with a team of 4, (4 watchers at 52 locations =208 watchers + 52 hand counters = 260 people at a minimum to hand tally votes.). The ballot is 3 pages containing 18 categories (votes) spread among 143 candidates and 1 Measure. Assuming to count and chicken scratch one vote per category takes 15 seconds, (15×18), it would take 270 seconds, (270 divided by 60), or 4.5 minutes per ballot and a total of 522,441 minutes, (116098 x 4.5 divided by 60 = 8,707.35 hours divided by 24 = 362.8 -24 hour days to count all ballots. Measure B proposes to squeeze those 362.8 days worth of ballot counting into a single (1) day while avoiding the hand count error rate of up to 25% (Brennan Center for Justice). So to make Measure B work for a complete count in one day. (7am until 8pm (13 hours) for concurrent counting) would take [ 4.5 minutes per ballot divided into 60 minutes = 13.4 ballots per hour x 13 hours (no breaks) = 174.2 ballots per worker per day divided into 116098 ballots = 667 counters + 4 watchers each = 2668 for a total of 3,335 people. Of course not every registered voter will vote so the number of people required to do the actual count would be less by the percent that did not vote. But to be prepared the total would have to be on stand by.
The watchers and counters would be eligible for $100 per day stipend equaling a cost of $33,350 for just counters and watchers alone.
That is what the majority voted for and Clint and his hand picked assistant can’t deliver so now he wants Joanna to do it for them.
Don’t do it Joanna. It’s Clints fantasy.
Jo- just say no
Congratulations, ROV-elect Joanna!
To all the candidates who earned the right to interview for the position of ROV in 2025, we Won!!! The BOS disrespected all the qualified candidates with years of election administration and experience, specifically Joanna! Please do not accept the offer to come back until Curtis is gone, and you are sworn in as the newly elected ROV.
In clerkship,
Robin Underwood, CMC/MiPMC; MCD
Michigan/Macomb County
Chutzpah. Pure chutzpah.
My guess is that he hopes Joanna will drop her law suit against him and the county. Joanna has been a professional through all the attacks and smears thrown at her since CDA retired. I hope she basks in the glory of having won by a huge margin and lets the clown screw up yet another election while she and we watch.
I would stay as far away from him as possible if I were Joanna. He can’t be trusted, he doesn’t like her and he will look for anything to put her in a bad situation.
Aw, c’mon, Curtis wants to bug out early. He lost and doesn’t want to do the work
Joanna, please don’t go back in under Curtis’s leadership. Fired because you “acted like the one in charge?” Holy crap, you should have been the one in charge. The only reason I’d want you to go back before January is because I trust you. But don’t stress yourself out. Who knows what Curtis would pull and try and blame on you? If you don’t want to go back before January, don’t!! I’d take a nice long Christmas vacation and go in under my terms.
People, why is it so hard for you to grasp that the BOS cannot fire Curtis. Despite having been appointed, the law treats him as an independent elected county official. The only way he’s going before the end of his term in January is if he chooses to resign himself.
Now, I agree that I’d be very cautious about Joanna accepting at-will employment as his assistant ROV. If he can be trusted, which is a stretch that defies logic, then her services are needed to resolve employee morale issues and recruit poll workers for the General Election in November. He basically wants to borrow her well-earned credibility to avoid his own potential failure.
Either the risk is something greater than delay, in which case Kelstrom should publicly encourage him to resign immediately and promise to seek Joanna’s appointment as acting ROV; or he should be left to his own devices to fail or fade away. In either case, we are well rid of him.
Mr. Toller,
Why can he not be fired? He was not elected, he was appointed by the BOS. Unless his employment contract or county charter indicates otherwise, he is an “At-Will” employee under those circumstances.
Please understand, Curtis is not an “employee,” at-will or otherwise, as that term is used by Shasta County Personnel. He was appointed by the BOS to fill a vacant elective office, the County Clerk. As such, he could only be removed by a successful recall or rejection by voters through the elective process. That latter has happened; but his term does not end officially until Monday, January 4, 2027. Joanna takes office that same day.
Trust me, the only way he departs earlier is if he resigns office, just as I did in April of 2025 for health reasons. I would have preferred remaining in office until January 4, 2027; but at the time I thought I’d be dead in less than a year. Fortunately, that has not proven to be the case. I have no doubt that some of the BOS would have relished the opportunity to fire me, had they the authority to do so. After I told them I’d found no evidence of electoral fraud, some were disappointed with my management style and tried to pressure me into decisions I determined were not in the best interests of the voters in Shasta County. I regret that my resignation opened the door for Curtis, but his appointment came as no great surprise to me.
I urge you to shift focus from his failings to asking how you can foster and support Joanna’s efforts to repair and improve the office. Beyond her election day success, which I found abundantly gratifying, she will need many volunteer poll workers and broad community support for her vision and the budget needed to accomplish it.
Thank you for your service Tom Toller.
Mr Toller is 100% correct.
In The Know, he can not be fired. Yes, he was appointed by the BOS, in what is called in lieu of election, he has the protection of any other elected official until the next election.
Would you care to finally tell the public what caused the 7% discrepancy rate in the 2024 election? Or why they should believe that error rate was contained to only the sample of ballots selected for audit?
You campaigned for the job on a platform of transparency afterall…
My dude, you’ve been beating this dead horse for years. Nobody is buying a ticket to bet on your dead horse. Report your evidence to the DA, AG, and SoS, or bury it.
That’s the thing, he HAS reported it to all of the above. He even reported it to Mr Curtis who supposedly reported it to the DOJ.
.
