What’s Next For Shasta County Voting? Hand Counting, Supervisor Jones Says.

2.27.2023 12:32 pm: We have updated this article to include an explainer box about why some people with disabilities require an electronic voting machine system to vote privately and independently.

Shasta County Supervisor and Board Chair Patrick Jones has placed the County’s voting process on the agenda again for this Tuesday, February 28.

He hopes other Supervisors will like his idea to transition the County to an elections process that would involve hand counting the vote. 

“We’re a small County and (hand counting) is definitely possible,” Jones told Shasta Scout by phone last week, “And it’s going to be a lot cheaper than what we were doing before.” 

What the County has been doing is using machines to electronically tabulate votes. It’s how elections are conducted all across California, but it worries Jones, who believes electronic voting machines are susceptible to outside manipulation.

On January 24, those concerns led Jones to vote to cancel the County’s contract with Dominion Voting Systems, Inc. He was joined in the vote by two other Supervisors, Chris Kelsom and Kevin Crye, both of whom said while they might not be concerned about Dominion voting machines themselves, replacing them is necessary to restoring trust in the local elections process.

Supervisors have not yet chosen a process to replace Dominion, but their choices are few: California has only three state-certified electronic voting machine systems.

Shasta County Clerk and Registrar of Voters, Cathy Darling Allen, said she has no comment on Jones’ statement that a hand count would be cheaper for the County because hand counting is not a legal option.

“I’ve done no research into (the cost of) hand counting,” Darling Allen said, “because it’s not legal in the state of California or anywhere else in the U.S.”

That’s why, as Darling Allen sees it, the vote to cancel the contract with Dominion means Supervisors will need to decide which of the other two state-approved electronic systems will work best for them moving forward.

She’s bringing that matter to the Board’s agenda Tuesday, with a recommendation that Supervisors either choose one of those two voting systems or rescind their previous vote to cancel the contract with Dominion.

But Jones says he’s not interested in approving another electronic voting system, which he believes could also be “hacked” by outside interests. He told Shasta Scout he won’t vote for any electronic voting system unless the owners can “prove” to him that the machines can’t be manipulated. 

That’s a statement that infuriates Darling Allen.

“You can’t prove a negative,” Darling Allen said. “That’s like me saying, ‘Supervisor Jones please prove to me that you didn’t eat pizza last night.’ There’s no way to do it.”

Supervisor Tim Garman, who voted with Supervisor Mary Rickert against ending the County’s contract with Dominion, agrees with Darling Allen.

He says while it would be nice to have total assurance that vote hacking can’t happen, it’s more reasonable to operate on the assumption that there is no fraudulent activity unless we have proof that there is. 

“I think innocent until proven guilty is sort of what our society is built on,” Garman said.

Garman also agrees with Darling Allen that there’s no legal way to hand count the vote in Shasta County. 

“Basically, as far as I understand it,” Garman explained, “hand counting is not an option that’s certified with the (California) Secretary of State, and whatever voting system we use must be certified. So at this point I don’t see that as a viable option. I don’t believe that’s legal.”

They’re right, according to Fred Nisen, a Managing Attorney with the Voting Rights Practice group of Disability Rights California (DRC), a federally designated agency that advocates to protect the rights of Californians with disabilities. 

Complying with elections law requires meeting the demands of the Help America Vote Act, or HAVA, a federal civil rights law that was passed in 2002 to ensure that those with disabilities can vote privately and independently. 

After the Supervisors’ January 24 vote to cancel the contract with Dominion, Disability Rights California released a public statement saying the County will be exposed to substantial liability if supervisors fail to provide that voting opportunity for those with disabilities, something Nisen believes can only happen through the use of one of the three state-approved electronic voting machine systems. 

“I don’t understand,” Nisen told Shasta Scout by phone last week, “how the Supervisors would expect the Registrar of Voters to run an election by hand counting the votes without any machinery at all and still make it accessible. I’ve never seen that happen and I don’t think it’s legal under the Help America Vote Act.”

Jones told Shasta Scout that hand counting is already happening legally in other parts of the country, but Nisen said his research didn’t turn up any evidence that’s true.

“I am not aware of hand counting anywhere in the U.S. in compliance with HAVA,” Nisen continued, “It would be a stretch to imagine how it would be possible.”

Given the County’s lack of an approved voting system, Disability Rights California is closely watching the actions of the Shasta County Board of Supervisors, Nisen said, mentioning that Paul Spencer, DRC’s Voting Rights Practice Group’s Senior Attorney, will be at Tuesday’s Board meeting.

On February 23, DRC was also one of several non-profit organizations with expertise in voting rights, including the ACLU of Northern California, that sent a letter to the Board of Supervisors, encouraging them to proceed carefully as they move forward, to ensure they protect the voting rights of all Californians.

The Board has not yet cancelled the contract with Dominion; their vote to do so included a decision to wait until after a March 7 City of Shasta Lake election.

But Jones, Crye, and Kelstrom all said during the Board’s January 24 meeting that they believe cancelling the County’s contract with Dominion will help restore the public’s trust in the local elections process. Jones has said, without offering evidence, that the “majority” of Shasta County voters currently lack that trust.

It’s a statement Darling Allen takes issue with, pointing out that she won the majority of Shasta County’s vote in the June 2022 primary while running against a candidate who wanted to restore trust by getting rid of Dominion voting machines.

Nevertheless, Darling Allen said, she’s very interested in doing whatever she can to build the trust of all community members in the local elections process. Her department has just released a short survey on trust in elections. All questions are optional so voters can share as much or as little as they’re comfortable with, she said.

And she’s holding an Elections Department Open House on Monday, February 27, from noon until 7 pm at the Shasta County Veterans Hall. Representatives from the State’s two other certified electronic voting machine vendors, ES&S and Hart, will be present with their equipment so the public can see and touch the machines and ask questions of vendor staff.

Ultimately, Darling Allen explained, it’s important to remember that while the Board oversees her budget, they don’t have the authority to direct the work of her office. That means their vote can’t dictate that she fundamentally change how she runs the elections process, including directing her to implement a hand vote.  

“There seems to be a fundamental failure to understand who’s the boss of this process,” Darling Allen said. “I am the duly elected Clerk and Registrar of Voters. The Supervisors do have supervisory capacity of the elections budget . . . they do not have the authority to direct the work of my office. That’s very clear in the law.”

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