Free Republic

Just two weeks into his new role as the top elections official in Shasta County, Clint Curtis abruptly fired the county’s most veteran elections official. Curtis, an out-of-town lawyer who will now handle the elections in the northern California county, shocked the community when he was appointed the interim county registrar of voters in early May. He will temporarily serve in the role until the 2026 election. Despite the transitional nature of his job, he’s still making big changes. Barely a month into the job, Curtis handed Joanna Francescut, the former assistant county registrar of voters, a termination letter. Curtis...

A new election rule in Georgia that would require ballots on election night be hand counted has been blocked by a state judge and will not take effect before Nov. 5. Fulton County Superior Judge Robert McBurney said “the public interest is not disserved by pressing pause.” His eight-page ruling went on to note how “this election season is fraught” and “memories of January 6 have not faded away, regardless of one’s view of that date’s fame or infamy.” He said the new rule would cause “administrative chaos” given the limited time left to instruct poll workers. "Anything that adds...

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. Newsom and other state officials then stepped in to stop the plan. On Oct. 4, Newsom signed a law...

Colorado legislation supposedly aimed at increasing election security effectively outlawed hand-counting ballots in most of the state, and election officials are the ones who requested the ban. The Colorado Election Security Act (SB22-153) was drafted in response to Mesa County clerk Tina Peters allowing election skeptics to replicate hard drives to check for evidence of fraud. SB22-153 contains a number of provisions, with the state government mostly focusing on those outlawing replication, and banning people convicted of insurrection or sedition from becoming election officials. At a meeting of the National Association of State Election Directors (NASED), Colorado’s elections director Judd...

Counties across the U.S. are switching to hand-counting election ballots instead of using electronic tabulation machines over concerns about the accuracy and security of the devices. At the forefront of the transition is election integrity advocate Linda Rantz, who says her model, now being used in a Missouri county, is less expensive than critics continue to say it is. While the security of the country's election system has always been a concern, the matter burst into the public eye in the 2020 presidential election, amid the concerns of then-President Trump and others about the reliability and transparency of voting machines....

OAKLAND — It will be at least several days before all votes are counted in the hotly contested Oakland mayoral election, county officials said Monday. Former U.S. Rep. Ron Dellums is 214 votes short of the 50 percent plus one he needs to avoid a runoff against City Council President Ignacio De La Fuente, according to elections officials. There are at least 2,000 provisional ballots to be counted in the mayoral election, Acting Registrar of Voters Dave Macdonald said. Countywide, there are about 11,000 ballots left to tally and an unknown number of damaged or mismarked ballots. Of the 76,496...