New California State representatives Ron and Patty Plumb with Clint Curtis.
For the 40 percent of Americans who’ve been fired at least once during their career, it can be the most unnerving question on a job application: Were you ever discharged or forced to resign from a position?
Here at A News Café, we’ve always endorsed honesty as the best policy. Florida-based election integrity advocate and Shasta County ROV candidate Clint Curtis apparently takes a different approach.
Cutis is one of five finalists selected to be publicly interviewed for the ROV position at a special board meeting at the Shasta Lake City Council chambers on Wednesday, April 30, 11 a.m.
“Were you ever discharged or forced to resign from a position?” is question No. 13 on the county’s application for the ROV position. Curtis answered “No.” He certified that all his statements were true and complete to the best of his knowledge and belief by answering “Yes” to question No. 20.
In fact, Curtis was fired from his computer programming job with the Florida Department of Transportation on April 1, 2002, as Curtis himself admitted in a 2006 Orlando Weekly profile:
“After FDOT fired him, Curtis says he couldn’t find work anywhere, so he ended up working at a dollar store in Tallahassee. ‘They crush these people who try to tell the truth,’” Curtis said.
It’s highly doubtful that Curtis has forgotten his dismissal from FDOT, since it appears to be the transformative event leading to his election integrity activism.
Clint Curtis at last year’s ROV interviews.
In 2000, Curtis worked for Yang Enterprises Inc., a computer consulting firm located in Florida Republican state Rep. Tom Feeney’s district. Feeney also served as YEI’s attorney and its lobbyist. YEI had contracts with FODT, where Curtis transferred to in March 2001.
Curtis became a person of interest in the then-burgeoning election integrity movement (led by liberals in the wake of President George W. Bush’s successive campaign victories in 2000 and 2004) when he produced a sworn affidavit in December 2004 claiming he had developed election rigging software at Feeney’s request in 2000.
Although Curtis offered no evidence to support his sworn claims, the affidavit went viral after it was picked up by Brad Friedman’s The BradBlog. Curtis caught the blogosphere’s election integrity wave and has been surfing it ever since, earning a law degree and purporting to be the expert who can work both sides of the aisle, a Zelig-esque character who claims to advise Germany, The Netherlands and Mike Lindell on cybersecurity issues.
Taking a page out of District 4 Supervisor Patrick Jones‘ book, Curtis took and passed a lie detector test to bolster his unverifiable claims about Feeney.
Former District 4 Supervisors Patrick Jones takes a polygraph test.
Feeney has consistently denied he asked Curtis to write an election-rigging program and has been cleared of any wrongdoing alleged by Curtis. As a News Café reported during last year’s ROV interviews, Curtis, then 46 and a lifelong Republican, registered as a Democrat and ran against Feeney in 2006. Curtis contested the results of that election to no avail. He ran again in 2008, 2010 and 2020, as a Democrat, losing all three times.
“All I can tell you is I didn’t do any of the illegal things Curtis says I did, and I didn’t lead the purple Martian invasion of Earth either,” Feeney told that Tampa Bay Times in 2005. By then, Feeney had become a member of Congress.
“Our view is that Curtis is just a disgruntled former employee who has an ax to grind,” YEI attorney Michael A. O’Quinn, Feeney’s former law partner, told the Broward Palm Beach New Times in 2005. “The guy’s a crackpot, a funny nuisance.”
When professional journalists (as opposed to bloggers) began drilling down on Curtis’ claims, they became increasingly less credible, and Curtis as disgruntled former employee became the more likely explanation.
As the Orlando Weekly reported in its profile, titled “Is This Man Crazy?” Curtis and his supervisor filed a complaint about YEI’s billing practices on May 10, 2001.
“But the day before that, YEI’s lawyers had contacted FDOT to allege that Curtis had violated a non-compete clause by working for an FDOT subcontractor and, more important, accused Curtis and (the supervisor) of stealing some of YEI’s software and trying to sell it,” the Weekly reported.
What followed was a year of accusations and counter-accusations that ended with Curtis and his supervisor being fired on April 1, 2002.
Clint Curtis at last year’s ROV interviews.
That was 23 short years ago. Is it possible that this pivotal event, which directly led to his status as an election integrity specialist, has slipped Clint Curtis’ mind?
It seems unlikely. Curtis lied on his job application for the ROV position. He should be disqualified automatically.
For this story, A News Café contacted Clint Curtis by telephone, leaving a message on his law office’s answering machine. He has not replied.
A News Café also contacted County Counsel Joe Larmour, County CEO David Rickert, District 1 Supervisor Kevin Crye, District 2 Supervisor Allen Long, District 3 Supervisor Corkey Harmon, District 4 Supervisor Matt Plummer and District 5 Supervisor Chris Kelstrom. A News Café posed the following questions:
1. Could lying about not being fired result in an automatic disqualification from the Board/Shasta County?
2. What does this easily disproved lie say about Mr. Cutis’ character and his attitude toward the Board?
3. If Mr. Curtis lied about not being fired in the past, is it likely that he’s lying about other things in his application?
4. This isn’t the first time Mr. Curtis has applied for the ROV position. Why didn’t the County catch this misrepresentation the first time?
At this time, no one has replied.
