California Sues to Stop One County’s Ban on Most Mail Voting

California officials have sued to block a measure approved by Shasta County voters that would end most mail voting, require voters to present government-issued photo identification to register and to vote, and mandate the hand-counting of ballots.

In their lawsuit, state officials argued that the Shasta County ballot initiative, Measure B, which passed in June with 55% of the vote, violated state election laws and needed to be struck down before the November general election. The lawsuit was filed in California’s 3rd District Court of Appeal on Friday by Attorney General Rob Bonta and the state’s top elections official, Secretary of State Shirley Weber.

The five proponents of Measure B, who are named as “real parties in interest” in the lawsuit, said in a statement that the litigation “is just one more stark demonstration of the crushing hostility and contempt that our elected officials hold for citizens who use the initiative process to improve elections and safeguard their freedom.”

Measure B’s supporters included the county’s current clerk and registrar of voters, Clint Curtis, who was ousted by voters in the same June election in which the measure was passed. The newly elected registrar, a longtime elections official named Joanna Francescut, had been fired by Curtis.

A Shasta County spokesperson said the county was unable to comment on ongoing litigation.

A vast majority of California voters cast ballots by mail or drop off completed ballots in special boxes offered by each county. That includes Shasta County, where about 90% of voters in the November 2025 special election mailed or dropped off their ballots, according to state data.

Proponents of mail-in balloting say it expands access to voters who might struggle to make it to the polls in person on Election Day, whether because of age, disability or the inability to get away from other responsibilities to wait in line.

President Donald Trump, though, has repeatedly decried mail-in voting, making baseless claims that mail ballots lead to fraudulent results. Trump and many Republican lawmakers are also pushing for tougher voter identification laws as part of a proposed package of federal restrictions on voting that Republicans are trying to pass ahead of the November midterms.

In addition to its vote-by-mail and identification rules, Shasta County’s Measure B would also mandate that ballots be counted by hand and separate the county’s voter registration system from the state’s.

State officials said in their lawsuit that Shasta County’s proposed changes to election procedures were preempted by state election laws that ban photo ID requirements, guarantee the right to vote early and by mail, ban the counting of ballots by hand in most elections and require the county to use the state’s voter registration system.

The lawsuit by Bonta and Weber said Shasta County officials had filed their own suit over the measure and that one proponent had acknowledged in an interview with a journalist that portions of the measure were illegal.

Bonta’s office recently prevailed in a challenge to a similar voter identification law in the Southern California city of Huntington Beach.

Shasta County, which leans Republican, has more than 110,000 registered voters and is located between Sacramento and California’s border with Oregon. The county has clashed with the state over voting rules before.

In 2023, the county’s board of supervisors ended its contract with Dominion Voting Systems, the company that drew false accusations of fraud during the 2020 election, and voted to look into counting ballots by hand. In response, the state passed a law banning most hand-counting of votes.

California elections, where ballot counting is notoriously slow compared to other states with high mail-in voting rates, have become a lightning rod for Trump.

The president wrote on his social media platform earlier in June that, after a week of in which his pick for Los Angeles mayor appeared to be holding second place, it was “not possible” for reality television personality Spencer Pratt to have fallen behind progressive city council member Nithya Raman.

Raman’s share of the vote rose as election officials counted mailed ballots that were largely sent in by Democratic-leaning voters. Raman will advance to the November mayoral runoff against the incumbent, Mayor Karen Bass, a Democrat.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Maia Spoto/Mike Kai Chen
c. 2026 The New York Times Company

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