Shasta County voters passed Measure B during the primary election earlier this month. The measure would severely restrict mail-in voting, require voters to show photo ID at the polls and mandate that votes be hand-counted.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta argued the county doesn’t have the authority to make such sweeping election changes.
“The stakes are especially high because voters in Shasta County are just months away from casting their ballots in the November midterms,” Bonta said in a statement. “We are confident that the law is on our side and that Measure B will be struck down expeditiously. No city or county gets to unliterally [sic] rewrite our election rules.”
He added that state law overrides most of the measure anyway. Bonta sued the city of Huntington Beach after it passed similar voter ID requirements in 2024 and got them struck down in court.
Proponents of Measure B have argued that the Shasta County measure could be tweaked to fit existing law.
Supporter Rich Gallardo declined to comment on the lawsuit, saying their group is deciding what to do next.
Shasta County has a history of attempting to change how elections are run based on unproven claims of election fraud.
County supervisors sought to hand-count ballots in 2023 after scrapping their voting system without a replacement lined up. But state lawmakers stepped in and banned hand-counting in most elections, specifically targeting Shasta County.
Measure B has already survived a lawsuit trying to prevent it from going on the ballot. But the judge there did not rule on the legality of the measure.
During that lawsuit, proponents argued it could be possible to let the illegal parts of the measure be struck down and keep the legal parts.
But Bonta’s lawsuit says that’s not possible because the entire measure was presented to voters as a package deal.
“There is no part of Measure B that is lawful, let alone any part that could be severed from the unconstitutional provisions,” the lawsuit reads.
Shasta County’s current elections official, Clint Curtis, has supported some of the changes proposed in the measure, including filming all the ballots as they’re being counted and using paper poll books.
But during this primary election, voters chose his opponent, former Assistant County Clerk Joanna Francescut, to take over the office starting in January.
Francescut said she believes that voters supported Measure B because advocates promoted it based mostly on the voter ID requirements.
“It didn't talk about anything else in their signage and their advertising,” Francescut said. “I think the voters just thought it was specific towards voter ID.”
Polling has shown wide support across the country for voter ID requirements, but that same poll also shows broad support for early voting and universal vote-by-mail, things that Shasta County’s measure outlaws.
The Attorney General is asking the courts for a swift decision because preparations for the November general election will begin soon.
“By ending mail-in voting, restricting voting options and requiring hand counting of ballots, it would dismantle protections that help voters actively participate,” California Secretary of State Shirley Weber said in a statement. “In California, we move democracy forward, we should not be trying to roll it back."
