NOV. 11 ELECTION UPDATE: 21,000+ Still-uncounted Ballots; County Clerk Speaks Frankly About Election

Journalist R.V. Scheide and I spoke with Cathy Darling Allen, Shasta County’s Registar of Voters, late this afternoon, as the North State awaited the updated election counts.

Darling Allen said she and her staff continue to count the remaining tens of thousands of remaining ballots, most of which are mail-in ballots.

Scheide: Can you say anything about the character of these remaining ballots?

Darling-Allen: You know, it used to be 10 years ago that we would think of mail-in ballots as primarily Republican and primarily seniors, but now, all that’s kind of out of the window.

Scheide: But you’ve now had two years of mail-in voting being demonized.

Darling-Allen: Yes, and it’s fascinating because this is the way that most older Republicans voted, and now they’re being told not to, so that’s their strategy. But you know, when it rains, we also see a lower in-person turnout, so sometimes voting is suppressed by the weather.

So all those messages on social media telling voters to hold their ballots to the end, in the end, it certainly seems possible that that strategy would potentially suppress the votes of the very people they were trying to encourage to get to vote in person.

I guess we’ll find out at the very end of our process. So we’ll have tonight’s update, and the next earliest would be Wednesday, and potentially Friday of next week.

Scheide: This always happens when the first numbers come out, and it’s like everyone’s commenting on the low turnout. Now it looks like there was a pretty good turnout. Can we say it was a good turnout?

Darling-Allen: It’s certainly a respectable turnout. Absolutely. June wasn’t that long ago, and we had the exact same thing happen in June, and yet, the next day we have on social media people saying, ‘Oh, so-and-so won.’

We just have too many ballots to add in, and I don’t know that anybody’s safe, and I say that having done a lot of analysis about it.

Chamberlain: I don’t know if you saw Courtney Kreider’s television reports that basically said citizens did not have full access to the elections department on election night, and then, there was a story on Rumble that repeated that claim. It made the elections department look pretty bad. What’s your response to all that?

Darling-Allen: I have never visited the website Rumble, but I did see the Courtney Kreider stories. But that’s the only reporting I’ve seen about that, and that reporting was not accurate. I’m just not sure how to react. I would want to go back and listen to Courtney’s initial reports, but I believe that Courtney said something like that law demands that we allow close access to ballots. She did not get that legal interpretation from me. She and I had a brief conversation on election night about why we had implemented some of the new procedures that we have in place for observers and for physical security. None of that was reflected in her reporting. I’m not sure what her motivation is, but she’s not doing a great deal of legal research, or presenting both sides of the story.

Chamberlain: I don’t remember seeing the live video surveillance projections on the wall for the last election. Was that new?

Darling-Allen: That is new. We had purchased a whole camera system prior to June’s election, and we would have had it in place, except for supply-chain issues, and we didn’t get all the pieces and parts. Not all of it was operating in the way that we expected. For example, in the hallway up here, two cameras have been installed since then. But we didn’t have those in June. If we had, we wouldn’t have had people in the warehouse then, right? And that’s what Freedom was objecting to; not being able to be down in the warehouse.

During the June Primary election, Melody Fowler films her group’s confrontation of Cathy Darling Allen, Shasta County clerk/registrar of voters inside the elections department warehouse where ballots were being processed.

Chamberlain: Right. Where they could get in the way of you and your staff like they did in June. But to me, the video was very clear. You could see everything that was happening. It kind of reminded me of being at a zoo behind the polar bear enclosure. You can still see them, but you’re not right in their space.

But do you know exactly what they were looking for?

Darling-Allen: There’s an old adage that I probably shouldn’t say on the record, but only a thief thinks everybody steals. And so, no, I don’t know what they were looking for.

Carlos Zapata (hands in pocket) and the RWB crew invaded election headquarters on the June Primary election night. Photo by Doni Chamberlain.

