California has one ballot-counting trouble spot. It’s the one run by an election denier

In summary

The only California county having problems counting ballots is Shasta, which has an election office run by Clint Curtis, one of Trump’s election deniers.

In the end, it wasn’t shady bogeymen stuffing ballot boxes or federal agents who caused disruptions on election night in the rural Northern California Republican stronghold of Shasta County. 

It was the seeming incompetence of Clint Curtis, the county’s election-denying elections chief who’s soon to be unemployed.

Journalists, including CalMatters’ reporting partner Shasta Scout, have reported numerous problems with the vote count in Shasta County, a 2.5-hour drive north of Sacramento. They reported overflowing ballot boxes, staffing shortages, workers putting ballots in the wrong bins, computer hiccups and voters arriving at their polling places to find signs saying the location had been moved.

Most counties dropped initial results right after 8 p.m. when the polls closed, but Shasta didn’t report any until around 10 p.m. since elections officials hadn’t set up their computer system properly, leaving it as the only county in the state that on Wednesday morning hadn’t finished counting ballots from those who voted in person. 

A reporter for the Shasta Scout asked Curtis Tuesday night why the extra staffers he claimed to have hired over recent months didn’t pick up the ballots from drop boxes. Curtis himself left the election office to grab ballots when he should have been overseeing the count.

“Because I’m stupid,” Curtis told Shasta Scout. “So when I see it needs to be done, I just do it myself.” 

Curtis did not immediately respond to an interview request from CalMatters Wednesday.

The problems in Shasta County are an outlier in California. No major issues were reported in California’s other 57 counties, despite pre-election worries that the Trump administration might try to interfere with the vote count after federal officials made unprecedented threats to California election workers. 

Curtis brought FBI to Shasta County 

Because of Curtis, it appeared this fall that Shasta County could become Ground Zero in President Donald Trump’s war on blue state elections as his prosecutors sought to prove Trump’s longstanding claims that Democrats are rigging elections against him.

Curtis, a longtime election denier, made outlandish claims that nefarious actors had stuffed drop boxes with fake ballots in the June primary. He lost his bid for a full term in that election.

Curitis reduced the number of ballot drop boxes in Shasta County from 13 to four last year. Then, after the June election, Curtis claimed a plot was afoot to stuff ballot boxes after he and his team found ballots they claimed had paper that looked, felt and smelled funny.

His claims caught the attention of top law enforcement officials in Trump’s administration.

Officials sent a team of FBI agents to the county elections office in September carrying bolt cutters to get into a room holding old ballots that Curtis had padlocked and thrown away the key. Curtis said the agents didn’t seize any ballots.

The status of the federal investigation in Shasta County is unclear. The U.S. Department of Justice has not acknowledged there is an investigation.

Curtis’ replacement takes over in January

Curtis, a minor celebrity among the election deniers in Trump’s MAGA movement, had never had an official role in elections before the far-right members who controlled the Shasta County Board of Supervisors in 2025 appointed him.

Curtis, an attorney and former Democratic congressional candidate in Florida and California, lost the June primary to Joanna Francescut, a former Shasta County elections official who helped run the elections office before Curtis fired her.

Francescut will take over in January.