Shasta County Superior Court Judge Stephen H. Baker heard arguments on Tuesday in an election contest brought by Laura Hobbs, who ran for Shasta County Supervisor earlier this year. Hobbs lost the District 2 race to Allen Long by 14 votes. Hobbs alleged numerous election irregularities, including malconduct by election officials. Baker is expected to conclude the trial on Wednesday.
Hobbs’ attorney Alex Haberbush, who is also an attorney for former President Donald Trump’s previous attorney John Eastman, told The Arizona Sun Times after the first day of trial concluded that they were facing at least half a dozen arguments from their opponents as to why their case should be dismissed.
“Today we left with only one, whether malconduct by election workers must be intentional.” He said, “Intentionality is not the standard, and the misconduct by Deputy Registrar of Voters Joanna Francescut easily surpassed the actual standard.”
Hobbs, a self-described MAGA candidate who supports hand-counting ballots, said to The Sun Times, “It was a victory on many fronts; the trial is proceeding nicely and I’m glad the judge is willing to consider and accept the evidence. Alex is doing a stellar job representing me.”
Hobbs’ trial brief went over the standard to show malconduct. The California Court of Appeals held in the case In re Cryer that “the word ‘malconduct,’ as used in the Elections Code, ‘was intended to broadly include erroneous conduct without wrongful intention.’” Similarly, “In Kenworthy v. Mast, absent intentionality, the court found that failure by precincts to open on time constituted malconduct because ‘there was no sufficient cause or excuse for the failure.’”
Francescut admitted on the witness stand that she had neglected to properly train election workers on how to randomly place candidates on the ballot, resulting in Hobbs illegally being placed further down on the ballot. The random drawing determined that “the letter ‘H’ was placed in the second position, and the letter ‘L’ was placed in the seventh position.” Due to this, the brief argued that Hobbs’ name should have been placed ahead of Long’s. Instead, it was placed after his and candidate Dan Sloan’s names. This violated California law, Elec. Code § 13113(b).
Hobbs’ main complaint, the Second Amended Statement of Contest of Election, cited Gould v. Grubb, a California case that held that a “significant advantage accrues to a candidate by virtue of a top ballot position. … James Scott, the expert upon whom the court in Gould relies, found that approximately five (5) percent of each candidate’s vote share could be attributed to their position on the ballot.” Hobbs lost by 0.13 percent of the vote.
In Rideout v. City of Los Angeles, the California Supreme Court held that “[v]iolation of a mandatory provision ‘vitiates the election,’ even absent a showing that the result of the election has been changed,” the brief stated.
Hobbs and Haberbush said much of the trial consisted of examining discrepancies in the audit logs, which Baker is expected to admit into evidence tomorrow as some of the most crucial evidence in the case.
This issue was that the “Ballot Tracks” system “does not align with the official final returns from the County for the Election,” the complaint said. “[T]he ‘Ballot Tracks’ system indicated that 11,544 ballots were marked as ‘good’ and returned in District 2, yet the official canvass recorded by the Shasta County Registrar of Voters on March 28, 2024, at 11:40 am showed a total of 11,713 votes in District 2.”
Hobbs alleged that this resulted in a discrepancy of 169 votes, “a figure approximately twelve (12) times the margin of victory.”
Hobbs also alleges that “data in the audit logs does not match reports by observers Ronnean Lund, Jeff Lowe, and Contestant.”
The observers noticed that the time on some of the tabulators was incorrect. Although Registrar of Voters (ROV) Cathy Darling Allen acknowledged the error, she logged the incident and took no action.
Francescut said “this discrepancy occurred because the machines are not connected to the internet and therefore cannot update to the correct time.” However, two of the observers said two tabulators displayed the correct time. Francescut said in a declaration that the time was off due to Daylight Savings Time. However, the complaint said audit logs showed one of the tabulators was 12 hours ahead.
Hobbs also expressed concern that batches of ballot images were assigned the same number, which resulted in overwriting ballots.
“In District 2, approximately 729 ballots were overwritten as a result of this process … which amounts to approximately 6.22% of the total returns,” she said.
The complaint said this error rate was more than the error rate standards stipulated by the Federal Election Commission (FEC). “The acceptable error rate for each processing function is no more than one error in 10,000,000 ballot positions, with a maximum permissible error rate during testing of one error in 500,000 ballot positions.” The complaint cited the 10.4 percent error rate countywide, which “highlight[s] a systemic issue that undermines the reliability of the voting system used.”
Hobbs said, “[A]pplying the overall 10.4% error rate suggests that as many as 1,218 ballots were affected. This number far exceeds the margin of victory of only fourteen (14) votes in District 2.”
Another problem alleged by Hobbs was that observers were blocked from viewing ballot counting. Observer Richard Gallardo was placed in a different room to watch the counting on a TV monitor, which “provided an incomplete view of the room where ballots were being processed.”
Hobbs said the statutorily required announcement as required by Elec. Code § 15360(d) about public viewing of the random precinct selection was never posted.
Gallardo “observed Election workers handling unsecured ballots by moving them behind a locked gate and into an elevator, completely out of the view of observers.”
In violation of Elec. Code § 14430, “Gallardo observed that the security protocols mandated for the transportation and handling of ballot containers were not adhered to. … containers were observed without the necessary security seals.”
The complaint alleged that the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) was violated “by using an inadequately maintained voter registration database for printing and tabulating ballots.”
Gallardo observed that video surveillance records were overwritten daily, violating Cal. Gov’t. Code § 26202.2.
Furthermore, Hobbs alleged in the complaint that the Cast Vote Record was not made available within 30 days after the election when it was certified, a violation of Elec. Code § 15372.
Hobbs asked the court to place her on the November ballot as a remedy.
Allen did not share Hobbs’ concerns about the election illegalities. He described himself during an interview with Shasta Scout as “not a conspiracy theorist.” He said he did “not support hand counting our votes. It’s a process that’s subject to more error and fraud than if we use voting machines. … These machines have been working for a long time.”
Haberbush is raising money for the election challenge at his law firm, the Lex Rex Institute.
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Rachel Alexander is a reporter at The Arizona Sun Times and The Star News Network. Follow Rachel on Twitter / X. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Laura Hobbs” by Laura Hobbs.
