In the Documents: Election Denial in Shasta County, Calif.

Records obtained by American Oversight shed new light on how far-right election denial has taken hold in northern California’s Shasta County, where baseless claims of fraud led the county to cut ties with Dominion Voting Systems earlier this year and raised significant concerns about election administration.

The records, reported on this week by the Redding Record Searchlight, include communications between prominent election denier Mike Lindell and Kevin Crye, a member of the county Board of Supervisors’ ultra-conservative majority. American Oversight also received a response to a records request to the Shasta County Sheriff’s Office that suggests the office is conducting an investigation involving several far-right election-denial groups and activists.

In January, the board voted to end the county’s contract with Dominion, moving instead to count ballots by hand — a far costlier, less secure, and more time-consuming method.

In April, weeks after the contract officially ended, Crye announced that he had been in touch with Lindell about piloting a new voting system in Shasta County. Lindell — whose attorneys this week sought to cut ties in a defamation lawsuit brought by Dominion against him, claiming he has not paid millions in legal fees — was a vocal proponent of abandoning electronic voting machines. On his streaming show in March, Lindell had said that he would cover the county’s legal fees if the state sued Shasta County for violating laws requiring the provision of electronic machines for voters with disabilities.

That promise to cover the county’s legal bills was echoed in the emails American Oversight obtained between Crye and Lindell. In response to a records request seeking communications between Board of Supervisors members and groups or individuals known to spread election misinformation — including Lindell — American Oversight obtained 25 pages of documents.

Among them was the full text of an email from Lindell that Crye had read aloud during a Feb. 28 board meeting. The portion read by Crye stated, “I promise if you have any pushback, including lawsuits against you or your county, I will provide all of the resources necessary (including both financial and legal) for this fight.” 

The records obtained by American Oversight revealed the rest of the email, which had the subject line “Promise to Kevin Crye & Shasta County”: “As everyone is aware, we need to get rid of all electronic voting machines in our elections. I have sent you the best hand counting paper ballot system that you can use in lieu of the machines. Also, I have provided the United States Law that documents what you can do for the handicap without machines. … Also, the Election Crime Bureau will be at your full disposal.” In August, Lindell hosted an “Election Crime Bureau Summit” in Springfield, Mo., where he suggested that polling places should be surveilled by flying “WiFi monitoring devices.” Crye was initially listed as a featured speaker at the event. 

We also submitted a request to the Shasta County Sheriff’s Office seeking any communications officials may have had with election deniers. The office responded with a letter stating that the requested records would not be released because they are “an intrinsic part of an individual confidential law enforcement investigative files.”

Other records we obtained include several text messages between Crye and Lindell, as well as communications between Crye and Terry Rapoza, an activist with the far-right “State of Jefferson” movement, which seeks to create a new majority-conservative state made up of counties in southern Oregon and northern California.

In April, Crye was served with recall papers during a Board of Supervisors meeting. At that meeting, county staff reported that hand-counting ballots could cost an additional $3 million over two years. Crye’s recall will appear on a special election ballot in March 2024.

This week, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law a bill that limits the ability of local governments to hand-count ballots. Patrick Jones, the president of the Shasta County Board of Supervisors, told ABC News, “If they try to stop us from hand counting, then there will be litigation.”