The Shasta County Clerk issues marriage licenses, registers business pseudonyms and processes passport applications. The clerk also serves as the registrar of voters, overseeing elections in the county.
Former Assistant County Clerk Joanna Francescut is facing her former boss, County Clerk Clint Curtis. County supervisors appointed Curtis in a controversial decision last year.
Curtis outlines changes to the system
Curtis moved from Florida, where he was working as a lawyer, and had never run an election before. Supervisors selected him for his plans to radically change how elections are conducted.
“The elections have basically been given to the bureaucrats,” Curtis said. “They run them, they block observation, they do whatever they pretty much want to and tell you to go away, ‘Don't look here. We got under control,’ and so we're changing all that.”
Now, Curtis is that bureaucrat, and he wants to introduce his vision of transparency to Shasta County. He has already set up cameras to film the ballots being scanned and tabulated.
“As far as observing, they can observe everything, and candidates can count their own,” he said. “If they find an error, they can tell us about that, and we can get down there and drill down and find if it's correct.”
Although in reality, the camera system needs some tweaks. During the November election, the livestream camera resolution was so low, it was almost impossible to read the ballots. Curtis said he wants to fix that.
Curtis also faced additional problems during his first election, including failing to submit a ballot report to the state on time and slower check-in times after eliminating electronic poll books. Curtis blames those hiccups on staff, which he claimed have done it purposefully.
“This job is extremely easy. It's not hard at all,” he said. “Now for me, it was a little harder because I didn't necessarily have the staff 100% on board, so I had to keep, you know, like pushing a rock uphill to get them to do little stuff.”
Curtis said he does not trust computers in the election system or members of either political party, arguing that someone will always try to cheat their way into office.
"They can observe everything, and candidates can count their own.”Clint Curtis
Shasta County has been at the center of a debate around elections for years. In 2023, the far-right majority on the Board of Supervisors voted to terminate the county’s contract with Dominion Voting Systems, leaving officials without a way to conduct elections. Supervisors wanted election workers to hand-count ballots, though research has shown it’s less accurate, more expensive and slower than machine counting.
Before the county could try its hand-counting system, the state legislature banned the practice in most elections. Curtis said he’s using ballot-counting machines right now only because the law requires it.
“I'd want to get rid of them,” he said. “But even that needs to be on camera.”
Even if he were able to start hand-counting ballots, Curtis said he would livestream the process because humans can’t be trusted either.
Francescut emphasizes experience in office
Joanna Francescut brings 17 years of elections experience and said she is motivated by public service.
She said some of Curtis’ transparency measures were already underway before he took office.
“We weren't able to implement any new video cameras because we didn't have the appropriate space on the server,” she said. “We had just purchased a new server right before I got fired that would allow for more video cameras and more streaming and that type of work to happen. But that was because I was making steps to plan and working with IT.”
“I never once got a chance to step up and implement my priorities”Joanna Francescut
Supervisors passed over Francescut twice when appointing someone to fill the clerk seat. The first time was in 2024, when the longtime clerk Cathy Darling Allen stepped down for health reasons and Tom Toller was appointed, and again last year, when they chose Curtis.
Francescut, who said she worked well with Toller, described her role as supporting the office’s leadership.
“I was following the direction of the county clerks,” said Francescut. “I never once got a chance to step up and implement my priorities and make sure that I can make the changes that I want to have happen, happen within Shasta County.”
One of her priorities would be moving the elections office out of its current location on Market Street.
“Where we count ballots, it's tough to manage,” she said. “Having that balance between secure elections and transparent elections and allowing that work to happen, it's tough in our current location.”
A new building is something both Francescut and Curtis agree on.
“If I had a new building, we could do our own printing in house,” Curtis said. “One of my concerns is that we don't know how many ballots are printed. We don't know where they're mailed to. We really don't have any control over anything.”
A new building will require money the elections office doesn’t have. The Board of Supervisors declined Curtis’ proposal to lease a former Joann Fabrics building and purchase additional equipment.
Debate over transparency and trust
Curtis has spent much of the campaign criticizing his opponent.
Shortly after he started as county clerk, Curtis fired Francescut.
“She has no concern for the public at all,” he said. “She treats them as if they are the villain.”
Francescut disputed that claim but acknowledged the office has gotten a bad rap in the past. She also said that what Curtis has done has mostly been for show.
“I really think it's important that people are aware that he hasn't made it that much more transparent,” she said. “Stuff that we had observable is no longer observable because he had to change the layout of the office.”
Francescut said she’s more focused on working with local community members than her predecessor, Cathy Darling Allen.
“One thing that Cathy was great at was educating our legislatures, educating people at the state level,” Francescut said. “But at the community level, we weren't … helping people understand that process change, or why it was changed, or what happened to make that change, and then people would get frustrated.”
Francescut said her critics sometimes overlook that the clerk’s office hasn’t been lock-step with the state lawmakers. She said the office opposed a 2022 law that made vote-by-mail permanent for all California voters, arguing it adds complexity and costs for rural areas.
“If we would have left it as is, the voters that wanted to choose to vote by mail would continue to choose that,” she said. “Things like that have had an impact on the trust in elections locally.”
How and when to vote
Ballots will be mailed to voters by May 4 and must be returned to a drop box or postmarked by June 2.
Curtis removed most of the county’s drop boxes after taking office. The county’s website lists the four remaining locations. Voters can also go to their local polling place on Election Day to vote in person or drop off their ballot.
Because only two candidates are running, the winner will be decided in June.
