The Shasta County, California, Board of Supervisors has “upended the county’s election process,” the Los Angeles Times reported last week, “canceling its contract with Dominion Voting Systems.” The county could opt to hand-count ballots instead, which would likely delay results and promote more suspicion of elections. One supervisor said he had explored seeking the services of Mike Lindell, the pillow purveyor and prominent conspiracy theorist.
Shasta, a deep-red county in California’s far north, has proven vulnerable to causes that are on the national fringe but being pushed by the forces that supported Donald Trump’s false election fraud allegations. Militia members and other hard-right activists led a recall of a member of the all-Republican county board last year and have since attained a majority, leading to last week’s official endorsement of baseless suspicions about Dominion.
The current state of QAnon and related conspiracy theories is no exception to the old axiom that all politics is local. Since President Joe Biden’s inauguration put an end to efforts to keep Trump in office, these theories have trickled down from national to local politics, influencing local officials responsible for crucial policymaking on voting, education and more.
