Voters, observers and poll workers wrap up final hours of Shasta’s Prop. 50 election

In the final hours of voting, a steady stream of voters were arriving at the election office in downtown Redding to cast ballots. Short lines gathered inside the office as voters without their mail-in ballots queued up to receive provisional ones from staff. 

In the observation area on the ground floor of the election office, about a dozen community members and media staffers gathered in small groups to chat and keep a watchful eye on mounted monitors showing the ballot processing area. Unlike earlier today, those monitors were empty as staffers took a break from their full day of processing ahead of the next phase of the election process: counting the ballots that were cast today. 

That process will begin just after the polls close. The first results will likely come out just after 8 p.m. and will include totals from vote-by-mail ballots cast and processed prior to Election Day. Throughout the evening, additional vote totals will be released as the ballots from today’s voting are counted. 

Along with a number of new election staffers hired by Registrar of Voters Clint Curtis, numerous volunteers also showed up to help with the election. Observers sometimes expressed confusion about which participants were staffers, which were volunteers and why anyone was allowed in the ballot processing area without a badge or escort.

A verbal altercation erupted briefly between community member Jeff Carr and Assistant Registrar of Voters Brent Turner, when Carr pointed out that a representative of Congressman Doug LaMalfa — whose days as the congressional representative of the North State may be numbered, depending on the outcome of Prop. 50 — was in the ballot processing area without a badge or escort. Turner downplayed the incident, saying Carr had a “good eye” and that a badge would be obtained.

“She’s a well-respected person that everybody knows here,” former Supervisor Patrick Jones, who had been speaking with Haynes interjected. 

Outside the observer room, officials from the Secretary of State and Attorney General offices spoke intermittently to one another and with local officials, including Curtis, Turner and Shasta’s lead attorney Joseph Larmour. 

The state is watching closely as Curtis, who moved to Shasta from Florida earlier this year, conducts his very first election along with fellow novice, Turner. Beginning shortly after 8 p.m. access to a live stream of Shasta’s ballot counting is slated to be shown here. Live streaming of ballot processing is a new process that’s been implemented under Curtis.

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