To Clint Curtis, Shasta County Clerk and Registrar of Voters:

We, the undersigned residents, voters, and concerned members of the Shasta County community, call upon you, Clint Curtis, to resign immediately from your position as Shasta County Clerk and Registrar of Voters.

This request is not based upon political party affiliation or a single disagreement over election policy.

It is based upon your documented conduct in office, sustained investigative findings regarding your treatment of employees, the increasingly partisan operation of an office that should be administered impartially, repeated public dissemination of unproven election allegations, questionable personnel decisions involving political activists, and the resulting erosion of public confidence in the Shasta County Elections Office.

DOCUMENTED MISCONDUCT IS NOT AN “ALLEGATION” WHEN AN INVESTIGATION SUSTAINS IT

Shasta County did not merely receive complaints about your workplace conduct. The County commissioned investigations.

Those investigations resulted in sustained or substantiated findings regarding portions of the complaints against you. They included: misuse of county resources for campaign activity, retaliation, inappropriate workplace conduct, and threatening or demeaning remarks.

The investigation sustained multiple findings, including that you engaged in campaign-related activity on county property, restricted an employee’s duties following a disagreement, and engaged in a pattern of inappropriate workplace commentary.

A separate County investigation produced even more serious findings involving your treatment of Elections Office employees, including threats involving physical violence and retaliation.

The findings included evidence supporting an allegation that you threatened to have an employee removed from an office by her hair, along with findings regarding statements about slapping or physically striking employees and other abusive workplace behavior.

You have publicly disputed and denied those findings. You have every right to do so.

But your disagreement with an investigative conclusion does not erase the fact that investigations were conducted and findings were sustained.

The Shasta County Board of Supervisors subsequently formally censured you over substantiated managerial misconduct and violations of County personnel rules.

For the official entrusted with protecting confidence in our elections, that alone is profoundly troubling.

AN ELECTIONS OFFICE SHOULD NOT OPERATE AS A PARTISAN POLITICAL PLATFORM

The office of County Clerk/Registrar of Voters is a nonpartisan office.

Yet your conduct has repeatedly blurred the distinction between administering elections and participating in the political movements surrounding those elections.

Public reporting has documented that you have openly identified your political affiliation, supported and promoted Measure B, sponsored a partisan event connected to that measure, and hosted political candidates at the Elections Office while making unsupported accusations about previous election officials.

That is not the appearance of political neutrality voters should expect from the individual responsible for administering their ballots.

A Registrar of Voters must serve Republicans, Democrats, independents, third-party voters, and voters with no party preference with equal professionalism.

The public should never have reason to wonder whether the election administrator is acting as an election official or a political activist.

POLITICAL ACTIVISTS WERE BROUGHT INSIDE THE ELECTIONS OFFICE

Your personnel decisions have created additional and avoidable concerns about impartiality.

Laura Hobbs was not merely an ordinary member of the public before working in the Elections Office. She was one of the proponents of Measure B, participated in gathering signatures to qualify it, financially supported the measure, and subsequently became an Elections Office employee.

Reporting raised concerns that her participation in official matters involving Measure B created at minimum a serious appearance of conflict and may have implicated County policy.

The situation involving Richard Gallardo raises similar concerns. Gallardo has been a highly visible election activist, a leader associated with the group responsible for Measure B, and one of the measure’s named proponents.

He was also a candidate for the Shasta County Board of Supervisors in the June 2026 election—an election administered by the very office in which you had hired him to work.

Regardless of whether every aspect of those employment arrangements was technically permissible, the appearance problem should have been obvious.

The public should not have to wonder whether political activists, initiative proponents, or candidates have special access to the Elections Office while their own political interests are before voters.

Election administration does not merely have to be fair.

It must appear fair.

UNPROVEN ELECTION CLAIMS HAVE BEEN AMPLIFIED AS THOUGH SUSPICION ITSELF WERE EVIDENCE

Following the June 2026 primary—an election that you administered, certified, and personally lost—you began publicly raising extraordinary allegations about the election.

You questioned ballots because of how they allegedly looked, smelled, or felt and communicated allegations that mail ballots could have been counterfeit or improperly inserted into the election. Those accusations traveled far beyond Shasta County.

Political and media personalities, including Corinne Cliford, publicized messages attributed to you alleging that vote-by-mail ballots were counterfeit and had potentially been inserted to alter election results.

