LOS ANGELES — In 2023, the Shasta County Board of Supervisors was so swept up in President Donald Trump’s unsubstantiated election fraud claims that they ditched Dominion voting machines and opted to hand-count ballots for the county’s more than 110,000 registered voters — quickly prompting a new state law that banned them from doing so.

Three years later, they’re still debating hand-counting in the Northern California county, which, in recent years, has become a national poster child for hard-right governance and election skepticism.

A citizens’ initiative called Measure B is on the ballot for the June 2 primary, aiming to dramatically reshape Shasta County elections, including by requiring a hand count.

Measure B also would amend the county’s charter to require elections to be held in-person on a single day, limit voting by mail to “the infirm, military, and U.S. citizens living overseas,” and require voters to show identification at polling places (as would a statewide ballot measure that voters will decide upon in November).

Opponents expect the county to be sued

Cathy Darling Allen, the former longtime Shasta County registrar, said Measure B violates multiple state and federal election laws and warns that the county likely will spend lots of money on litigation if it passes.

“It would be very expensive to implement even if it were allowed — and it’s not,” said Darling Allen, the board chair of the nonprofit California Voter Foundation.

In 2023, Darling Allen clashed with the Board of Supervisors as they pushed to hand-count ballots. Because of California’s long, complex ballots, she reported then, a full manual tally during a presidential election year would have required the hiring of at least 1,255 temporary employees, at a cost of more than $1.6 million, to meet reporting deadlines.

The ACLU of Northern California and the League of Women Voters said in a joint statement that Measure B “plainly violates state law” and that its elimination of most voting-by-mail will disenfranchise Shasta County voters.

“For people who live in rural areas far from polling places, for working people who can’t take time off or are working outside the region on election day, for seniors and people with disabilities who can’t prove they are ‘infirm,’ a mandatory single-day, in-person requirement isn’t a reform — it’s an obstacle to exercising a fundamental right,” the statement reads.

Supporters expect lawsuits, too.

Richard Gallardo, a leader of the citizens’ group Save Shasta Elections, which wrote the measure and collected thousands of signatures to get it on the ballot, said in an interview that Measure B is meant to protect the local election process from fraud.

“We don’t like the state laws,” said Gallardo, who is running for election to the Board of Supervisors. “We want to enact our own local election reform. … There’s a lot in there, so, yes, we do expect the state to sue us.”

In an email, the California secretary of state’s office declined to comment on the measure or whether state elections officials would challenge it in court, like they did a 2024 Huntington Beach city charter amendment that would have required voter ID. (An appellate court struck down the law, and the California Supreme Court this January declined to hear the city’s appeal.)

Gallardo said that if Measure B passes in Shasta County, “the onus is now on the county” to “fully and fervently” defend it in court because it’s “the will of the voters.”

Access to the ballot

Last year, Clint Curtis, the Shasta County registrar of voters, eliminated nine of the vast county’s 13 ballot drop boxes, telling The Times he did not trust ballots in the hands of “little old ladies running all over” to collect them.

Curtis was appointed to his job by the Board of Supervisors last year after saying he wanted to hand-count votes and that he had worked with Mike Lindell, the MyPillow chief executive and pro-Trump conspiracy theorist. Curtis now is up for election against Darling Allen’s longtime deputy, Joanna Francescut — whom he fired.

Curtis has advocated for Measure B.

Cork McGowan, a 79-year-old Redding resident who wrote a Measure B opposition statement that appears on residents’ official voter information guides, said he believes Curtis’ elimination of drop boxes disenfranchises voters — and so would Measure B.

“It’s illegal, and it’d be better to stop it at the ballot box before the county gets wrapped up in a bunch of lawsuits,” he said.

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