Part 2: Shasta County Supervisors Kevin Crye, Corkey Harmon and Chris Kelstrom Choose Florida Fabulist Clint Curtis for Next County ROV

....The final candidate interviewed by the board last Wednesday, Ellie Leigh Sharp, a Subject Matter Expert II and top-down integration specialist for the Nevada Secretary of State Elections Division, has worked in elections offices since 2007—about the same length of time as Assistant ROV Joanna Francescut. She was clearly more qualified than Curtis, who has no direct elections experience.

Like all the candidates, Sharp declined to comment on the state of Shasta County’s election system and instead described what a healthy system might look like.

“So the nature of elections, you have normally two systems,” Sharp said. “You have your front end system, which is your voter registration system. And then you have a separate system which handles your tabulations. Handling that first system that manages all of the voter information, who is issued a ballot, whether that ballot has been returned and giving that voter their voter credit...

from the rest.

\ ...Sharp said she’s worked with Dominion Voting Systems and ES&S and has never experienced any issues with optical vote tabulators....

( really ? in the last election weren't balotts rejected cuz of invisible ink overspray ? ) \

....After the recess, Crye began by claiming he didn’t believe there was rampant election fraud in Shasta County when he voted with former District 5 Supervisor Patrick Jones and Kelstrom to switch to hand counted ballots in 2023.

“That wasn’t something that I didn’t necessarily believe, but I did believe the system needed to be changed.”

Got it. The voting system needs to be completely revamped for no reason.

Crye called it a “misnomer” (sic) that Francescut had finished second in the first ROV sweepstakes last year when he in fact caused that outcome by endorsing Thomas Toller for ROV and threatening Jones and Kelstrom he would vote for Francescut if they insisted on voting for Curtis.

“And as I prayed about my decision as the vote came down the dais, it was really, I felt very convicted that I knew the easy way would be to say, no, we’re going to go back to what we had talked about originally,” Crye said. “The hard way was going to be voting to get rid of machines. And my life was a living hell for a year and a half after it.”

Such a snowflake, this guy who made all our lives a living hell with his magical thinking, especially our elections administrators and staff for, it bears repeating, absolutely no reason. No election fraud of any magnitude has been detected in Shasta County. Crye claims he forced Toller’s selection to save the elections office from totally collapsing.

But now that Trump’s back in office and writing insane unconstitutional executive orders daily, Crye thinks it’s time to give Curtis, who has zero experience running elections, a second look.

“I think now is the time to do things differently and lead in a different way,” Crye said. “So I’m going to make a motion that we appoint Clint Curtis to be our next.”...

Kelstrom’s second was drowned out by loud complaints from the Francescut supporters.

“Hey, hey, hey, let’s let’s remember this is a job interview!” Crye exclaimed for the sixth or seventh time in the meeting.

That gave Long the space to fire out a substitute motion and it was a doozy.

“So before we go any farther with this, I’m going to make a motion,” Long said. “I was hoping I was not going to have to go to this point. But my motion is going to be that I do not believe Mr. Curtis meets qualifications. And so what I did was …”

Crye immediately began sputtering.

“Wait, wait, please, please,” Long said. “What I did was, I have looked at the actual special meeting language and I did a closed circuit so I could see the exact words. And what it said is as follows. BA or related managerial experience or leadership experience.”

“OK, now I went to the actual flyer that was the handout for the minimum qualifications. And it said BA in public administration, business administration or related field. Four years of leadership in an organization that included performing county clerk or elections functions.”

Curtis meets none of this criteria.

“His qualifications are not something that we can go any farther with,” Long said. “So I make the motion that I do not believe Mr. Curtis meets the minimum qualifications under either the packet provided or the actual board vote on 3/27 and request he be excluded from further consideration.”....Kelstrom tried to drown out Long.

“Miss Underwood and Miss Sharp, thank you so much for coming out here,” he said. “You guys both knocked it out of the park. You were absolutely both amazing. And Joanna, I you know, I you know, I think you’re great and I think you do a great job and I want you here, you know, 20 more years in Shasta County.”

