Shasta County, a rural jurisdiction of about 182,000 residents in California’s far north, approved Measure B last Tuesday, advancing a proposal that would fundamentally restructure how local elections are conducted. The measure passed with more than 55 percent of the vote. It would require all elections to occur in person on a single day, restrict absentee ballot access, mandate voter photo identification, and institute a manual tally of ballots.
About 85 percent of county residents currently vote by mail. The abrupt shift would eliminate a voting method that has dominated Shasta County’s elections for years.
Civil rights and voting advocacy organizations challenged the measure’s legality. The ACLU of Northern California and the local and state chapters of the League of Women Voters issued a joint statement calling the measure unlawful.
“Measure B also plainly violates state law and exposes county taxpayers to significant litigation costs — all in pursuit of a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist,” the organizations said.
The groups added: “We should be preserving options for eligible voters to cast their ballots — not erecting needless barriers that will infringe upon our right to vote in Shasta county.”
California election statutes generally prohibit local governments from creating and enforcing laws that require voters to present identification in order to cast ballots. Measure B’s photo ID requirement is at odds with those statutes, according to the civil rights organizations.
The California attorney general’s office said it was “closely monitoring the Measure B results and, if necessary, stand ready to take appropriate action to protect voters’ rights and enforce state election laws.”
The offices of the California secretary of state and the Shasta county registrar of voters did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Measure B is the latest flashpoint in an ongoing conflict over election administration in Shasta County that has persisted since the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election. A small but vocal group of activists convinced of widespread voter fraud focused their attention on the local elections office, alleging that local contests had been rigged and voting was not secure. Some election officials repeated those accusations despite having won their own elections.
In 2022, the former registrar of voters told a U.S. Senate committee that activists had weaponized election observation activities and that she and her staff faced interference and bullying. Numerous staff members left the office as a result.
The elections office has been overseen since last year by Clint Curtis, an election skeptic who was new to running elections and who alleged his predecessors had rigged them. Curtis supported Measure B. The measure’s passage represents a victory for the activists who have been campaigning to transform Shasta’s elections for more than five years.
Yet Curtis himself was ousted by voters, losing to Joanna Francescut, who had 17 years of experience in the office before Curtis fired her after he started the role. Curtis’s tenure had been marked by allegations that he created a hostile work environment and made violent threats against workers. Curtis has publicly denied those claims.
Shasta County previously attempted to dismantle its automated voting system. The county’s governing body cut ties with Dominion Voting Systems in 2023, a move supported by prominent election deniers including MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell. The board of supervisors moved to enact a hand-count system that experts warned would be costly and far less accurate, but the state thwarted that effort by passing legislation banning manual tallies in most cases. Measure B appears to resurrect part of that earlier effort.
The measure advances amid a new wave of voting-conspiracy theories in California that has surged since the state’s primary election last week. The outcomes in some of the most-watched races, including contests for governor and Los Angeles mayor, were not known until this week because of California’s notoriously slow but thorough ballot processing and the large number of voters who held their ballots until election day.
Former President Donald Trump accused the state, without providing evidence, of election rigging. Spencer Pratt, who did not advance to the runoff for Los Angeles mayor, suggested one of his opponents had rounded up unhoused people to vote for her.
The U.S. justice department sent a federal prosecutor to observe ballot processing in Los Angeles. Bill Essayli, the Trump-appointed first assistant U.S. attorney for the central district of California, announced that his office and the FBI’s Los Angeles field office had “multiple election fraud investigations under way.”
MSI previously covered California’s slow ballot-counting process and its implications for this election cycle in late June. The state’s extended verification periods have drawn scrutiny from both election administrators and conspiracy theorists as results lag behind election night.
Shasta County’s Measure B now heads toward implementation unless blocked by state courts or executive action. The measure’s passage guarantees a legal confrontation between a county that has repeatedly challenged California’s election framework and a state government that has repeatedly intervened to preserve existing voting procedures.