California county on edge over bid to recall far-right, election-denying official

On Super Tuesday, voters in northern California’s Shasta county weighed the fate of a far-right official who promoted conspiracy theories that elections were being rigged and backed a controversial effort to do away with voting machines and pursue a hand-count system.

But two weeks after the election, the recall remains too close to call, with the Shasta county supervisor Kevin Crye maintaining a hold of his seat by less than 50 votes. As of Friday, the county elections office still had 1,200 ballots to process and residents are anxiously awaiting results.

The battle over Crye’s seat was one of several key races in a rural county that has taken on an outsized importance in the national political fight.

Crye, who has held his seat for just over a year, was elected as part of a far-right movement that has gained control of the county in recent years. Shasta became a hotbed for ultra-conservative politics during the pandemic, with rowdy protests and threats against moderate elected officials and the county health officer.

In the past year, Crye and the far-right majority on the board of supervisors, the county’s governing body, moved to allow people to carry firearms in public buildings in violation of state law and offered the county’s top job to the leader of a California secessionist group.

Perhaps most notoriously, they helped Shasta rise to national prominence for its embrace of the election denial movement, which proposes “fixes” such as the sole use of manual tallies of votes to enhance “election integrity” based on the lie that the presidency was stolen from Donald Trump.

Crye, the chair of the board of supervisors and the rest of the far-right majority voted in January 2023 to cut ties with Dominion Voting Systems and create a hand-count system. Crye even traveled on the county’s dime to meet with Mike Lindell, the chief executive of MyPillow and one of the leading promoters of falsehoods about election fraud. The county’s attempts to institute a manual tally system were ultimately thwarted by state lawmakers, and Shasta has since begun using Hart InterCivic machines.

As of Friday, Crye had the support of 50.25%, or 4,573, voters who opposed his recall, while 49.75%, or 4,527 voted in favor, according to results from the Shasta county elections office.

“It’s not over yet … We are behind less than 50 votes,” the recall group said. “This is almost as close as it gets, so hang in there … 1,200 votes left to count – anything could happen.”

While Crye’s race remains too close to call, there are other signs that Shasta voters may be ready for a change.

On 5 March, incumbent Patrick Jones, a leader of the local far-right movement who has baselessly argued that county and US elections are being manipulated, lost his seat to Matt Plummer, who pledged to offer an alternative to the county’s “dangerous path of hostility and division”. Plummer won nearly 60% of the vote.

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Supporters of Crye’s recall have argued that he failed to honor his campaign promises to unite the county and advocate for fiscal responsibility, and hoped that a recall could force a larger change in the county.

“He’s doing things he said he wouldn’t do. He violated his campaign promises. He wasn’t listening to his constituents,” Jeff Gorder, a spokesperson for the recall group, told the Guardian last month. “He was freely and fairly elected. But a recall, in our view, is appropriate when someone misrepresents who they are.”

Crye had described the recall as an attempt by “Democrats in a very red county trying to usurp local control and the vote of the people” and urged residents to stop the state’s Democratic governor from “dictating our county’s future”.

On his local radio show, Crye recently described some members of the recall campaign as evil. “They have made up unbelievable amounts of lies,” he said.

The race drew intense interest and involvement from national Republicans and far-right figures, including the Kentucky senator Rand Paul and Kari Lake, a Trump ally from Arizona, who urged Shasta residents to vote no on the recall.

The California governor, Gavin Newsom, could pick Crye’s temporary replacement, if he loses, though supporters of the recall and local officials have requested he not do so. The governor has filled such seats in some cases, and at other times has left seats vacant.

Meanwhile, Shasta county’s assistant clerk and registrar of voters said the change in machines did not delay tabulation and that the county was on track with where it was counting ballots in past elections.

“We can only process ballots as quickly as we receive them, and when we receive 20,000 ballots on election day where we have to do the signature verification, it takes time to do that,” Joanna Francescut told KRCR last week. “It takes work to do that, and we appreciate the public’s understanding of that process.”

The Shasta county elections office is expected to share its next update on Friday.