“I think we are at a time right now where Mr. Curtis has been talking from the roof, yelling from the rooftops about these machines and this and that,” Kelstrom continued. “He has a solution. His solution should make your side happy because it’ll prove there’s absolutely no voter fraud. That’s what you believe is his system will prove that the other side that thinks there is massive voter fraud.”

This is nonsense. Curtis has presented no “system” to the board, hand count or otherwise.

“And I think his plan is to install this system so that the other 57 counties in California can hopefully jump on board and copy it. And it may go across the whole United States. I don’t think he’s fine on staying here for 20 years.”

It’s that messianic strain of Trump Derangement Syndrome working inside Kelstrom’s gigantic skull.

At this point, Plummer had had enough of the shenanigans and made his own substitute motion....

OK, there’s four reasons why I don’t support Clint Curtis for ROV,” Plummer said. “The first is he’s had 25 years to travel the world, travel the country, getting people to overturn, you know, election related issues that he alleges and to incorporate his system. And not one community, I mean, we heard him earlier today, not one community in the whole country has done it.”

“Now, I’m for trying new things, but why would we try something that everyone else has soundly rejected? And he couldn’t name one in 12 years, according to his resume, couldn’t name one case that he’s won. I mean, so something’s wrong there, right?”

Plummer noted that Curtis has run for Congress in Florida as a Democrat in a Republican district four times on the issue of election integrity, losing badly every time.

“So what we see is a track record of failure of his ideas to actually get any traction,” Plummer said. “And I cannot responsibly advocate for those ideas to be implemented in Shasta County when everyone else has soundly rejected it. So that’s the first reason.

Reason No. 2 for rejecting Curtis: the inconsistencies in his job application.

“I mean, we heard today that the Dominican Republic office is closed,” Plummer said. “It’s still on his resume in terms of his legal office on the application. He talks about convincing the whole county to get on board with hand counting. But then today said, no, that’s not even possible. So what’s going on there?”

As others have noted, we only have Curtis’s word that he’s consulted with the governments of Germany, Netherlands and Italy. Or with Kamala Harris’ 2010 campaign for California Attorney General.

“So it’s not adding up,” Plummer said. “This is a highly detailed job where you have to get the details right. And even in an application to our county, there are a number of things that don’t add up and don’t make sense.”...

Reason No. 3 Plummer wants Curtis out of the equation? During the interview process for ROV last year, Curtis opined he might fire the entire staff and start over.

“And then the last thing is when I asked him about, you know, are there serious problems with Shasta County?” Plummer said. “He said he doesn’t want to speculate. So we’re going to go ahead and change and the expert in the room is saying that he doesn’t know if there’s anything wrong, but we’re going to go ahead and what will end up being investing a lot of money if we’re going to do this system on the basis of something that we don’t know exists.”

“So for those four reasons, I will not support this,” Plummer concluded. “And I’m going to go ahead and make a substitute motion to appoint Joanna as the ROV. And the reason for that, I think the other two candidates were are, you know, somewhat qualified, particularly Ms. Sharp. But the situation we have a year to an election. We’ve had tons of turbulence in this office over the last three years. We don’t know, you know, there’s going to be a six to nine month time frame for any of them to get up to speed in terms of actually knowing something.

There were vociferous complaints from the MAGA side of aisle and Crye threatened one person with removal. Long seconded Plummer’s motion and proceeded to drill down on Curtis’s employment record, beseeching Harmon to apply his best business sense to the candidate’s sketchy work history....

If you were hiring somebody to run your business—and you’re going to see where I’m going with this in just a minute—you would hire the most experienced person with pertinent, direct, local experience that knows how to run your company that you wouldn’t you wouldn’t hire somebody that would possibly involve you in litigation. You wouldn’t involve those kinds of things. You would just pick the most applicable person with the proper experience.”

A retired RPD lieutenant, Long did his fair share of hiring while on the force. Direct relevant experience for the job matters, Long believes.

“So I would just ask you to consider that Joanna has 16 years of experience with Shasta County in our elections office,” he said.

Then he turned to Curtis’ 2004 claim that Florida House Speaker Tom Feeney had asked him to write a vote-rigging software program while Curtis was employed at Yang Enterprises Inc. in 2000.

