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The L.A. County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday approved a proposal to publish candidate statements online in addition to inside printed sample ballots, a move that will dramatically reduce candidates’ cost of getting their statements in front of voters.

Right now, many candidates do not buy space in sample ballots because they say it's cost prohibitive.

The cost is more than $200,000 to get each countywide candidate’s 200-word statement in the sample ballot, according to Registrar Dean Logan. The fee is based on printing and mailing costs to send the guide to 5.6 million registered voters, he said.

Under the plan, the Registrar of Voters would publish candidates' statements online for a fee of about $280, starting with the March 2024 primary election.

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Tuesday’s special election filled a seat on the Gateway Unified School District board and created a fire protection district in the historic community of Shasta.

While the eyes of election observers were on Shasta County, voter turnout was extremely low.

With all precincts reporting and a portion of mail-in ballots counted, county election officials reported less than 20% of the people eligible to vote cast a ballot.

Votes left to be counted include provisional ballots, ballots still in the mail, vote-by-mail ballots that were dropped off at precincts and damaged ballots.

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Election Hero Day and tomorrow, "good government" groups will be monitoring the local election in rural Shasta County, to support election workers there and make sure the laws are followed.

Recently, members of the Board of Supervisors said they wanted a hand count on election night, even though state law requires the first count to be done using optical scanners.

Dora Rose, deputy director of the League of Women Voters of California, will be in Shasta County for the vote. She condemned the county's attempt to get rid of voting machines and spread fear about potential voter fraud.

"A few key decision-makers have perpetrated the false claim that the 2020 election was stolen," Rose explained. "Based on that false claim, they took very risky, very disruptive actions that could have destabilized the election."

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In many elections, the suspense comes from wondering which candidate is going to win.

In Shasta County, the question everyone is hanging on is: Will the local election next Tuesday bring unrest or even violence? 

The county of about 200,000 people on the northern rim of the Central Valley made national news last spring when a far-right majority on the Board of Supervisors, swept up in unproven voter fraud claims, decided to dump Dominion voting machines and hand-count its ballots instead.

Gov. Gavin Newsom and other state officials then stepped in to stop the plan. On Oct. 4, Newsom signed a law limiting counties from hand-counting ballots. In response, Patrick Jones, chair of the Board of Supervisors, said he favored such a count anyway, declaring in the local newspaper: “I believe [the new law] does not affect Shasta County.”