An attempt by Shasta County Supervisors Kevin Crye and Patrick Jones to find a smoking gun to implicate elections officials in undermining the board’s authority appears to be up in smoke. Last year Cathy Darling-Allen and her Elections Office was recognized for its excellence by a national organization which awards no-strings grant funding. Jones and others argued against accepting the $1.5 Million grant, saying the Center for Tech and Civic Life leans left politically. The board eventually voted to accept the money, as long as it was only used for the construction or purchase of a building for the Elections Office. The grant was approved and the money was ultimately used to purchase the Hart Intercivic machines, which was necessary after the board canceled the contract with Dominion but the state said no to a hand count. But both Jones and Crye asserted last week that the restrictions they demanded had been removed from the final acceptance letter without their knowledge. Saying that their authority was “circumvented”, they demanded an explanation and last Thursday the board voted to publicly release more than 200 pages of emails between Darling-Allen, Assistant Registrar Joanna Francescut, and county counsel. We read through the less-than-stimulating emails and found that, rather than revealing a conspiracy, they seem to be just routine correspondence of the elections officials consulting counsel about the legal and appropriate way to accept such a grant.
-Steve Gibson