Top Shasta County Elections Official Testifies in Elections Misconduct Case
Testimony began in a hearing regarding failed-supervisor-candidate Laura Hobbs’ claim that misconduct by Elections Office staff should invalidate the election results in her race.
6.13.24 1:37 pm: We have updated the story to correct language about how random alphabetization of names should have been applied on the March 5 Shasta County ballot. Attorneys in the case agreed in court on June 12 that the state random alphabetization draw should have been used for local district supervisor races and Republican Central Committee races but the local random alphabetization draw was used instead, across the ballot.
Assistant County Clerk and Registrar of Voters Joanna Francescut took the stand in Shasta County Superior Court yesterday afternoon, June 11. She’s testifying in response to a lawsuit brought against the Elections Office by Laura Hobbs, who ran for county supervisor during the March 5 Primary Election.
Hobbs opponent in that race, Allen Long, won the primary by only fourteen votes. He’s also named in the lawsuit. He’s currently scheduled to take the District 2 seat held by Tim Garman, in January 2025. But Hobbs lawsuit claims that a series of alleged errors made by county elections staff should invalidate the result of that race and lead to a general election runoff between her and Long in November.
Yesterday, June 11, was the first day of what is scheduled to be a two-day hearing. Alex Haberbush, a Long Beach attorney who runs the Lex Rex Institute, a nonprofit focused on constitutional advocacy, is representing Hobbs. He has presented Judge Steve Baker with a witness list of twenty. Yesterday, he called two witnesses to the stand: Supervisor Patrick Jones and Francescut.
Jones’ testimony did not last long. He came to the witness stand carrying a statement representing the Shasta County Board of Supervisors. A majority of supervisors voted last week in closed session to share with the public their concerns that a random alphabetization error made by election staff could have affected the outcome of the District 2 primary election. Judge Baker sustained Pisano’s objections that Jones’ testimony on a county supervisor opinion released after the election, was not relevant to the case.
Random alphabetization is the process by which the order of names on the ballot is chosen. According to Francescut there are two different random alphabetizations used on California ballots, one that’s determined by the Secretary of State’s Office and another which is determined at local elections offices. From testimony thus far, it appears that a random alphabetization process was used for local races on the March ballot, but the incorrect method was applied. Hobbs’ name was placed third on the ballot in the list of candidates for District 2 Supervisor. According to the lawsuit, her name should have come first in the list, a change which she argues could have resulted in a different election outcome.
The county is being represented by attorney Chris Pisano of the law firm Best, Best and Krieger. His brief, submitted to the courts on June 10, does not dispute that an ballot error was made. Instead Pisano argues that the judge should dismiss the case because it does not “allege actual facts that give rise to a legitimate challenge.” A simple clerical error, Pisano said during the last hearing, should not invalidate an election result.
But Haberbush said yesterday that he feels mis-ordering names on the ballot is more than a simple clerical error and suggested that what occurred might indicate negligence or event intentional election mal-conduct. He has not yet backed that claim with evidence.
Throughout about two hours of questioning yesterday, Francescut spoke with great deliberation. The alphabetization error occurred, she said, because of a lack of adequate training of some of the staff to whom she delegated the process. Francescut said she herself would normally have been in charge of proofing the order in which names are placed on ballots before final publication. But during the March 5 primary, she said, her focus during proofing was largely on the complex new language presented in the voter information guide regarding instructions for presidential voting for No Party Preference voters.
Francescut said she did proof the order that names appeared on the ballot within the voter information guide itself, and the order was correct at the time she reviewed it. The order was later changed by staff, Francescut said, to match the order of names appearing on the ballot itself, which they assumed to be correct.
While Francescut took full responsibility for oversight over the ballot process, her responses to Haberbush’s questions highlighted the very significant impact on her and her staff of a series of important changes that occurred at the Elections Office in the months leading up to March 5.
Those changes included the process of onboarding a new machine voting system after the county’s contract for voting systems was cancelled by supervisors, and implementing a new in-house ballot production process necessitated by the new voting system contract. Prior to the fall of 2023, ballots were produced by the county’s previous voting system vendor, Dominion Voting Systems Inc.
