Two northern California counties settle election disputes

Nevada County Courthouse (California)
(c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2022

Two stories in the past few days discuss election disputes in far northern California.  Both counties that are home to these disputes are technically "metropolitan," meaning they have more than 100K residents each, but they (and the entire region between Sacramento and the Oregon state line) are popularly thought of as rural.  

First, Hailey Branson-Potts reports under the headline, "Conservative activist calls off his request for a recount in an election won by a landslide."  Here's the lede for the story, which is out of Nevada County, California, population 102,241: 

A conservative activist who sought a hand recount of a rural Northern California election that his candidate lost in a landslide defeat called it off Monday, one day before it was set to begin.

Randy Economy — a leader of the unsuccessful Republican-backed effort to recall Gov. Gavin Newsom last year — requested a recount last week in the race for Nevada County clerk-recorder and registrar of voters, part of a right-wing movement to take control of local and state election apparatuses across the nation.

Natalie Adona won the race last month with 68% of the vote. She was nearly 15,000 votes ahead of Jason Tedder, who came in second place.

Economy requested the recount in a July 4 letter to the county registrar, saying he was doing so on behalf of Tedder, a Navy veteran who was endorsed by the local Republican party.

Economy called off the recount Monday afternoon, the day The Times published an article about it.

* * * 

“The purpose here was disruption, and it’s all designed to muddle trust in our office,” said Gregory Diaz, the Nevada County clerk-recorder and registrar of voters, who is retiring.

Courthouse Annex, Nevada City, California
(c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2018

Here's the prior story, which provided this detail about the recount:  

It is expected to take 38 days, cost more than $82,700, and require the hiring of temporary workers to count nearly 38,000 ballots.

And it is being funded by Randy Economy, a leader of the unsuccessful Republican-backed effort to recall Gov. Gavin Newsom last year.

Economy spoke vaguely about his motivations, saying “something doesn’t smell right” about the county registrar’s race.

“We have a crisis here in this state of who’s in charge of democracy, and it ain’t the county clerks, and it’s not the local city clerks. It’s the people,” Economy said.

The second story is out of Shasta County, the most populous county in the region with 182,155 residents.  Jessica Garrison reports for the Times under the headline, "Shasta County OKs election results that turned back a far-right revolt."  Here's the gist of the story: 

After an expensive and often combative campaign, voters in a bellwether Northern California county have mostly turned away a slate of far-right candidates who had sought to take control of local government.

On Tuesday, after hours of debate that featured references to questions about the validity of Dominion voting machines, allegations of miscounted ballots and members of the public saying they feared for their safety at public meetings, the county Board of Supervisors voted 3-2 to accept the results of a June election that was bitterly contested.

The two dissenting board members, Patrick Jones and Tim Garman, had proposed instead a forensic audit of the county’s entire elections process, including, as Jones put it, “not just recounting ballots, but taking a look at the paper, the folds, the software.”

Backers of the far-right candidates had consulted with a pro-Trump data analytics company and claimed there were “irregularities” about Shasta’s election — which they did not detail — deserving further examination. One person in the audience referred to the effort as a “coup attempt.”

The certification represents a victory for mainstream Republicans in the county, who have long held power in government but have been roiled in recent years by a populist flank to their right, including members of a local militia, furious about coronavirus restrictions and seeking to remake government.

The most recent post about Shasta County and its election is here (also discussing the primary in Nevada County).  Many more posts about Shasta County and the broader State of Jefferson movement are here.