“So let’s go into Mr. Curtis’ history so that the board knows what they’re voting on,” Long said. “And he claimed in the year 2000, October, September of 2000, that he was approached by his employer, Ms. Yang from YEI, and asked on behalf of her and Tom Feeney, who went on to the Florida House of Representatives and eventually he became a congressman, we was asked to write software that could not be detected.”

Like a cat raking its nails across a chalkboard, Crye attempted to bring Long’s discourse to a screeching halt.

So much for transparency.

“Supervisor Long can I ask you a question?” Crye whined. “I just want to ask you a question because if I personally, and it’s not because I, whatever, I don’t think it behooves Shasta County to disparage a candidate who flew across the country.”

Wait a second. Wasn’t this supposed to be a job interview?

Perhaps forgetting that he already disparaged Francescut, Crye asked Long if it was OK if he disparaged the other three applicants after Long was finished critiquing Curtis. Sure, Long shrugged. He then presented much of the information about Curtis, YEI and the alleged vote-rigging software first published by Orlando Weekly in 2006 and first published locally by A News Café last year and last week.

Sensing Long was building up a head of steam, Crye once again attempted to derail is train of thought.

“So if they’re not substantiated, Supervisor Long, I mean, this has been 12 minutes.”

Long explained his claims were substantiated, a matter of public record, but he was drowned out by Francescut supporter Christain Gardenier, who loudly objected to Crye’s interruption....

I’d like Mr. Gardner removed,” Crye said. “Yes, we’re going to take a break. So we are at recess while Mr. Gardner is removed. Sorry, you have to clear the room. You can thank Mr. Gardner on your way out. So clear the room, please, while he’s removed.”

This reporter stayed at his post inside the chambers, understanding that A News Café publisher Doni Chamberlain was forcibly removed by a Shasta County Sheriff deputy last year after a similar public protest inside the chambers. Fortunately, Gardenier agreed to leave the chambers; he’s a big guy to forcibly remove.

The meeting reconvened roughly 8 minutes later, at which time Harmon once again complained about being the swing vote on the Shasta County Board of Supervisors.

“I’m not ready to vote and I want to make a motion,” Harmon said. “I know you’d like you’d like to hear me vote because that would tell you what you need to know. Or these two guys (Plummer and Long) would like to hear me vote. I’m the one in the hot seat. But I’m saying right now I’m not ready to vote. And OK, with everything that you said, I want to make a motion to bring Clint Curtis back to the podium.”...

But first, Harmon wanted Long to finish his statement.

“This is not meant to slander Mr. Curtis in any fashion,” Long said. “I’m simply saying this was my investigation. These were legitimate sources that I found from his signed affidavit. So it is my belief that these are all factual, not alleged. These are all factual, but that is my opinion.”

The board voted 5-0 to approve Harmon’s substitute motion and bring Curtis back for questioning.

Curtis proceeded to tell the same story he’s been repeating since 2004, as if most of his allegations against Feeney and YEI haven’t been adjudicated in the past 20 years, and not in his favor. Again he claimed he couldn’t be fired from the FDOT because he was a contractor, and claimed his supervisor received millions of dollars from her whistleblower lawsuit. It was $750,000, and back in 2006, Curtis told the Orlando Weekly he missed the deadline for filing a whistleblower lawsuit after he was fired from FDOT.

Today, he’s pretending he wasn’t fired from the FDOT after all.

“They couldn’t fire me because I’m a contractor, right?” he explained to Harmon. “But they fired (my supervisor). She filed a wrongful termination suit and got millions of dollars. I was a contractor. I got nothing. So it went on and on and on.”

As previously stated, his supervisor received $750,000 from her lawsuit, not “millions.” The only reason Curtis’s beef with Feeney, YEI and FDOT went “on and on and on” is because Curtis himself continued to push unsubstantiated conspiracy theories about his former employers, including self-publishing a novel and a dubious BradBlog video.

Curtis claims writing the vote-rigging software was “child’s play” but Plummer questioned that assertion....

