CVF in the News

By Carly Severn, KQED, January 30, 2024

Excerpt:

The 2024 general election in November will decide who will be the President of the United States for the next four years. But way before that, California voters have another big election on March 5: Our state’s presidential primary. 

‘The good news is that nobody has to vote with the ballot that they get in the mail if they don’t want to.’ Kim Alexander, president of the nonpartisan California Voter Foundation

Among other things, the March primary election allows voters to choose the candidate from their preferred political party that they ultimately want to run for president in November. But if you’re registered as a “no party preference” voter (sometimes referred to as an “independent”), you’ll need to take action to be able to vote in these races. Otherwise, the ballot you’ll receive starting in early February won’t have any presidential candidates on it.

By Vicki Gonzalez, CapRadio, January 9, 2024

Excerpt:

California is likely to play a more impactful role in the 2024 election as our state’s primary has been moved up to Tuesday, March 5– also known as “Super Tuesday.” Ballots will be sent out next month and voting starts soon after, but there is concern over voter enthusiasm and participation. Joining us to discuss what we all need to know as the primary approaches are Kim Alexander, president of the California Voter Foundation, and Mindy Romero, founder and director of the Center for Inclusive Democracy. (Full Audio)

By Frank Stoltze, LAist, November 28, 2023

Excerpt:

The L.A. County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday approved a proposal to publish candidate statements online in addition to inside printed sample ballots, a move that will dramatically reduce candidates’ cost of getting their statements in front of voters.

Right now, many candidates do not buy space in sample ballots because they say it's cost prohibitive.

The cost is more than $200,000 to get each countywide candidate’s 200-word statement in the sample ballot, according to Registrar Dean Logan. The fee is based on printing and mailing costs to send the guide to 5.6 million registered voters, he said.

Under the plan, the Registrar of Voters would publish candidates' statements online for a fee of about $280, starting with the March 2024 primary election.

By Fox 40 Staff, Fox 40, November 13, 2023
By David Benda and Damon Arthur, Record Searchlight, November 8, 2023

Excerpt:

Tuesday’s special election filled a seat on the Gateway Unified School District board and created a fire protection district in the historic community of Shasta.

While the eyes of election observers were on Shasta County, voter turnout was extremely low.

With all precincts reporting and a portion of mail-in ballots counted, county election officials reported less than 20% of the people eligible to vote cast a ballot.

Votes left to be counted include provisional ballots, ballots still in the mail, vote-by-mail ballots that were dropped off at precincts and damaged ballots.

By Annelise Pierce, Shasta Scout, November 7, 2023

Excerpt:

By 8:15 a.m., poll workers at the Larry J. Farr Community Center in Shasta Lake said they’d had only four voters show up at their voting site, which includes two precincts. That’s not too surprising because today’s ballot for this area of the county affects only a small subset of the community. 

Registered voters in what is known as Area 2 of the Gateway Unified School District Board will decide whether to elect Casey Bowden or Camille King to fill the District Board’s vacant, and hotly contested, fifth seat.

Mary Axelson, precinct inspector at the Shasta Lake Community Center polling site, confirmed for Shasta Scout that the site has a single accessible Hart InterCivic voting machine, which is intended to serve the needs of those with disabilities but can be used by any voter upon request. No voters have requested to use it so far, she said.

By Suzanne Potter, Public News Service, November 6, 2023

Excerpt:

Election Hero Day and tomorrow, "good government" groups will be monitoring the local election in rural Shasta County, to support election workers there and make sure the laws are followed.

Recently, members of the Board of Supervisors said they wanted a hand count on election night, even though state law requires the first count to be done using optical scanners.

Dora Rose, deputy director of the League of Women Voters of California, will be in Shasta County for the vote. She condemned the county's attempt to get rid of voting machines and spread fear about potential voter fraud.

"A few key decision-makers have perpetrated the false claim that the 2020 election was stolen," Rose explained. "Based on that false claim, they took very risky, very disruptive actions that could have destabilized the election."

By David Benda, Record Searchlight, November 3, 2023

Excerpt:

Shasta County Registrar of Voters Cathy Darling Allen anticipates officials from the California Secretary of State’s Office to be in Redding for the upcoming special election.

Darling Allen told the Record Searchlight in an email that she believes "we will have observers here from the (Secretary of State) next week.”

The Secretary of State’s Office did not immediately reply to an email that asked if its representatives planned to be in Shasta County for the election and if so, in what capacity.

Tuesday’s election will be the first in Shasta County since Assembly Bill 969 became law. Signed on Oct. 4 by Gov. Gavin Newsom, the law bans the hand counts in elections in all but the smallest jurisdictions in California.

The new law targets Shasta County’s controversial move to eliminate machine tallies in local elections.

By Jessica Garrison, Hailey Branson-Potts, Los Angeles Times, November 2, 2023

Excerpt:

In many elections, the suspense comes from wondering which candidate is going to win.

In Shasta County, the question everyone is hanging on is: Will the local election next Tuesday bring unrest or even violence? 

The county of about 200,000 people on the northern rim of the Central Valley made national news last spring when a far-right majority on the Board of Supervisors, swept up in unproven voter fraud claims, decided to dump Dominion voting machines and hand-count its ballots instead.

Gov. Gavin Newsom and other state officials then stepped in to stop the plan. On Oct. 4, Newsom signed a law limiting counties from hand-counting ballots. In response, Patrick Jones, chair of the Board of Supervisors, said he favored such a count anyway, declaring in the local newspaper: “I believe [the new law] does not affect Shasta County.”

By George Winship, A News Cafe, November 1, 2023

Excerpt:

Like a mongrel cross of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s “The Magic Flute” and Gioachino Rossini’s opera buffa “The Barber of Seville,” Patrick Henry Jones led his merry troupe of political players — better known as the Shasta County Board of Supervisors — on an 8-hour romp through a repertoire of old favorites cleverly coupled with some new agenda items to keep audience members guessing whether “The Gunsmith of Shasta” might be a hit or a miss.

Parts of the meeting were a farce as acts, cleverly designed as agenda items, were moved willy-nilly out of order while others were postponed to another yet-to-be-announced show date.

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