In summary
The only county in California having difficulty counting ballots is Shasta, whose elections office is headed by Clint Curtis, one of the Trump deniers.
Ultimately, it wasn’t shady ballot-stuffing bogeymen or federal agents who caused election-night disruptions in Northern California’s rural Republican stronghold, Shasta County.
It was the apparent incompetence of Clint Curtis, the county leader who turned down the election and will soon be unemployed.
Journalists including CalMatters partner Shasta Scout reported numerous problems with the vote count in Shasta County, a 2.5-hour drive north of Sacramento. They reported overflowing ballot boxes, understaffing, workers putting ballots in the wrong bins, computer glitches and voters arriving at their polling place to find signs saying the location had been moved.
Most counties released initial results just after 8 p.m., as polls closed, but Shasta didn’t report any until around 10 p.m. because elections officials hadn’t set up their computer system properly, making it the only county in the state that as of Wednesday morning had not finished counting the ballots of those who voted in person.
A Shasta Scout reporter asked Curtis Tuesday evening why the additional employees he claimed to have hired in recent months had not retrieved ballots from the drop boxes. Curtis himself left the election office to collect the ballots when he should have been supervising the count.
“Because I’m stupid,” Curtis told Shasta Scout. “So when I see it needs to be done, I do it myself. »
Curtis did not immediately respond to an interview request from CalMatters on Wednesday.
Shasta County’s problems are an exception in California. No major problems were reported in California’s other 57 counties, despite pre-election concerns that the Trump administration might try to interfere with the vote count after federal officials made unprecedented threats against California election workers.
Curtis brought the FBI to Shasta County
Thanks to Curtis, it emerged this fall that Shasta County could become ground zero in President Donald Trump’s war on blue-state elections, as his prosecutors sought to prove Trump’s long-standing claims that Democrats were rigging elections against him.
Curtis, a longtime election denier, made wild claims that nefarious actors filled drop boxes with fake ballots during the June primary. He lost his bid for a full term in that election.
Curtis reduced the number of ballot drop boxes in Shasta County from 13 to four last year. Then, after the June election, Curtis claimed a plot was afoot to stuff ballot boxes after he and his team found ballots they said contained paper that looked, felt and smelled funny.
His claims caught the attention of the Trump administration’s top law enforcement officials.
Authorities sent a team of FBI agents to the county elections office in September, armed with bolt cutters, to enter a room containing old ballots to which Curtis had padlocked and thrown away the key. Curtis said agents did not seize any ballots.
The status of the federal investigation in Shasta County is unclear. The US Department of Justice has not acknowledged the existence of an investigation.
Curtis’ replacement takes over in January
Curtis, a minor celebrity among election deniers in Trump’s MAGA movement, had never played an official role in the election before the far-right members who controlled the Shasta County Board of Supervisors in 2025 appointed him.
Curtis, a lawyer and former Democratic congressional candidate in Florida and California, lost the June primary to Joanna Francescut, a former Shasta County elections official who helped run the elections office before Curtis fired her.
Francescut will take over in January.
