California Attorney General Rob Bonta and Secretary of State Shirley Weber have filed a lawsuit against Shasta County, challenging a voter-approved measure that would drastically limit mail-in voting and impose new voter ID requirements. The lawsuit, filed Friday in the 3rd District Court of Appeal, argues that Measure B violates state election laws and must be struck down before the November election.
Measure B, approved by Shasta County voters in a recent election, would require all voting to take place in person on a single day, create a separate county voter registration system disconnected from the state's uniform system, and restrict voting by mail to only the infirm, military personnel, and U.S. citizens living overseas.
This would upend the voting method used by an overwhelming majority of Californians, including in Shasta County, where most voters currently cast ballots by mail.
"Measure B is legally indefensible. It directly conflicts with state law and threatens to upend the orderly administration of elections," Attorney General Bonta said in a statement.
"No city or county gets to unilaterally rewrite our election rules."
The lawsuit names Shasta County Registrar of Voters Clint Curtis as a defendant. Curtis, a Florida-based attorney who has made unsubstantiated claims about rigged voting machines since the early 2000s, was appointed to the position last year after previous registrars resigned citing health issues exacerbated by job stress.
He was voted out of office in the June 2 primary election and will be replaced in January by Joanna Francescut, the former longtime assistant registrar whom he had fired.
Richard Gallardo, a leader of the citizens' group Save Shasta Elections, which wrote Measure B and collected signatures to place it on the ballot, told reporters that he expected a lawsuit. "We don't like the state laws.
We want to enact our own local election reform. Yes, we do expect the state to sue us," Gallardo said.
He added that if Measure B passed, the county should "fully and fervently" defend it in court because it's "the will of the voters."
The state's lawsuit notes that similar litigation was successful against Huntington Beach, where an appellate court struck down a city charter amendment requiring voter ID, and the California Supreme Court declined to hear the city's appeal. Bonta and Weber are urging a quick decision because election officials must begin mailing voter information guides and ballots for the November election in September and early October.
Shasta County has a history of election skepticism. In 2023, the Board of Supervisors, influenced by unfounded election fraud allegations promoted by former President Trump, ditched Dominion voting machines and opted to hand-count ballots for the county's more than 110,000 registered voters.
This prompted a new state law banning such hand-counting. Curtis, before being voted out, eliminated nine of the county's 13 ballot drop boxes and made unsubstantiated accusations against his predecessors.