THE BUZZ — The legacy of election denial in 2020 is haunting California in one of the last bright red corners of the state. The last time we had a presidential contest on the ballot, rampant misinformation and false claims about rigged voting systems led to an epidemic of distrust across the country that culminated in a conspiracy-driven siege on the U.S. Capitol. California, despite its deep blue roots, was not immune. Beneath the thick top layer of the state’s Democratic control is a passionate base of conservative voters that even the Republican Party sometimes has to rein in. Pandemic rage, Donald Trump’s loss in his reelection bid and conspiracies peddled by cable news pundits have encouraged suspicions about how the state conducts its elections. It’s a troubling paradox for the state GOP, which for years has advocated for early and mail voting to counter some of the distrust within the party. Alienating voters could drive down turnout in a state where Republicans haven’t held a statewide office since 2006. Headwinds could get even stronger depending on the Republican presidential nominee. If Trump earns the party nomination and continues to sow doubt in voting systems (as he did on Hannity earlier this week), it could hamper Republican outcomes in California — not ideal considering the several battleground House races shaping up here. Election doubts have taken root in a very real way in Shasta County, 200 miles north of Sacramento, where a vote this year by far-right supervisors has election officials on edge about how to conduct upcoming vote counts. The county, which for years used Dominion voting systems to tabulate the ballots of its more than 100,000 registered voters, is now going to rely on humans to hand-count the tens of thousands of pieces of paper. It’s a move that was encouraged by pro-Trump conspiracy mongers, including MyPillow exec Mike Lindell. It could make the count harder to verify and end up costing the small, rural county millions of dollars over several years. "It's more prone to error, and it's also prone to fraud and interference," said Kim Alexander, president of the nonpartisan California Voter Foundation. "The more people involved in handling ballots, the more risk there is that somebody is going to be able to mark a ballot." To comply with California’s election rules, Shasta County will need 1,300 people to count votes in November 2024, according to a preliminary estimate from Cathy Darling Allen, the county clerk and registrar of voters and board chair of the voter foundation. "It's a dramatically different operation, a dramatically different focus and a dramatically different amount of staff and time required,” she said. “Whether we can meet reporting deadlines hand-tabulating the presidential general elections — I have serious doubts about the feasibility of that." This doesn’t happen anywhere else in California as of now. Secretary of State Shirley Weber is in the process of creating regulations around the uncommon process, which could include requiring an electronic voting system to verify the results of the hand count — something that Shasta is prepared to do, according to Allen. The Legislature has also taken note. Assemblymember Gail Pellerin, a Democrat who spent more than 25 years as the chief elections official in Santa Cruz County, is carrying a bill to prohibit hand-counting paper ballots in any county with more than 1,000 registered voters. Among the opponents are state Sen. Brian Dahle, who represents Shasta County. At a hearing in June, Dahle said he doesn’t agree with everything that the Board of Supervisors has done, but “for me, it boils down to local control and the ability for locals to choose their destinies on what systems they choose.” Dahle voted against the bill, as did his wife, Assemblymember Megan Dahle, who also represents the county. Pellerin’s bill passed the Assembly and needs a vote in the Senate Appropriations Committee before heading to the floor. If it's adopted, it would spare Shasta from having to undergo a "convoluted and complex" voting process, as Allen, the registrar of voters, called it. But it won’t necessarily stop election skepticism from taking root in other places around the state. "I have been doing this job in the same way for 20 years. and the last three years, the narrative around elections being conducted in our county has changed dramatically,” Allen said. “It's not because of anything I've done, or anyone in my office has done."
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