Laser Focus on Shasta County Elections: Town Hall Features Registrar of Voters Clint Curtis
- Elisa Ballard
- 1 hour ago
- 4 min read
On Thursday, March 12, 2026, approximately 40 community members gathered at Faith Community Church in Redding for a town hall event focused on election integrity in Shasta County. The event, hosted by Shasta County Board of Education member and R.N. Authur Gorman, featured Clint Curtis, the current County Clerk/Registrar of Voters and a candidate for the position in the upcoming June election.
Curtis was appointed by the Shasta County Board of Supervisors in 2025 to fill a vacancy left by Thomas Toller. Since taking office, he has implemented significant, low-cost improvements to the Registrar of Voters’ Office, earning praise from the public and election integrity experts for enhancing transparency and security.
Key changes Curtis has introduced include:
Improved public observation: Election observers now have access to a comfortable lounge area equipped with screens displaying live views of the vote tabulation process. Cameras have been installed to capture ballot images, which are live-streamed, allowing the public to independently verify machine counts. In prior years and under prior leadership, the public was kept behind metal fencing and too far away from ballot processing activities to allow for meaningful observation.
Enhanced chain of custody and security: Under previous leadership, ballots lacked proper chain-of-custody protocols—often stored unsealed in stacks across unsecured rooms. One storage room used a keycard system that failed to log entries, resulting in approximately 500 untracked accesses. Curtis has addressed these vulnerabilities with sealed envelopes, bins, improved camera coverage, and stricter access controls.
Reduced drop boxes and better ballot pickup: The number of drop boxes countywide has been reduced to four. Ballots are collected twice daily, sealed immediately, and transported directly to the office, eliminating the previous practice of ballots remaining unsecured in vehicles for extended periods.
Curtis highlighted problems from the November 2024 election under prior management, including:
Ink overspray issues on ballots printed by Runbeck Election Services in Arizona, which prevented accurate machine tabulation. A secondary duplication process was used, but much of it occurred out of public view and without camera recording.
Official results showed approximately 2,800 more ballots counted than voters who participated, contributing to public distrust.
Since Curtis took over, he reported that the most recent election achieved a perfect balance between voters checked in and ballots counted. Also, the 1% manual handcount matched the machine count exactly, unlike under prior leadership.
Curtis, a computer programmer and attorney with 25 years of experience in election integrity, shared his background as a whistleblower. He described being hired by Republicans in Florida to develop prototype vote-tabulation software capable of flipping votes, later discovering its alleged use in general elections. He advocates for hand-counting ballots as practiced in Germany, where volunteers (excused from jury duty) conduct a full hand count. He argued that U.S. media pressure for rapid results creates an artificial demand for speed over accuracy.
Other points Curtis raised:
Voter rolls: He described current rolls as problematic, partly due to the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), which grants states significant control. He criticized the lack of citizenship verification at the DMV and noted California’s resistance to sharing voter-roll data with federal authorities. Curtis has hired three staff members to review rolls and will be documenting instances if the state fails to remove ineligible voters, with plans to escalate non-compliance to the U.S. Department of Justice.
Pending legislation: He supports the proposed Save America Act, which would require citizenship verification and voter ID, with provisions for free county assistance in obtaining IDs (including help with birth certificates and other documents).
Ballot retention: Curtis criticized the practice of destroying extra tear-out ballots (in booklets of 50) the day after an election. He believes they should be preserved in sealed bags as potential evidence if discrepancies arise.
In-house ballot printing: Printing ballots internally could save approximately $150,000 per election after an initial $300,000 investment in equipment. Curtis plans to request funding in the next budget cycle if elected. This would also better control the number of ballots printed and how they are mailed to the voters.
2024 anomalies: He has asked the FBI to review the 2024 election data due to statistical irregularities. Election integrity expert Dr. Douglas Frank analyzed Supervisor Kevin Crye’s race, noting that mail-in ballots showed Crye trailing by 20%, while in-person precinct ballots reversed the trend—resulting in a narrow 11-vote win instead of an expected 500-vote margin based on voter demographics.
Secretary of State directive: Curtis halted a mid-cycle instruction to add four extra digits to voter zip codes, which he said would have triggered duplicate ballot mailings without appearing on envelopes, potentially introducing excess ballots.
Curtis emphasized transparency by taking a polygraph test after each election to affirm no misconduct.
He contrasted his approach with his opponent, Joanna Francescut. Francescut served 17 years in the Elections Office working her way up to the position of Assistant Registrar while serving under previous leaders Cathy Darling Allen and Thomas Toller. Curtis terminated her shortly after taking office and appointed Brent Turner (of San Francisco) as his assistant.
Curtis concluded by calling for volunteers to help spread the word about his reforms—through phone calls, door-to-door outreach, or other efforts—targeting the county’s roughly 60,000 registered Republicans and 7,000 Independents. He warned that failure to re-elect him could reverse recent improvements and erode public trust in the electoral process.
Curtis was recently endorsed by the Shasta County Republican Assembly.
People interested in helping or donating to Clint Curtis' campaign can go to his website at:
For more information about Joanna Francescut, go to:
