Beautiful Shasta County became the first county in California to eliminate the use of voting machines in its elections.
The Board of Supervisors in Shasta County, California voted Tuesday night to terminate the county’s contract with Dominion Voting Systems.
A split Shasta County Board of Supervisors voted to terminate the county’s contract with Dominion Voting Systems after next month’s special election in the city of Shasta Lake.
Shasta will be the first of 40 California counties that used Dominion in the November 2022 election to drop the voting system, Shasta County Clerk/Registrar of Voters Cathy Darling Allen told the Record Searchlight after Tuesday’s meeting…
…Tuesday’s Dominion vote came after a long public debate on the machines, including a tense exchange between Darling Allen and Supervisor Patrick Jones, who led the charge to end the county’s contract with Dominion.
Jones joined Supervisors Chris Kelstrom and Kevin Crye to terminate the agreement, bucking the advice of acting CEO Patrick Minturn, who said it would cost the county at least $1 million to bring in a new electronic voting system and train employees.
The board’s majority agreed with those who spoke in favor of ending the contract and argued you can’t put a price tag on voter trust.
Many individual citizens spoke at the meeting.
In voting 3-2, supervisors directed staff to cancel the agreement. The contract states that only the CEO “and his/her designee,” or the county clerk and registrar of voters can terminate the agreement.
Many who spoke in support of terminating the contract called for an audit of past elections, specifically pointing to last June’s primary, when four far right, “non-establishment” candidates that they supported all lost convincingly to incumbents.
Jones, Crye and Kelstrom also suggested that the primary deserved a closer look. They didn’t mention last November’s election, which put Crye and Kelstrom on the board.
As reported previously, other counties have eliminated the use of Dominion voting systems in their elections. Otero County New Mexico was one, for example.
Senator Bill Eigle in Missouri is looking into the elimination of voting machines in that state.
In Georgia, Professor Alex Halderman issued a report on the use of Dominion Voting Systems in the state. This report is being kept hidden by corrupt judge Amy Totenberg. Based on Halderman’s comments from a speech in 2019 we can guess that the report is not supportive of the use of these systems.
The government agency CISA released a report that was in response to the issues identified in the Halderman report. In this report, CISA reported on a number of significant issues with the Dominion Voting Systems used in that state.
What is ultimately identified is that these systems should never be used in US elections due to the numerous system security and performance issues alone. (Based on my professional opinion as an international auditor and per discussions with some very smart IT experts, these systems should never have been put in production and used in US elections.)
Shasta County, California is now a country-wide leader in election integrity and will be known for the actions of its courageous Board of Supervisors for years to come.