You know, this has been a year-and-a-half of really demoralizing feedback from some of these folks. And not just for me, but for all of the people who work in this building. Every time we have this kind of conversation, where our integrity is called into question, or our character is called into question. And it’s on the basis of internet speculation and lies, not on the basis of any true thing that happened. That’s just an endless source of frustration. We’re just running in circles, trying to figure out how to regain their trust … the trust that we never broke.

It’s just county elections; and it’s not the true cause of their concerns. The cause of their concerns come from national actors who have a very pointed agenda. They are making a lot of money, on all of us.

And we’re just trying to do our jobs to interpret the marks made by voters on paper, count the vote, certify the vote, and be a witness to the peaceful transition of a new administration in this county, and, of course, across the state for statewide offices as well.

One of my staff says, “They’re looking for the body.” And there is no body.

When a rat crawls into your wall and dies, you know by the smell that it’s there. There is nothing smelly about this office and the way we perform our job duties. We follow the law. And the allegations and implications in Courtney’s reporting, that we are somehow violating the law, is offensive and incorrect.

Scheide: Are you concerned at all that if these results have a reversal of what they currently are, particularly in the bigger races, like the supervisors’ – are you concerned about the reaction of some members of the public?

Darling-Allen: Absolutely. We are now in an environment where, if you don’t like the election results, it’s the election officials’ fault. And it’s not just on one side. We’ve heard those allegations from people other than Republicans. It’s not just a one-sided problem.

So yeah, we don’t like the drama at all. We have voters who are skeptical of the system, with a certain world view … It’s really a no-win situation for us. We are the referees at a T-ball game where both sides think their kids are going to the majors, and they’re not. So we get beat up.

Scheide: My understanding is that it’s been fairly subdued this time around. Is that correct?

Darling-Allen: This is correct. We have had, what we would call a couple of minor things happen on election night that were very easily remedied, primarily because RPD was on-call and on-site, as were deputies. They kind of divided up the building, SO (Shasta County Sheriff deputies) was covering inside and PD (Redding Police officers) was outside, so that worked out really well.

Scheide: So you’ll have an announcement soon tonight?

Darling-Allen: Yes, we’ll push it out as soon as we can. And then we’ll run to our cars.

Shasta County Elections Department General Election image

Nov. 11 4:33 updated election count press release

“Cathy Darling Allen, Shasta County Clerk and Registrar of Voters wishes to inform the public and the media about the estimated number of unprocessed ballots. This report is an estimated count of unprocessed ballots that we have in our office. It is just that, an estimate. We are still processing these ballots, including verifying the signature and the eligibility of the voter. There may be ballots added to this count or removed as necessary, as we receive valid post marked ballots from the post office through November 15, 2022.

Vote by mail ballots that were dropped off at precincts on Tuesday, November 8 are included in this report and have not yet been counted.

First Estimated Unprocessed Ballot Report

Vote by mail: 19553
Provisional: 528
(CVR) Conditional Voter Registration Provisional: 35
Other: 893

(Includes unprocessed ballots that are damaged, need to be remade, or require further review)

Total Unprocessed: 21009

As a reminder, our next expected results report will be Wednesday, November 16 at 5:00 pm. We thank you all for your understanding as we process all eligible ballots for this election.

Questions should be directed to elections@co.shasta.ca.us.

Click here for the updated Nov. 8 election results, posted on Nov. 11 at 4:33 p.m.

Counts shift in key races

Below are screen grabs of three of the North State’s most contentious, tight races: Redding City Council, District 1 Supervisor and District 5 Supervisor.

Updated election details

• More than 21,000 ballots remain uncounted; the majority of which are vote-by-mail ballots.
• District 5 Supervisor candidate Chris Kelstrom’s previous lead over opponent Baron Browning shrank by 15, from 232 votes to 217 votes.
• District 1 Supervisor candidate Kevin Crye’s previous lead was 193; now his opponent Erin Resner leads by 26; a gain of 219 votes.
• Authur Gorman is maintaining his lead in Shasta County Board of Education Area 2. Richard Gallardo is a close fourth.

Go to the Shasta County General Election website for full details.

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