On September 20, 2025, Clint Curtis, Shasta County’s new Registrar of Voters, held an open house to let the public see changes he has made over his predecessor, Tom Toller, and before that, Toller‘s predecessor, Cathy Darling Allen.
The first and most notable change was the office layout.
The gate leading to the upstairs corridor had been removed, which was originally a compromise with IT professionals, who wanted an entire wall built to keep people out of sensitive areas.
The gate was originally installed in the elections department lobby following some raucous Election Day incidents in June of 2022. Some members of the public entered via the alley through the Elections Department back door, disrupting ROV Darling-Allen and her elections staff.
A trail cam was also discovered on election night, hidden in a tree near the alley.
Open floor plan, an abundance of American flags
On this day, the room had been opened up tremendously. All elections operations have been moved downstairs.
The room where votes will be counted was decorated with flags splashed about on small tables, each with a chair on either side.
The chairs faced a screen that, at the time, played a video of Clint Curtis removing ballots from a bag, briefly scanning the pack of 50 for marks or write-ins that may make the ballots unreadable by the Hart Civic machines. The screen itself sat on a flag-covered table that acted as a barrier to the actual Hart machines, which lay covered on small tables in neat rows just beyond the screen.
The room was empty, beyond the equipment. No staff outside of Clint Curtis and Brent Turner, second in command, were present.
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- Brent Turner speaks at Shasta County Board of Supervisors meeting.
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- Clint Curtis speaks at Shasta County Board of Supervisors meeting
The tour began after fewer than a dozen people arrived. A perpetually smiling Clint Curtis stepped up to describe everything happening on the screen.
Next, Curtis ushered the visitors around for an up-close view of the centers he’d created. As visitors stood directly next to a covered Hart machine, Curtis explained the ease of the Agilis machine, operated with one push of a button to scan the ballots.
“He has nothing to do but press a button, it’s actually the easiest way really,” he joked, “you just press a button.”
Summarized ballot-processing steps.
Curtis’ statements during his Saturday elections-office open-house, as well some recent answers to election-related questions, are summarized below into the following step-by-step explanation of Curtis’ ballot-processing system:
1. Sorting (via Agilis machine): Incoming vote-by-mail envelopes are scanned and sorted by the Agilis machine, which sorts and organizes ballots by precinct.
2. Signature Verification: Election employees compare the signature on each envelope to each voter’s registration record, and accept or reject each ballot accordingly.
3. Adjudication (if needed): Ballots with unreadable marks or errors are reviewed by staff, and if necessary, a duplicate ballot is created to ensure the vote can be tabulated.
4. Batch Delivery: Verified ballots are removed from their envelopes, grouped into batches of 50, and placed on carts for delivery to the counting stations.
5. Ballot Display: Each ballot in a batch is shown front and back to a camera at the counting station, with the feed live-streamed to the public.
6. Tabulation (Hart machines): After being displayed, the ballots are fed into the Hart tabulator, which counts the votes and records them into the system.
7. Sealing and Storage: Once counted, each batch is sealed in a tamper-evident bag and moved into secure storage under chain-of-custody rules.
Election Day volunteers and additional non-employee assistance
Curtis said that the Elections Day work will be handled by volunteers and part-time hired workers. He said none of the experienced staff will even oversee the work performed by the volunteers and the paid workers; non-union short-term employees.
When Curtis has been asked to explain why he’s having only inexperienced volunteers and extra help doing the elections work, he’s replied that the experienced elections employees will be upstairs, “as the staff are afraid of people.”
Asked to define the volunteer and extra helpers’ exact duties, Curtis didn’t go into detail, except to suggest these special workers would be relegated to tasks that “don’t touch ballots”.
When asked why no one was holding a mock election during the open house — also referred to as an “accuracy and logic test” — Clint Curtis laughed and said that such a test would be a waste of time.
“Most of this is braindead,” Curtis said. “You just have to be able to count to 50, not even that.”
