Judge Benjamin Hanna ruled that state election law preempts the voter-approved charter amendment; its supporters say they are weighing an appeal and have 30 days to decide.
A Shasta County Superior Court judge on Monday permanently barred the county from carrying out Measure B, the charter amendment that voters approved in June to require photo identification at the polls, count ballots by hand and keep a county voter roll separate from the state’s.
Judge Benjamin Hanna adopted a tentative ruling in The People of the State of California v. County of Shasta, the suit Attorney General Rob Bonta and Secretary of State Shirley N. Weber filed days after the June 2 primary. According to the county’s summary of the decision, the court found that key provisions conflict with state election law, that the remaining provisions could not be severed and kept, and that election administration is “a matter of statewide concern” on which a charter county cannot write its own rules.
“Shasta County’s status as a charter county does not entitle it to enact invalid legislation simply because some in this community do not agree with the existing law,” Judge Hanna wrote, as quoted by KRCR and The Los Angeles Times. He had suspended the measure in August, so it played no part in the Nov. 3 election.
What Measure B would have done
The measure, which its proponents called the Election Transparency and Security Reform initiative, passed with about 56 percent of the vote. According to the secretary of state’s release, it would have required a government-issued photo ID to register and to vote in person, eliminated vote-by-mail and most early voting, mandated hand counting and created a county registration system outside the state’s uniform database. Voting would have been limited mostly to a single Election Day, with exceptions for voters with disabilities, members of the military and Americans living abroad.
Its backers framed it as a matter of public trust. The initiative “seeks to restore confidence in Shasta County elections through voter identification, precinct-based hand counting, limited absentee voting, and local voter roll oversight,” the proponents wrote in a March statement, noting that more than 10,000 residents signed petitions to qualify it.
The two sides after the ruling
The proponents’ lawyer, Alexander Haberbush of the Lex Rex Institute, argued by phone for about 15 minutes at a hearing that lasted roughly half an hour, Shasta Scout reported. Afterward he said the ruling “tells the voters of every charter county in California that they have no say over how their own elections are run.”
“This ruling goes far further than any state law requires,” Mr. Haberbush said in a statement to KRCR. “It didn’t stop at the provisions the State said conflict with its statutes; it threw out even the requirement for paper poll books, which state law allows and Shasta County already uses.” He noted that the county did not defend the measure and said his clients are “reviewing every option, including an appeal.”
Laura Hobbs, one of five proponents who intervened in the case, told KRCR the group was “disappointed in the judge’s decision” and believed it should have been allowed to argue the merits. “We hope to be able to appeal,” she said, adding that an appeal would require fundraising and that the group has 30 days to decide.
Shasta County took no position. County Counsel Joseph Larmour attended the hearing and, at the direction of the Board of Supervisors, has stayed neutral throughout the case, according to Shasta Scout.
Ms. Weber called the measure “a colossal waste of time and taxpayer funds” and said its proponents “knew it was unlawful but submitted it to the voters anyway.” Mr. Bonta said in a statement quoted by Shasta Scout that the decision “shut down another unlawful attack on our state’s elections and the fundamental right to vote.”
What the law says
The ruling follows a recent precedent. California’s Legislature in 2024 passed SB 1174, now Elections Code section 10005, which bars cities and counties from requiring voters to show identification beyond what state and federal law require. Last November, a state appeals court relied on that statute to strike down Huntington Beach’s voter ID charter amendment, a case Mr. Haberbush cited in his argument.
“It seems pretty clear that state election law preempts any local requirements related to voter identification,” Richard L. Hasen, a professor at the UCLA School of Law who studies election law, said in an email to The Inquirer. “That conclusion was already reached with regards to Huntington Beach, and I believe that this would be followed in the Shasta case.”
The League of Women Voters of California did not respond to a request for comment.
Why it matters beyond Shasta
Shasta has been the state’s most persistent test of local control over elections. In 2023, its Board of Supervisors ended the county’s contract for Dominion voting machines and moved toward hand counting, prompting a state law that limits full manual tallies.
The question of photo ID is also before voters statewide. Proposition 39, a statewide voter ID measure on the Nov. 3 ballot, was trailing by a wide margin in the unofficial count. Results remain unofficial until the secretary of state certifies them on Dec. 11.
If the proponents appeal, the case would go to the Third District Court of Appeal in Sacramento, which in March, according to the proponents, stayed an earlier order that had threatened to keep Measure B off the June ballot. For now, Shasta County’s voters, more than 110,000 of them by The Times’s count, will keep voting under the same state rules as the rest of California, including mailed ballots for every active voter.
Graham Ostrowski covers the governor, the Legislature, state agencies and the state budget for the Sacramento Report. More from Graham Ostrowski