I just want to say, I mean, the idea that our election systems can be hacked at the simplicity of it being child’s play is kind of wild, because if it’s that easy, it would have to be happening rampantly, all the time, everywhere, completely controlling our elections,” Plummer said. “And yet no one has … even those who are suggesting that are not alleging that.”

Once again Crye butted in.

“So what I would say with this, I think Joanna is a remarkable human being,” Crye lied. “Unequivocally, no buts, no anything else. I think she’s a phenomenal human being. I have nothing negative to say about her, personally.”

He’d just aggressively raked Francescut over the coals like no other candidate an hour or so before this statement.

“I believe in this role and where we are right now and what we’re seeing with executive orders and where we’re going in Shasta County, again, I mean, I didn’t get into this to make it comfortable. I got into this to do what I think was best and would move the county and what I’m now realizing at times the state or even the country forward.”

The messianism is strong with this one!

“There has never been anything that has been substantiated or we would be doing things differently,” Long countered. “So with that, I will just close and confirm my recommendation for Joanna.”

“So what I am saying is let’s just settle down here a minute,” Long continued. “Someone who has been dedicating her life to this, has been following the laws to the letter, is open to suggestion based on changing laws, based on board direction. And let’s just settle down and let’s stop the controversy in our community. We need to heal. We need to not be subject to so many lawsuits. We need to settle down this narrative unless it’s proven.”

At some point during the conversation, Harmon decided he’d heard enough. Crye, Kelstrom and Harmon, each of whom apologized for not hiring Francescut on the merits, voted 3-2 against Plummer’s substitution motion to hire Francescut. They then voted 3-2 to hire the totally unqualified Clint Curtis to be the next Shasta County ROV.

This reporter buttonholed Curtis after the vote and asked him a number of pertinent questions.

“What was your position at the Florida Department of Transportation March 2001 to April 2002?” I asked.

“I don’t know the exact dates or anything,” Curtis replied.

“Okay, and so why were you fired in 2002 from the Florida Department of Transportation?”

After several evasive answers, Curtis finally blamed it on former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.

“Because it was Jeb Bush’s era, and he basically was a corrupt piece of crap.”

“So you said in there that you did consider that a firing?” I asked Curtis.

“I did.”

“So why was that not on your application?”

“Because legally, it’s not a firing, I can put it at that,” Curtis said.

I asked Curtis to provide me with any contacts in Germany, Netherlands and Italy who can verify he advised them on election integrity issues. He said he hasn’t kept a list of that information. I asked Curtis to point me toward any clients he’s represented on election integrity issues. He refused to name one, citing attorney client privilege.

Yet Curtis claims representing such clients qualifies him to Shasta County’s next ROV.

Can the Florida fabulist pass the background check necessary to ascend to the ROV position?

It seems highly unlikely if truth is involved in the equation.

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now look at some of my counties replies below this article..

0 Reply Harry Markopolos Harry Markopolos 9 hours ago Reply to Jolly You only see some comments

0 Reply Becky Becky 8 hours ago Reply to Harry Markopolos Absolutely not. Having a two month case here or there as a lawyer gives you no experience performing clerk/rov functions. The HR director should never have passed him though. What do we know about her, because it appears she is doing Crye’s bidding too.

1 Reply Randy Randy 1 day ago “as I prayed about my decision”. And of course any decision you make after, ‘praying’, makes you blameless for the outcome. Makes sense. Wonder if God told him to stage the plant in his ‘town hall meeting’?

8 Reply Candace CC Candace CC 14 hours ago Reply to Randy An elected official publicly speaking about their use of personal prayer as part of their selection process for appointing an ROV should have no place in government. Crye does it to pander to the “Christian” MAGA folks in the audience. News Flash Supervisor Crye – praying isn’t an instant qualification for determining you are a “good” or fair person.

9 Reply Peter Peter 14 hours ago Reply to Randy No it wasn’t God. That idea came from praying to his Patron Saints. Saint Anselmo and Saint Lindell.

4 Reply Candace Gemstone Candace Gemstone 6 hours ago Reply to Peter Maybe he prays to “Teenjus” to keep the government school grants coming his way.

0 Reply Mrs. T Mrs. T 1 day ago Crye is such a liar. He has to go!

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