Ballots for the June primary and the 2024 general election sit in the Shasta County elections office, behind a padlocked door marked with “Keep Out” signs.
Registrar of Voters Clint Curtis said the keys were discarded as a security measure.
He may soon need bolt cutters.
Curtis has been subpoenaed to appear before a federal grand jury in Sacramento on Sept. 24 and bring tens of thousands of voted ballots from the June election.
The nature of the federal investigation remains unclear. Curtis has raised unsubstantiated concerns about fraud in the June election, which he oversaw, saying some ballots did not “look, feel or smell right.” He nonetheless certified the results.
Curtis was not immediately available for comment.
Transporting the ballots could prove complicated. A California law enacted this year prevents federal authorities from taking voted ballots from the custody of an elections official. An attorney with the UCLA Voting Rights Project told Shasta Scout that Curtis could transport the ballots himself as long as they remain in his custody.
The county is also facing a separate dispute over ballots from the November 2024 election. Under state law, the deadline for disposing of those ballots passed last week, but Curtis has kept them while calling for a federal investigation into that election.
On Monday, a judge declined to issue an emergency temporary restraining order preventing the county from destroying the ballots. Another hearing on the matter is scheduled for Thursday.
On Tuesday, the Shasta County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to authorize County Counsel Joseph Larmour to continue opposing the requested restraining order.
“The state is heavily involved in what’s going on,” Larmour told supervisors. “The secretary of state’s office is here today, and they are in communication with my office on a pretty frequent basis, based on some of the things that are moving.”
Larmour also confirmed that the county had received a federal subpoena but did not discuss its details.
Shasta County supervisors appointed Curtis to the elections position in 2025. The county has since called his fraud allegations “frivolous.”
“While some progress has been achieved, including the promotion of meaningful observation within the Elections Office, Mr. Curtis has failed significantly in other core responsibilities, undermining the very principles he was appointed to uphold,” the county said in a statement last month.
Curtis lost the June election to former Assistant Registrar of Voters Joanna Francescut. He is expected to remain in office until January 2027 and oversee the November midterm election.
The UCLA Voting Rights Project and former California Attorney General Xavier Becerra have also asked a Shasta County civil grand jury to seek Curtis’ removal from office.
“Sequestering ballots from the 2024 November general election in hopes that the federal government would seize the ballots prior to their destruction violates Curtis’s duty to keep those ballots within his custody,” they wrote.
Curtis responded by calling Becerra, a Democratic candidate for governor, a “little Hitler.”
