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Six nonprofit voting rights advocacy groups have formally requested California’s Secretary of State, Shirley Weber, to provide monitoring and support for Shasta County’s upcoming elections. Among other requests, they’re asking her to deploy in-person monitoring of the local elections process both during the November 2023 and March 2024 elections.

Intervention by Weber’s office, the advocates write, could have “tremendous benefits . . . not only for the citizens of Shasta County but for all of the people who are watching these events unfold.”

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Several nonprofit voter advocacy groups have reached out to the California Secretary of State to ask Dr. Shirley Weber to monitor and support upcoming elections in Shasta County due to recent controversies over voting equipment and ballot counting. 

In a joint letter sent to California's chief elections officer on October 24, California Voter Foundation along with the ACLU of Northern California, California Common Cause, Disability Rights California, League of Women Voters of California and Verified Voting called upon Secretary Weber to take several actions in response to "grave concerns, which we believe call for urgent, decisive, and sustained response from your office."

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Will Shasta County get special dispensation from a new California law that essentially bans tallying votes by hand except in the tiniest towns?

Patrick Jones, who chairs the Shasta County Board of Supervisors, insists that votes will be counted by hand and has threatened litigation if the state tries to stop the county by invoking the provisions of AB 969.

Jones has suggested that because the county developed a hand-count system that the Secretary of State reviewed before AB 969 became law, it should go ahead with its plan.

The new law bans the manual counting of ballots in regular elections with more than 1,000 registered voters and in special elections with more than 5,000 registered voters.

There is a special election scheduled for Nov. 7 in Shasta County. Ballots and voter information guides have been mailed to eligible voters.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom is considering whether to sign a bill that would change some of the language you see on the referendum portion of your 2024 ballot. AB 421 would ask voters whether they want to “keep the law” or “overturn the law” and eliminate “Yes” or “No” choices. It would also require the top three sponsors of a referendum to appear on the Secretary of State’s voter information guide. But the final legislation is far more modest than its original version, which would have strengthened government oversight of signature collection, mandated more robust disclosures about the funders of referendum campaigns and required unpaid volunteers to obtain at least 10% of petition signatures. Those failed proposals, backed by labor groups, were favored by a majority of likely California voters, according to a June poll by the Public Policy Institute of California.