Voters in rural Shasta County, California will decide in a recall election on whether to remove Kevin Crye from the county Board of Supervisors.
Crye is part of a conservative majority on the board that voted to eliminate ballot counting machines and pursue hand counting ballots instead, in response to false claims of election fraud promoted by Trump and his allies.
This has divided the community and sparked a recall effort.
“I feel like if we’re not engaged, then you’re going to have these kind of extremists who are just going to run rampant around here,” one resident said.
“I felt they were trying to intimidate us for doing our job,” assistant registrar of voters Joanna Francescut said.
If removed, it would undermine the push for hand counting that has gained traction in some conservative areas but is opposed by experts as unrealistic.
“It’s like he’s accountable for what he’s doing,” resident Jason Miller said. “If you take that away from us … that’s not going to go well in Shasta County.”
“They’ve found that path that they’re following and it is Trump’s playbook, just disrupt the hell out of everything,” retired school district superintendent Charlie Menoher said.
“All I ever wanted in this whole process was transparency and truth,” Crye said.
The recall has become a broader referendum on the influence of election conspiracies in rural regions and whether voters will tolerate actions stemming from those unsupported claims.
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