Literally no one has decided to act on MD’s information, because there is nothing there.
.
How do I know? Through public information and also MD’s own comments.
.
Sounds like a personal grudge in my opinion. It also leads one to wonder, at what point should this be considered harassment?
Still no comment from the transparent tom toller… Wonder why that is? Until either publicly respond, I’ll harp on it whenever Toller pokes his head out of his hole or Joanna claims to have integrity.
Fact: Hart machines are capable of determining whether a ballot has been scanned twice. This is, near as I can tell, the ONLY advantage Hart offers over Dominion. But state law forbids Hart from using this feature in California ostensibly for privacy reasons (ballots cannot be individually marked, even if anonymized).
Shasta County, under Toller’s mostly absentee leadership, royally screwed up in the 2024 election in large part by failing to reliably determine which ballots could not scan and sometimes scanning ballots twice and others not at all.
If Toller truly believed in public service, he would acknowledge this so citizens and the legislature could debate the merits of allowing California ballots to be printed with individual barcodes to prevent duplicate scanning (accidental or otherwise)
Cool story, bro.
“Still no comment from the transparent tom toller… Wonder why that is?”
I’m guessing that it is the same reason that I don’t try to talk analytical cubism with the guy sitting on the curb outside my office having a conversation with pigeons
The is yet another way for Mr. Curtis to leave the office of county clerk before his term ends. The district attorney of Shasta County could seek a grand jury indictment of Mr. Curtis for misfeasance and malfeasance in office. If that seeking resulted in an indictment, Mr. Curtis could resign (although that may not stop the progress of the indictment) or defend against the indictment. If he chose to defend, but was adjudicate as a committer of either misfeasance or malfeasance, he would be immediately removed from his office.
Joanna, please do not accept any offer from Curtis, unless he and all his cronies resign.
Because curtis lost the election, I believe now, the BOS can fire him for his abusive behavior towards the SC employees that have been reported in the investigative reports; also, the BOS should remove all of curtis’s cronies if they were to fire Curtis.
Then and only then Joanna should consider accepting from the BOS if they wanted to hire her to finish out curtis’s term.
Please Joanna, do not accept anything from Curtis, unless he resign first.
What a joke Curtis continues to be.
Joanna, don’t accept this unless it is on your terms.
Hopefully those terms would include the dismissal of Curtis, now.
ROV Elect Francescut would be ill advised to accept a position under Clint Curtis. I sense a trap by Curtis, Turner, Hobbs et al.. If I were in her position I would decline any employment in the Elections office prior to her swearing in unless Curtis, Turner, Hobbs and any other remaining proponent of Measure B first tender their resignations.
I would advise Francescut to avoid working under Curtis in a position where he could control and likely sabotage her work.
I hope the the BOS fires Curtis for cause well before the November Elections and asks Francescut to start early as ROV.
The BOS can’t fire Curtis—the voters would have to recall him. It’s an elected office—makes no matter that he was appointed by the BOS—he has to be fired by the voters. That sacking doesn’t take effect until January.
You are correct, he can’t be fired.
.
Disappointing that there are so many other people out there who don’t seem to grasp this.
The absolute MAGA stupidity brought to us by Curtis, Cryer, Kelstorm, Mr. Wolfman, P. Jones, and L. Hobbs has culminated in new highs with this one. How about this? Fire Clint, put Jonna in command, and put C. Darling in as temp second-in-command.
Looks like our friend Mr. Turner is about to be subjected to the “Shasta Backstab”, courtesy of Clint the Clown. If that’s not catchy enough, feel free to come up with a better one Brent.
Looks like we’re in for 6 months of blame shifting and back stabbing. Buy popcorn futures.
Selah
That’s a Trump move. He’s delusional-just like his twin dresser the POTUS.
The solution is to pressure the BOS to immediately fire Curtis for cause!
They can’t.
As Mr. Toller states above, this is not a solution. The power of the BOS to “fire” Curtis is dubious at best, most likely non-existent. They would have fired Cathy Darling Allen if they thought they could get away with it. But let’s say they try. Curtis would undoubtedly sue, and any litigation would not end until long after he is gone anyway. Not to mention wasting resources the county doesn’t have. It’s just not worth it.
Selah
What a pos! Fired the one person who could have helped him. Now he wants to hire her? Joanna should respectfully decline. This is a political stunt by Clint Curtis the butt hurt pitiful man who has done a horrible job in the position he was appointed to! He then hired another pitiful man to be his side kick. Now when his own harassing behavior has made it so he has to be baby sat by a third party if he is even in the ROV office. His own choice of assistant has been reported to not even be on site in the office that he is being paid to do! The only way Joanna should even engage this proposal, should it come is if the grifter Clint Curtis resigns! Along with Clint Curtis’s exit there needs to be a house cleaning of every MAGA election denier that he hired!
Astonishing. Profound levels of negligence on behalf of our elected officials has cost us millions and landed us with incompetent (and let’s not forget ABUSIVE) leaders. I’m looking at YOU Kevin Crye. Move to Florida, we want you wiped clean from our community along with this buffoon you corruptly shoved down our throats.
If I’m Francecut, I wouldn’t touch this (possibly fake) offer with a 10-foot pole. It reeks of a likely Trojan Horse scheme. “Trust me. I’m Clint Curtis… a straight shooter.”
.
Yeah, no.
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Let Clint screw up the November election with nobody to share the blame but his current Assistant ROV-in-abstentia. Oh, the non-MAGA-loon staffers don’t like you because you’re an abusive anal orifice? Not Joanna’s problem, my man. Not her bed to lie in.
100% agree with your assessment on this.
My thoughts exactly.