Weeks after deciding to ditch Dominion Voting Systems and become the largest government agency in the U.S. to hand-count its votes, Shasta County officials are now grappling with the complex logistics of carrying out that approach, accurately and legally, in a county with 200,000 inhabitants. people.

In a Supervisory Board meeting Tuesday seasoned with angry personal attacks and in which Supervisor

Kevin Crye

was told recall papers on stage mid-session. County officials told board members that counting ballots by hand could cost another $3 million over two years. The board eventually voted to fund seven

extra more

personnel positions to carry out the effort, even as stupefied citizens publicly complained about what they said were absurd new expenditures for a county struggling to provide

healthcare healthcare

and homeless services.

The planks

January

decision

earlier this year

to break the length of the province

–

existing relationship with Dominion, one of the largest suppliers of voting machines and software in the US, has gained national attention as an example of the chaos caused by baseless claims of voter fraud by the former president

Donald

Trump and his allies after his failed 2020

re-election re-election

offer. Last week, Fox News agreed to pay Dominion $787.5 million to settle a defamation lawsuit the company filed that accused the network of knowingly promoting false claims that its voting machines had been used to manipulate election results . As part of that settlement, Fox issued a statement acknowledging that “certain claims” made on the Dominion programming were false.

The fraud claims nevertheless found traction in Shasta County after a far-right majority, including Crye, was elected to the board

loading

November. Crye, the owner of a Ninja gym with no previous experience in elected office, recently announced that he has been in contact with MyPillow Chief Executive Mike Lindell, a prominent pro-Trump election conspiracy theorist, about helping Shasta in his plan to get his own voice control system.

Shastas

slide away

of a mechanized voting system has raised concerns among a

range number

from civil society groups, including the League of Women Voters and the American Civil Liberties Union, who have begged Shasta County to reconsider.

Thursday has the

stands

The assembly passed a bill that would make it more difficult for other California counties to follow Shasta’s lead. AB 969, which now goes to the

stands

Senate, would require a county board of supervisors to have a signed contract with a new voting system that meets state approval before canceling a contract with an old contract. The bill was sponsored by Councilman Gail Pellerin, a Democrat who formerly served as Santa Cruz County’s clerk of the electorate.

At Tuesday’s board meeting, supervisor Mary Rickert begged her colleagues to reverse their decision, saying it was irresponsible and terribly reckless.

I am shocked by what is happening in Shasta County,” she told them. “This will be your legacy.

Supervisor Patrick Jones, who led the movement to dump Dominion, shot back: This will be our legacy. We’re going to have free and fair elections in Shasta County.

That prompted Crye to say his legacy “will not be in politics.

“My legacy will be how I serve the Lord,” he continued. “That is my faith first, and my family second, and certainly children third.

Many in the audience, meanwhile, begged the board to reconsider the move. You build an inefficient, costly voting system based on lies and misinformation,

Susan Baremore

told the board. Take us back to the 21st century.

Other speakers said there was “no justifiable reason” for leaving machines to count votes, noting that they have

proved to be proven

more reliable than counting by hand. “Three million [dollars] of extra spending in the next two elections,’ said one man. ‘Where are you going to get that money from? Which law enforcement agency or fire department? Why would we do this?”

Jones countered at one point that for some in the audience “money seems more important than making sure our elections are fair”.

“Someone had to go first,” Crye said, referring to Shasta’s decision to conduct a hand count so close to the next election.

Cathy Darling Allen, the county’s elected voter registrar, opposed the decision to waive automatic voting. But given the board’s unwavering attitude, she’s tasked with figuring out how to conduct a valid voting process before the county’s next election, scheduled for November.

In a normal world, a policy change would have a preparation and research phase, said Darling Allen, the only Democrat elected to a district office in Shasta. We do it on the fly.

Still, she said, she is committed to ensuring free and fair elections, and has been doing little else for months. No one, anywhere, she said, counts the ballots by hand on the scale of the number of registered voters we have.

As of this week, there are more than 110,000 registered voters, according to the Shasta County Clerk and Clerk’s Office website. OKd addition by Jessica/AJ

She had initially hoped that November’s election could serve as a small trial run for the larger March presidential primaries. The only Shasta jurisdiction with scheduled elections was the Gateway Unified School District, which has an open seat in an area of ​​about 8,500 people.

But officials weren’t counting on another trend growing in Shasta County: recalls.

Some voters are now talking about increasing recalls targeting two other board members in the Gateway district. There is talk of a new recall in the Anderson school district. And the possible memory of

manager

Crye, who was presented with papers at Tuesday’s board meeting.

Supervisor Crye, you betrayed the trust of District 1 voters, Jeff Gorder, the county’s former public defender and a spokesperson for the recall group, said at the rally.

The recall petition alleges that in just four months in office, Crye had caused ridicule and embarrassment across the country in our county through his actions and votes. The petition denounced him for throwing out the voting system with no plan to replace it, and for seeking input from discredited election denier and voting conspirator Mike Lindell.

Crye did not respond to a request for comment. But in an interview with the local TV news channel

ABC

KRCR

abc 7,

he dismissed the recall as “the work of liberal Democrats against a conservative Republican.”

I’m going to get through this,’ he said. And I will come out much stronger.