SACRAMENTO, Calif. (CN) — California Governor Gavin Newsom on Wednesday signed a bill prohibiting manual vote counts in the vast majority of cases. Assembly Bill 969 is effective immediately.
Assembly member Gail Pellerin, a Santa Cruz Democrat wrote the bill in response to Shasta County’s Board of Supervisors canceling its voting system lease with Dominion Voting Systems in January. In March, supervisors directed its staff to create a procedure for manually counting ballots, select a new vendor for voting equipment required for people with disabilities, and send the plan to California’s secretary of state for approval.
Shasta County has a special election set for Nov. 7. Its elections office has an open house scheduled for Thursday, when a mock election will occur showing how its new voting system and manual tally process work.
David Maung, public information officer with Shasta County, said the open house will still occur.
"We still want to show the public the system we had prepared for manual tabulation," he added.
The bill’s passage means Shasta County is now prohibited from a full manual vote count for its November special election, as well as next year’s statewide elections.
“AB 969 puts in important guardrails to ensure that California’s elections remain accessible, accurate, and auditable,” Pellerin said in a statement. “By clarifying the conditions under which a manual count may be performed, AB 969 ensures that no California voter will be disenfranchised by the actions and decisions of ill-informed political actors.”
Shasta County supervisors — as well as Assemblymember Megan Dahle and state Senator Brian Dahle, whose respective districts include Shasta County — could not immediately be reached for comment.
According to a bill analysis, the Shasta County elections office told Pellerin it’s confident it could switch to a system to electronically count votes if Newsom signed the bill.
"We plan to follow the law, which is how we have always administered elections in Shasta County," said Cathy Darling Allen, Shasta County clerk, in a Thursday email.
Allen's office has been working for the past six months on two different voting systems — manual and electronic — as it waited for the fate of AB 969, Maung said.
"We do have enough machines," he said, adding later: "We are prepared for our next election."
The county currently has a contract with election technology company Hart InterCivic Inc. Initially the county penned the contract to ensure it had voting machines for those with disabilities. However, the contract will provide enough machines for all voters, Maung said.
Shasta County has over 112,000 registered voters and a total population of about 182,000.
AB 969 prohibits manual vote counts on an established election date if more than 1,000 people in a jurisdiction are registered to vote. If Election Day is on any other date, a manual count is prohibited if there are over 5,000 registered voters in a jurisdiction.
Elections officials must use certified voting systems for people to access the ballot and for workers to tabulate the votes. Additionally, no jurisdiction can end a contract for a certified voting system, unless it has a transition plan and contract for a new system.
“AB 969 is an important step to intervene in Shasta County’s plan to throw out their voting system,” Pellerin said. “It ensures that other counties with radical supervisors don’t fall in to the trap of believing election deniers. Choosing not to use a federally qualified, state certified voting system is dangerous to our democracy and, ultimately, costly for our taxpayers.”
Dominion Voting Systems became a flashpoint in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, as unfounded claims that the company switched votes from Donald Trump to Joe Biden spread through social and traditional media.
Dominion sued Fox News over the claims, ultimately settling in April for around $800 million.
On its website, Dominion states the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency has said there’s “no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.”
Newsom on Wednesday also signed Senate Bill 616 — written by Senator Lena Gonzales, a Long Beach Democrat — which guarantees workers a minimum of five sick days a year, an increase from the current three days. It also raises accrual and carryover levels.
“This reinforces our state’s values and commitment to protecting the health and well-being of our workers,” Gonzales said in a statement. “As workers and families face illnesses that can disrupt their wages and livelihoods, California has delivered and stepped up to protect and expand paid sick leave, providing a critical safety net to all working Californians.”
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