Brent Turner with sledgehammer used to crush voting machines.
Brent Turner, a progressive voting systems reform activist from San Francisco who believes President Donald Trump was not elected by the will of the people in 2016 has been hired to be Shasta County’s Assistant Registrar of Voters.
A confidential informant first informed A News Café that Turner was hired by the county on June 20. On the same day, Turner told Oakland vlogger Zennie Abraham that he’d accepted the offer from “my buddy Clint Curtis.”
Clint Curtis was selected for Registrar of Voters last month by the Shasta County Board of Supervisors on a 3-2 vote. He fired former Assistant ROV Jonanne Francescut as his first official act, paving the way for Turner’s ascension.
“He called me and asked me to be the assistant registrar of voters,” Turner told Abraham. “I accepted and we are now working on best practices for Shasta County.”
Director of Support Services Monica Fugitt told A News Café that Turner is employed as Shasta County’s Assistant County Clerk/Registrar of Voters.
For nearly two decades, Turner has been a fierce advocate for open source voting systems. Because independent third parties can view the source code in open source voting systems, its advocates claim they’re less susceptible to rigging than so-called black box proprietary voting systems, which don’t permit access of source code.
“We have a president who really wasn’t elected by the people,” Turner says at the beginning of “The Real Activist,” a half-hour documentary about Turner released in 2021. It’s narrated by noted progressive actor Peter Coyote and features former CIA Director James Woolsey, who believes the 2016 presidential election was hacked by Russia in favor of their preferred candidate, Donald Trump.
“Knowing what you know about elections systems, do you have concerns for our democracy?” Turner asks Woolsey in the film.
“I have concerns if we don’t fix it because the election problems are relatively easily fixed,” Woolsey said. “But you’ve got to do it. You really don’t want Mr. Putin deciding on the composition of the House and Senate.”
Ultimately, a dozen Russian intelligence officials were indicted in absentia by a federal grand jury for interfering in the 2016 election, including two officers who committed computer crimes “relating to hacking into the computers of U.S. persons and entities responsible for the administration of 2016 U.S. elections, such as state boards of elections, secretaries of state, and U.S. companies that supplied software and other technology related to the administration of U.S. elections.”
Oakland vlogger Zennie Abraham chats with Shasta County Assistant ROV Brent Turner on his first day at work.
Turner told Abraham that he asked Curtis what his plans were.
“His assistant registrar of voters is no longer there and a lot of folks in the office are in transition,” Turner said. “So I’m hoping through teamwork and good effort that we can make it a county to be looked at by other counties. … The nonpartisan aspect will unite people once they get the information and there is obviously a tremendous amount of misinformation in the space of election security.”
Turner did not specify what misinformation he was referring to.
While it might seem odd that Curtis has tapped a San Francisco progressive for the position, keep in mind that Curtis registered as a Democrat in Florida in the early 2000s, when he first became an election reform activist. Curtis, a computer programmer at the time, claimed a Republican congressman hired him to develop software that could rig a touchscreen voting system. That allegation was never proved but remains Curtis’s claim to fame—it’s how Turner first learned about him.
Back then, the election denier movement centered around the Bush v Gore presidential election results in Florida in 2000 and the 2004 presidential election results in Ohio in the Bush v Kerry contest. In “The Real Activist” Turner is seen in Ohio smashing two Diebold voting machines with a sledgehammer.
In terms of what they’re seeking, the two men’s paths have diverged somewhat over two decades. Curtis, the former computer programmer turned lawyer, is best known for his distaste of all computerized voter systems and his singular preference for hand-counted paper ballots. Turner on the other hand has been one of the foremost advocates of open source voting systems, or what he calls GPL (general public license) V3 open source software paper ballot systems.
“I think the divide between people that think that we’re going to revert to hand counting and those of us who now continue to support open source voting with mandatory paper ballots, I think that divide is now closing,” Turner commented at a California Secretary of State symposium on election security.
Currently, California has approved three voting systems, Dominion Voting Systems, Election Systems & Software and Hart InterCivic, none of which is open source. Turner has been at the forefront of efforts to gain state acceptance for open source voting systems, but efforts to establish such systems in San Francisco and Los Angeles ultimately petered out.
However, California-based company VotingWorks manufactures an open source voting system that is presently being used in several Mississippi counties and a test program in New Hampshire.
Turner told Abraham that after the 2024 presidential election, he approached former California Speaker Willie Brown and reminded him that he’d warned the Kamala Harris campaign about closed source voting machines.
“I told you to tell her don’t concede, there’s something wrong with the voting machines,” Turner told the speaker.
“Son of a blankety blank blank I do remember that,” Brown reportedly said.
“She didn’t raise any squabble in a timely fashion regarding the results, so that ship has sailed,” Turner told Abraham.
Abraham asked Turner directly if the 2024 presidential election was rigged, and Turner admitted he has to take on a more nonpartisan tone now that he’s a public official.
“The question is not whether or not they were rigged,” Turner said. “It’s whether they’re riggable.”
With the addition of Turner, is Shasta County on its way to becoming the first county in California with an open source voting system? There are significant upfront costs in developing an open source voting system that may prevent cash-strapped Shasta County from reaching that goal anytime soon.
But there’s no doubt Curtis and Turner are going to give it a go.
Turner and Curtis did not return A News Cafe’s request for comment.
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