Amended California bill would ban hand counts in elections with more than 1,000 voters

An updated version of a state bill introduced earlier this year in response to Shasta County's abrupt and controversial decision to ditch Dominion voting machines would essentially render moot the county's effort to hand count ballots.

Assembly Bill 969, the voting systems bill that was introduced in February, was recently amended to include language that would ban manual counting of ballots in elections with more than 1,000 registered voters.

There are more than 111,500 registered voters in Shasta County.

Authored by Assemblywoman Gail Pellerin, a Democrat, AB 969 was a response to Shasta County's decision in late January to ditch Dominion voting machines. The amended version of the bill is scheduled to be heard in the Senate’s Governance and Finance Committee on Wednesday — a week after the Senate’s Elections and Constitutional Amendments Committee passed the bill by a 6-1 vote on June 20.

The bill is an emergency statue, so it would take effect immediately upon Gov. Gavin Newsom’s signature.

“I would say the bill was crafted to defend the voters in Shasta County and make sure they are not disenfranchised,” Registrar of Voters Cathy Darling Allen said.

The Shasta County Republican Central Committee disagrees.

“The State Legislature and Governor are working overtime to thwart Shasta County from setting precedents in hand count and paper ballot elections. No new rules or laws were necessary,” the group recently posted on Facebook.

For the record, Shasta County voters have marked paper ballots in elections for decades. The ballots have then been tabulated by machines.

Pellerin told the Record Searchlight that she met with Secretary of State Shirley Weber before the bill was amended on May 13.

"She was pretty adamant about wanting to have something very strong in the (election) code that basically says hand counting ballots is not a voting system and so my office worked together" to make the change, Pellerin said.

Darling Allen, though, can’t predict AB 969’s fate.

“If the bill is successful, if the governor signs it, it has an effect on what we are doing. But for now, legislation is tricky, things change, things get held up, so we will continue to work … on a (hand-count) plan to submit to the Secretary of State,” she said.

How ballots will be counted in Shasta County has been not been certain since late January when supervisors voted 3-2 to terminate the county’s contract with Dominion Voting Systems. They did it without a state certified and federally qualified voting system in place, ignoring advice from Allen and then-county Counsel Rubin Cruse Jr.

In the months since, supervisors’ meetings have been beset by public outbursts and skepticism about the cost and manpower to do a hand count by supervisors who voted to terminate the Dominion contract.

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So far, the county has spent more than $1.5 million on a hand-counting system it hasn’t finalized. Even if it is finalized, there are no assurances at this point that the hand-counting system will be certified by the state.

What’s happening in Shasta County was the inspiration of Pellerin’s bill, which before the amendment would have only required the county board of supervisors to have both a transition plan and a replacement contract in place with a state-certified system before terminating an existing voting system contract.

Pellerin introduced the bill about three weeks after Shasta Supervisors Patrick Jones, Kevin Crye and Chris Kelstrom voted to ditch the Dominion machines on Jan. 23. Supervisors Mary Rickert and Tim Garman voted no.

In late March, Darling Allen, in a 26-page analysis on hand counting, said the county would likely need 1,300 workers to help with the tally and rent a facility large enough to conduct the work securely.

She based her numbers on proposed hand-counting regulations by the Secretary of State, which would require for each contest that the counting board have no less than four individuals to carry out the count. There would also have to be at least one person per counting board to supervise.

The proposed state rules would also require enough space to allow the counting of no more than 25 ballots per stack.

Deputy County Executive Officer Erin Bertain has told supervisors that the total estimated cost increases to go to a hand count through fiscal year 2024-25 would be at a minimum $3.8 million. She called it a conservative estimate.

Crye and Jones have been extremely skeptical of the costs and number of workers needed to do a hand count. In some cases, they have relied on “experts” who’ve fomented 2020 election conspiracy theories and have never overseen a county election in California.

Crye in March flew to Minnesota to visit MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell to get his advice on hand counting ballots. Dominion sued MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell last year, alleging $1.2 billion in damages to its brand for alleged defamatory comments Lindell repeatedly made about the firm, according to USA Today.

In contrast, Darling Allen has been the clerk/registrar of voters in Shasta County since 2004.

At a recent board meeting, Crye argued that in much larger California counties, the number of ballots hand counted during state-mandated post-election audits are essentially the same number of the total ballots cast in Shasta County.

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“So, when you’re looking at what the Secretary of State is doing, saying they’re creating all these new regulations and all this new way to do things, we’ve been doing this for a long time and there’s county’s that have been effectively counting 50, 60, 70, 80 almost upwards of 100,000 votes because in some of those counties — San Bernardino, San Diego, L.A. — you’re talking millions of voters, so that 1 percent is actually really close to what Shasta County has,” Crye said at the June 13 board meeting.

Darling Allen said elections are complicated and that is why simple characterizations like the one Crye made “are just not valid.”

“So that is really an apples-to-oranges comparison, and you can’t underestimate how important that is,” Darling Allen said of Crye’s claim. “When we do a 1 percent audit, we are auditing ballots that have already been counted.”

That means that, among other things, ballot envelopes don’t have to be open, signatures don’t have to be examined and verified. The exhaustive process involved before the count has been done by the time ballots are audited, she said.

Meanwhile, though Shasta County has terminated its contract with Dominion, the county would be able to count ballots mechanically should AB 969 become law.

Supervisors in April approved $950,000 in spending to purchase Hart voting machines to help with hand counting ballots by satisfying federal disability requirements.

David Benda covers business, development and anything else that comes up for the USA TODAY Network in Redding. He also writes the weekly "Buzz on the Street" column. He’s part of a team of dedicated reporters that investigate wrongdoing, cover breaking news and tell other stories about your community. Reach him on Twitter @DavidBenda_RS or by phone at 1-530-338-8323. To support and sustain this work, please subscribe today.

This article originally appeared on Redding Record Searchlight: Bill turns up heat on Shasta County's effort to hand count ballots