Activist Arne List subsequently went to court seeking to prevent destruction of November 2024 election materials.

Citizens absolutely have the right to question government and seek judicial review. But there is an enormous difference between asking questions and presenting suspicions as though they establish election wrongdoing.

Shasta County itself took the extraordinary step of publicly characterizing your post-election assertions as unproven and requesting that appropriate state and federal authorities review both your allegations and the operation of your office.

To date, publicly available evidence has not established the sweeping election fraud you and others have suggested.

THE “MISSING DOCUMENTS” CONTROVERSY DEMONSTRATES WHY FACTS MUST COME BEFORE ACCUSATIONS

The controversy surrounding November 2024 election records illustrates precisely why an elections official must exercise restraint before fueling public accusations.

Members of the public were told that requested election-related documents could not be located and concerns rapidly escalated into accusations about shredding, destruction of evidence, and potential wrongdoing.

You claimed that, when the November 2024 ballot materials were opened in preparation for lawful destruction, election-related log sheets and records believed to be responsive to a pending Public Records Act request were discovered inside ballot boxes in the Elections Office. However, that account has not been independently verified by a neutral third party, news organization, law enforcement agency, court, or other outside authority.

That episode may legitimately raise serious questions about recordkeeping, document management, and why the records were not located when they were first requested. But the records were ultimately found only after weeks of controversy, public accusations, and national attention had already been generated around their supposed disappearance. At that point, saying “I didn’t know” is not an answer to the underlying issue. As the elected official responsible for the Elections Office, you are accountable for how records are maintained, located, and communicated to the public.

But it also demonstrates why missing records should not automatically be transformed into accusations of fraud, criminality, or deliberate destruction before the facts are established.

Government records being poorly located or improperly filed is a records-management problem. It is not, by itself, proof of election fraud.

And an elected official entrusted with administering elections should understand that distinction better than anyone.

YOUR OWN COUNTY HAS PUBLICLY REBUKED YOUR CONDUCT

This issue is no longer limited to political opponents criticizing you. Shasta County itself has taken extraordinary action.

The County publicly condemned your conduct after you began making unproven claims concerning the June 2026 election and invited state and federal authorities to examine both those allegations and your official actions.

The Board of Supervisors separately censured you following substantiated findings of managerial misconduct.

Those are significant actions against a sitting County Clerk and Registrar of Voters. They cannot simply be dismissed as social-media arguments or political disagreement.

PUBLIC TRUST HAS BEEN DAMAGED

Mr. Curtis, this petition does not accuse you of committing election fraud, destroying evidence, or committing a crime unless and until an appropriate authority establishes such conduct. That is not necessary to reach the conclusion expressed by the people signing this petition.

Public office is a position of trust. A public official does not need to be criminally convicted before citizens may conclude that his judgment, behavior, management, or political conduct has damaged their confidence in his ability to continue serving.

The question is therefore simple:

Can the people of Shasta County continue to have confidence that the individual administering their elections will act with neutrality, restraint, professionalism, sound judgment, and respect for established facts?

For the undersigned, the answer is no.

An Elections Office should be the institution that brings clarity when rumors spread. It should not amplify them.

An Elections Office should separate evidence from speculation. It should not blur the two.

An Elections Office should be unmistakably impartial. It should not become intertwined with political activists, initiative proponents, candidates, and partisan movements.

And employees entrusted with carrying out our elections should be able to perform their work without sustained findings of threats, retaliation, or abusive conduct from the person leading their office.

Mr. Curtis, enough is enough.

Shasta County deserves an Elections Office that voters across the political spectrum can trust. It deserves professional leadership. It deserves political neutrality. It deserves responsible stewardship of election records. It deserves allegations supported by evidence before they are broadcast to the public. And it deserves an election administrator whose conduct strengthens confidence in our democratic institutions rather than continually placing that confidence under strain.

We therefore call upon you, Clint Curtis, to resign immediately as Shasta County Clerk and Registrar of Voters.

The Elections Office does not belong to one political movement. It does not belong to election activists. It does not belong to Clint Curtis.

It belongs to the people of Shasta County.

Public trust matters. Accountability matters. Facts matter.

Clint Curtis, it is time to resign.

Signed,

The undersigned residents, voters, and concerned members of the Shasta County community.