WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today, a recount will begin in northern California for a Shasta County Board of Supervisors seat just days after a self-proclaimed “MAGA” candidate endorsed by Mike Lindell filed a lawsuit challenging her loss in the March primary.
In a new lawsuit, Laura Hobbs is challenging her loss to Allen Long who is currently avoiding a runoff by 13 votes as he surpassed the 50% threshold.
Endorsed by election denier and conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell, Hobbs ran for District 2 of the Shasta County board in March and now alleges that there were errors in vote tabulation — including “Many illegal ballots” — which caused her to lose the race.
The five-member board serves as the county’s local governing body and its nonpartisan members are elected on staggered four year terms.
Hobbs argues that “a multitude of scenarios where the entirety of the elections process has resulted in human mistakes, lack of security, lack of chain of custody, electronic machine errors and intentional human actions that caused illegal ballots to be cast and tabulated, ballots being counted more than once, or ballots being discarded and not counted.”
Among her list of reasons for contesting the results of March’s election, Hobbs argues that not being able to list her occupation as either “microbiologist” or “Election Data Analyst” was discrimination against her. She is asking the court to “moot” Long’s District 2 win.
According to local reporting, a hand recount of the votes in the race will start today and is expected to take at least six hours a day until the recount is complete. It is estimated to cost $8,626.67 for the first day alone.
This lawsuit is not the first time election skepticism has taken hold in Shasta County. Despite state and federal law requiring the use of an electronic voting system, the county has taken steps to move toward hand counting all ballots even though the practice is often illegal, expensive and prone to errors. California Attorney General Rob Bonta (D) has warned the county that a full hand count of all ballots would violate state and federal law.
Learn more about the case here.
Learn more about controversy in Shasta County here.
