Why We Need an Elections Commission

Written by Guest Writer Margaret Cantrell

Commissions are government entities made up of unelected, unpaid citizens appointed by elected officials such as the Board of Supervisors. Their purpose is to research and investigate issues the Board needs to act on and make recommendations to the Board.

Our county’s Planning Commission is an example. As you can surmise, supervisors are not apt to have the background, knowledge, skills or time to do this research themselves.

Election commissions are allowed by law. The State and Federal governments have Election Commissions, and a number of California counties have committees looking into their elections. Many citizens have been concerned about the way elections were being conducted in Shasta County and the Election Commission is best way for the Board to be informed on the issues.

The Shasta County Elections Commission was formed in October of 2023, with each Supervisor nominating one constituent to sit on the commission. Some people who were appointed to the Commission in the past, were not willing to do research or participate in any meaningful way, which left the bulk of the work to only a few commissioners.

To date, the Commission has sent six recommendations to the Board and has numerous ad hoc committees actively working on additional recommendations. To see meeting dates and times, agendas, minutes, ad hoc committees, and recommendations go to: https://www.shastacounty.gov/clerk-board/page/shasta-county-elections-commission

Contrary to reporting from many local news outlets, there were numerous documented Shasta County policy errors in the handling of our elections that deserve to be investigated.

The biggest issue is the question of our sovereignty as a county. Prior to the introduction of the use of computer chips in our elections, people voted in local precincts. At the end of Election Day, the ballots were counted by local election workers, then placed in secure containers and transported to secure storagefacilities.

The Chain of Custody is a requirement under U.S. Federal and State election laws that means from the time you marked your ballot until it was counted and secured in an official container, it was not transported to another site, and it was in the presence of no less than 2 people. Another Election law requirement was Community members were able to be in charge of all aspects of Election Day, and assured the citizens of Shasta County fair and transparent elections.

Now in Shasta County, all ballots are transported to the elections office when the polls close, and then they are counted. Shasta County’s Election office is made up of a number of rooms where various tasks of the counting are performed making it difficult and often impossible for citizens to perform their legal right to observe every aspect of the ballot counting. If ballots are not secured in one place where the counting is done, Chain of Custody is lost.

Elections Commission served as a way to investigate, research and make recommendations to the Board of Supervisors about what it will take to fix the problems associated with such issues.

Another issue is the County no longer has sovereignty in its elections, because the State now controls our voter rolls electronically. The State now dictates how every little thing in elections through their electronics and their 65+ laws passed in the past few years, mostly telling us what we can’t do. Computer experts tell us there is not now, nor has there ever been, nor will there ever be a computer chip that cannot be hacked.

For those who do not want to believe there is a risk of fraud, I offer this example: Documents used for tracking the number of ballots cast were obtained from the Elections office that show 2,783 ballots whose votes were counted that have no voter registration in the system. That means there was no human being attached to those ballots.

What does this mean for you, the voter? If you vote yes on Measure A and one of those ballots showed a No vote on Measure A, your vote has been made null and void. It is as if you had not voted at all. It doesn’t matter what those ballots showed for voting options, 2,783 voters in Shasta County had their votes voided, they were disenfranchised.

Before the November 5^th election the citizens of Huntington Beach, a Charter City, voted to make Voter ID required to vote in their elections. The state, who passed a law against asking for ID, sued and the court upheld the right of a charter city to make its own laws

We are now a Charter County. This means either the Board can put measures on the ballot saying how we will conduct our local elections, or the citizens of Shasta County can place an initiative or referendum on the ballot through the petition process by securing a set number of signatures of registered Shasta County voters on a petition, and the state will have no jurisdiction over changes to local elections,

There is still much to investigate about past elections, and create solutions for future elections. The Shasta County Elections Commission serves the voters of Shasta County in these endeavors. The Elections Commission needs to remain in place until we are once again guaranteed fair and transparent elections where all legal votes are accurately counted and no illegal votes are counted.