‘Who cares? It’s my last election anyway’: Shasta ROV responds to election mistakes

Just before 8 a.m. at the Market Street elections office this morning, Election Manager Anna Rodriguez handed out the final vote counts from ballots cast at the precincts yesterday. It had taken all night for the team at the elections office to count those votes, a process usually completed by no later than 2 a.m.

As the night team headed home to sleep, others began arriving for the day, greeting Shasta County Registrar of Voters Clint Curtis as they entered. Despite having not slept at all the night before, Curtis said he wasn’t really that tired, explaining that he needed to stay on the job to get back out to ballot drop boxes for a final check to make sure none had been left behind.

Reflecting on the delays and mistakes that have beset this fall’s election, Curtis said he doesn’t see anywhere he could have done better and doesn’t think it matters anyway. Asked what he’d say to concerned voters, Curtis leaned in to respond, flashing his characteristic big grin.

“Who cares?” he asked conspiratorially. “It’s my last election anyway.” 

It would have helped, he added, to have had a “more seasoned” second-in-command staffer to help him run the election. Instead activist-turned-part-time staffer Michele Tyson functioned as his mid-level manager for the operational part of the election, he said.

Nearby where Curtis spoke to a reporter, Rodriguez, a manager who has worked in the elections office for years, mostly under a far more experienced registrar than Curtis, sat listening to the conversation. After months of in-office tension and conflict that came to a head when the county announced substantiated findings of misconduct against staff by Curtis earlier this year — claims he’s denied — she’d taken an extended unpaid leave from work, returning just a day before the election. 

She said she came back in time to help with operational issues during the election, including running ballot processing and tabulation, one of her areas of expertise. But when she showed up, she said Curtis told her help wasn’t needed with that role, assigning her to one usually done by extra help staff instead.

That decision cost dozens of staffers and observers hours of lost time, and left thousands of community members across the county waiting for delayed results. While Curtis said he had been prepared to handle the operational role himself, he was out running ballot drop box pickups in the final moments of voting instead — in response to overflowing drop boxes.

Some delays in ballot counting also occurred because no one had backed up the computer hard drive in preparation for vote releases, a necessary step before vote totals can be printed. Later it became clear that ballots had also been mislabeled in the computer system, necessitating restarts and relabeling before poll place ballots could be processed.

Further delays throughout the night came from how ballots had been sorted at the polls using a new process pioneered by Curtis: poll closers. The paid staffers were assigned to sort through ballots at the precincts before they were transported back to the elections office. 

Poll closers were supposed to check ballots for stray marks or damage, then prepare them for correct insertion in the machines. But that process didn’t go well, Curtis admitted this morning, saying many of the ballots that arrived at the elections office last night were not ready for processing.

Asked if he thought either inadequate training or unclear instructions were to blame — concerns reporters heard from those in the field yesterday —  Curtis said he didn’t know, but suspected sabotage. 

“It looked like some people were intentionally trying to mess it up,” he explained. 

The overflowing ballot drop box at Redding City Hall was another issue Curtis encountered during yesterday’s election. By mid-afternoon, he and other staffers had begun racing to empty the drop box every half hour just to keep it clear enough for use. 

That’s where Curtis was during the last hour of Election Day, a time when he normally would have begun prepping the computer for tabulation releases, he said. 

Changes related to ballot drop boxes were another key ideological decision by Curtis, who removed most of the county’s drop boxes last year, citing concerns about security. Today, he said he didn’t feel there was any connection between that decision and the high volume of ballots dropped at Redding City Hall yesterday, where voters waited in lines backed up to Athens Avenue to drop off their ballots by car. 

For those who’ve been following Shasta’s elections for years and seen the arc of activism that’s spanned the reigns of four different leaders in the top elections role, last night brought to mind the promises made by an enthusiastic Curtis during his interviews for the appointed position in early 2025.

At the time, Curtis promised to deliver on the demands of a small band of openly disgruntled community members by providing fast election results, fully transparent processes and restored community trust in elections. Among other promises, he said he’d count ballots in three hours, while unifying a county torn apart over voting processes. 

Nineteen months later, Curtis’ latest election seems to document profound failure on all those counts. But the election activists he’s hired, many of whom saw nothing but mistakes in past election officials’ actions, don’t appear to have turned against him.

As Curtis wrapped up his comments to a reporter this morning, he was approached by one of those staffers, election activist Laura Hobbs, who has unsuccessfully sued the county twice over claims of election mismanagement by former officials.

Raising her hand to high-five Curtis, Hobbs offered a broad smile. 

“Congratulations,” she said. “Another successful election.”

---

Do you have a correction to share? Email us: editor@shastacout.org.