He did not address the fact that although the logic and accuracy test not only ensures staff are trained and ready to go, the logic and accuracy test also ensures that the machines themselves are functioning properly, and need no extra attention or maintenance before Election Day.
In the last election, the ballot-printing company, Runbeck, created the ballots. A massive problem occurred that ultimately caused huge delays due to ink overspray on certain ballots that made those ballots unreadable by the sensitive Hart machines. Originally, the county was going solve this prior problem with in-house printing, but the county lacked the time to order the equipment, or find a new printing company. Therefore, the county will continue its contract with Runbeck. Curtis said he will not run any tests ahead of time to ensure the ballots can accurately be counted by the Hart machines.
Prior to the county’s adoption of the Hart Civic machines, the county used the Dominion system. Not only did the Dominion system retain paper ballots for comparison, but the Dominion system had no difficulty reading the Runbeck ballots, as the Dominion machines are not as sensitive to ink overspray.
In Shasta County’s last election, more than 50 percent of the ballots were kicked into adjudication due to ink overspray, which resulted in a time-consuming process where all of the unreadable ballots had to be duplicated.
For the upcoming election, Curtis said the entire process will be filmed and streamed online starting at 8 p.m. when polls close on Election Day. That is, everything will be filmed and streamed online except the adjudication and duplication process. Clint Curtis says that anything written on the ballot could be considered “identifying marks” and therefore cannot be filmed. Consequently, one crucial piece of the process — where people handle the ballots the most — will have little to no visibility and accountability.
“The reason the station is there is because cameras can’t see it. There won’t be a camera on it. So even though it’s able to be seen by everybody that something is being done, what’s being done is not being exposed to the public,” Curtis said with a shrug. “It’s good when you can watch the people on it, unfortunately, it is what it is.”
Rich Gallardo, a long-time elections activist and often controversial figure, asked, “Once the ballots are cleared from adjudication it’s going to be coming back into the system, right?”
Curtis responded by pointing to an empty area in the building where adjudication would take place. “No, they have their own system right over there,” he said.
Aside from the fact that adjudicated and duplicated ballots will not be seen by the public during Curtis’ process (a recurring complaint by former District 4 Supervisor Patrick Jones about former assistant ROV Joanna Francescut), there are now new concerns.
Under previous elections department direction of ROV Darling-Allen, and Toller, both assisted by Francescut, the Agilis machine was configured to use an expanded feature set, including scanning ballot envelopes to help detect duplicates. Under the current setup, however, Agilis has been limited to precinct sorting only.
Clint Curtis explained, “They wanted $250,000 for the contract. I said, ‘Well I’m not using it,’ so I cancel the contract. Ok, so they called back and said it’s $30,000 just to sort. There are other features they’d like me to use, but I would not do it.”
When asked how ballots would be voided in some scenarios, such as a person using a provisional ballot on voting day, Clint Curtis dismissed the concern and said: “It’s illegal in the state of California to have identifying marks on the ballot, even a scan code that can connect a person to a ballot.”
Curtis’ response to that question reveals a misunderstanding of how the system actually works. While the ballots themselves do not carry identifying codes, the envelopes do. Once an envelope is accepted and a voter’s signature is verified, the voter is supposed to be marked as having voted. If a duplicate ballot arrives later, it is supposed to be flagged by the Agilis machine, which ensures that only one ballot per voter is counted.
Providing replacement provisional ballots, followed by the step of voiding a provisional ballot-holder’s previously mailed-in-ballot, is part of this process, ensuring the database recognizes and records which ballot is valid. Under Curtis’ system, without the additional Agilis features, it is unclear how this process will work .
The next election is slated for November 4, 2025. Clint Curtis has made confident promises that he will hold a more efficient, transparent election. One of his most spectacular claims is that all votes will be counted within two hours of the polls closing.
It remains to be seen whether Curtis can deliver on his ambitious promises, but the truth will be be revealed in a little more than one month from now.
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