Francescut managed election administration of the March 5 primary mostly alone. After former County Clerk and Registrar of Voters Cathy Darling Allen left the office for medical reasons shortly after Thanksgiving last year Francescut became primarily responsible for administering the complex presidential primary election with a new machine system and a new ballot creation process.
Darling Allen’s absence, Francescut said, meant she was managing both her own responsibilities and those of her former boss. The expanded role meant taking on a new series of tasks, including attending Election Commission meetings and responding to media requests and public concerns.
Francescut is expected to take the stand again today, June 12, when the hearing resumes at 9 am.
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Elections department actually did very well considering all the hurdles that had been thrown at them.
Now consider if they had an inexperienced leader who didn’t know any of the election laws and procedures. I guarantee you there would have been a lot more, and bigger, mistakes
Stewart H…and that’s exactly why Joanna Francescut is the best and only trained person to be Shasta County Elections Clerk/ROV. The remaining applicants likely have no more than a high school diploma and are registered to vote. The public will be able to see this when interviews take place.
PS Hart Inter Civic did training for the voting machines. As well the public were invited to become familiar with them.
Where has she gotten her training outside employment in the elections department? Is her training or certification from non partisan publicly funded organizations? Joanna Francescut is listed as a member of the advisory committee of the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL). This election policy organization received $250 million from Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan.
I don’t trust any organization that receives Zuckerberg money. I don’t believe in privately funded training for election workers. The Wisconsin supreme court recently ruled that drop boxes are not allowed under state law.
14 vote difference! I think our county court needs to look at this closely. Maybe we find 10 vote difference in favor of Long and he wins anyways. So What! The point is to get it right. We the people of registered voters need confidence in our Election system.
Agree completely. Small ‘mistakes’ in the way names appear on a ballot, however, may seem to be unimportant but if that were true why would the state use random alphabetization?
Voting by machine has created a host of problems not anticipated by the general public. As Annelise states, the presidential primary was a ‘complex’ and employees were ‘implementing a new in-house ballot production process’. These machines should require IT certification and training in following rigid protocols.
As far as I know there seems to be no non-partisan publicly funded training at the university or state level for election employees. The systems are complex and require computer specialists.
You do realize that the elections department was beyond swamped with all of the stuff that the board of supervisors were throwing at them??
At the direction of the board, they had to develop a hand tally system. This of course went nowhere because of AB 969 but it’s still took them time to develop it.
After acquiring the new voting system, believe it or not they actually had a very short period of time to learn how to use it before the next election.
You’re correct that it can be complex. Election department actually did very well considering all the constraints that were placed upon them.
Hobbs & crew keep saying that Long won the election by only 14 votes. That is simply not the case. Long won just over 50% of the votes cast by 14 votes, thereby bypassing any run off. Long completely trounced Hobbs (and everyone else in the race) by over a thousand votes. All this whining about the order of the names on the ballot is about something that would not have made a dent in the election results.
👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
Thank you so much for this coverage, Shasta Scout. I’m very interested to see how the rest of this hearing goes.
It’s sad, true. But the JCK Crime Syndicate is now in court, using Hobbs as a “Test Case” that Jones and the syndicate, even with a promise of funding from their good friend, Mr. Pilliow, could never quite succeed in obtaining, a Shasta County vs. The State of California trial, a case that Jones and the Syndicate promised their Cartel of followers many times over the last few years.
This is basically the Syndicate that makes up the majority of the Shasta County Board of Supervisors suing the Shasta County Government by proxy. Oh well, the Syndicate has flushed millions of taxpayer dollars down the toilet so far, trying to advance lies, so heck, what another million or so?
It’s obvious the Attorney for Laura Hobbs is trying his best to rattle our Interim County ROV, Joanna Francescut, so that she looks weak during the BoS interviews…but, guess what, Ms Francescut is not a push over, she’ll be able to sound what a real County Clerk /ROV does while in office. Oh, and Hey Haberbush, slow down….you’re pissing off the court reporter in your rapid-speak haste to get in all those CA Election Codes.