Registrar of Voters, Clint Curtis Has Managed to Revamp the Election Processes in Shasta County and Bring More Transparency to the Way the Votes are Counted

Newly appointed Registrar of Voters, Clint Curtis, conveys a friendly, welcoming attitude towards all who come to observe election processes in Shasta County.  He has been making substantial changes to the way things were done for decades and has put election observers more at ease with the process by allowing them meaningful and better access to all of the procedures involved.  Security is paramount with regard to how the ballots are being handled, kept in sealed bins or envelopes, with tamper-proof seals, counted and recounted in stacks of 50, under constant camera video recording to prevent any attempts at tampering. This contrasts greatly with prior methods that in many cases were not observable by citizen observers and where ballots were not kept in sealed containers.

Curtis has a background in computer programming, was involved in writing election code, became a whistleblower for proprietary software that could manipulate the vote counts, then later became an attorney fighting election fraud.  Having never actually run an election, some people in the County were skeptical about his ability to do so.  The prior election of November 2024 was problematic under the former ROV Thomas Toller, another appointee after Cathy Darling Allen resigned due to health reasons, leaving the second-in-command, Assistant ROV Joanna Francescut to run the office.  Francescut was terminated within a week of Curtis taking the helm in May of 2025.  Francescut and Curtis both had announced their intention to run for the ROV position.

This summer Governor Gavin Newsom quickly pushed through a redistricting proposition to be placed on the ballot (Proposition 50), which was done in such a rush that every County had to scramble to have the ballots and voter guides produced in time for mailing to the voters.  With all of that happening, Curtis was making plans to make substantial changes to the way things had been done and made some requests to purchase cameras and more tabulating machines for the ROV office.  Even though his initial request to move the office to a larger space was denied by the Board of Supervisors, due to the cost, he eventually was able to receive an additional budget allocation of $130,000 to install the cameras and make some other changes to the office at 1643 Market St. in Redding.  The result of these changes seems to be a much more efficient and transparent process, leading to no conflicts or problems being raised by citizen observers. 

Curtis has held open house tours for the public to see the set-up of election ballot processing and now, as the ballot counting has begun, his staff already has counted approximately 37,000 ballots as of November 6^th, and have approximately 15,000 more ballots to count.  With all six tabulating machines running, 18,000 ballots can be tabulated per hour, which is quite speedy.    Curtis had planned to hire 25 temporary election workers but was only able to have 18 come on board in time for this election due to County personnel hiring practices that delayed the process.  However, he is pleased with the good workers he has and two County employees are also helping in the elections office. 

Some problems were encountered at the precincts on election day that Curtis says he will address and rectify for the next election.  Voters were needing to bring their mailed ballot to the precinct with the envelope if they wanted to either drop it off or vote a precinct ballot.  If they did not bring their ballot with them, this created some confusion on the part of some of the precinct workers.  The paper poll rosters were being used instead of the electronic poll pads, therefore, it could not be immediately determined whether the voter had already voted by mail or not.  If the voter brought their mailed ballot with them, it was not a problem.  If not, the voter could sign in and vote on a provisional ballot.  The precinct workers were calling the office unnecessarily to check to see whether the voter had voted already before they were giving the voter a new ballot.  Better training and possibly a training video that the poll worker can access from their phone to remind them of the proper procedures will remedy the situation according to Curtis. 

Adjudication of ballots with questionable marks is being handled by a team of three people of different political parties, and, so far, all have been in agreement in deciding about these questionable ballot markings.

The process of signature verification has been slowed down so that more care is taken with the decisions of signature matching and citizen observers are allowed to view the process with close enough access to see the signatures.  If the observer believes that an error has been made in the signature verification process, they are to let Curtis know and he will handle it.  During the June 2025 election, observers noted that the signature verification process was being done too quickly, with only one second or less being the speed at which signatures were being verified.

Clint’s Assistant ROV is Brent Turner, a lifelong California resident from San Francisco who has 25 years of experience working in elections.  When interviewed, he stated that the good road to success in elections involves three things:  1) open-source election system software, 2) a good paper ballot, and 3) a good election administration team.   He has been an advocate for open-source software since 2004, however, this has not been implemented by the State of California who must certify election tabulating systems.  Computers can be programmed to do anything, including switching votes, and the public will never know it happened without the software program being open source.  Everything currently being used in California is proprietary which is not in the best interest of the public.  New Hampshire and Mississippi are the only states he knows of that are now using open-source software.  Turner stated that everyone should agree to want free and fair elections and he wished that people were more aware of the dangers inherent in propriety election software in the tabulating machines.  That is why the hand count audit is so important to verify that the machines are accurately counting the votes. 

Registrar of Voters, Clint Curtis, standing in the election observers room

Projection Screens that Capture Ballots Being Processed in the Area Set Aside for Citizen Election Observers at the Election Office at 1743 Market St. in Downtown Redding

Curtis plans to use a completely random method of the ping pong ball draw to decide on which precincts will have a hand-count audit performed.  The audits will be conducted publicly as well so that the public will have trust in the outcome of the election.

At a press conference today, Clint answered questions and explained that the new camera system has been excellent.  He configured the new camera system himself using A-12 Samsung cameras with a very high resolution and the ability to shut off the automatic focus feature so that the ballot will always stay in focus.

The numbers released so far for the vote count in Shasta County are as follows:

Proposition 50 (Redistricting the State of California)*

Yes 10,788

No 24,496

Measure A (Sales Tax Increase for City of Redding)

Yes 6,316

No 11,163

*Proposition 50 was passing with about 63% of the vote in early returns for the State.

--A correction has been made for the sake of accuracy.