Election official involved in ballot seizure scheme backs Trump DOJ’s California lawsuit

A local election official involved in a prior scheme to seize ballots cast in a California election is backing the U.S. Department of Justice’s (DOJ) legal gambit to block his state from counting thousands of mail ballots cast by voters who the Trump administration claims may be noncitizens. 

In a declaration of support for the DOJ’s lawsuit against California, Shasta Registrar of Voters Clint Curtis defended the department’s unverified sources for identifying alleged noncitizens. 

Curtis, an outspoken conspiracy theorist who recently tried to get the FBI to investigate election fraud claims, was involved in the effort in Riverside County, California, to seize 650,000 ballots cast in last year’s redistricting referendum over false claims of election fraud. 

He reportedly traveled to Riverside to work with an anti-voting citizen group whose debunked claims spurred Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco to seize the ballots. County officials have pushed back on the group’s allegations of voter fraud, explaining that an alleged vote count discrepancy they identified likely resulted from the group’s misunderstanding of how votes are tabulated.

In his declaration in the DOJ’s lawsuit, Curtis said county election officials could easily segregate the ballots of voters the department believes belong to noncitizens — despite the state claiming otherwise.

“Electronic information management systems that are used for voting in California can flag the ballots of likely noncitizens identified by the United States, and the sorting machines can segregate those electronically flagged ballots while determining citizenship under state and federal law,” Curtis wrote. 

Curtis rebutted a filing by Los Angeles County Registrar Aman Bhullar, who said that the court should toss out the DOJ’s lawsuit because his office simply doesn’t have the ability to locate the ballots of people suspected to be ineligible voters and investigate their citizenship before votes are counted.  

“The Registrar does not make programmatic changes in the middle of an election cycle and, in fact, has policies against making programmatic changes during election cycles, consistent with federal and state law,” Bhullar wrote. 

Curtis’ support for the Trump administration’s California effort isn’t surprising, given his history. 

Curtis is a controversial figure — even by Shasta standards. Last year, the Shasta Board of Supervisors appointed him to finish out the term of the county’s retiring registrar. Curtis then ran for a full term this year but lost his June primary election by 15 points. 

Curtis certified the result but later said that the election might have been stolen from him, accusing election workers of hiding ballots and other outlandish claims. He later locked ballots away and called the FBI to investigate his election conspiracies. 

In August, Curtis faced censure by the board for threats, verbal abuse and retaliatory acts against employees. He then tried to hire election denier Tina Peters — who was convicted for her role in a major election breach in Mesa County, Colorado —  to assist him in running the county’s midterm election.