Shasta Clerk and Registrar of Voters Clint Curtis’ recent announcement urging voters to save the county money by either dropping off or mailing their ballot for the Nov. 4 special election raised questions about who pays the cost for postage.
“Voters may return ballots by mail and the postage is paid for by the state, not the county,” Curtis said in a statement issued Thursday, Oct. 9.
Curtis is right in this case because the election is being triggered by California’s initiative Proposition 50, which asks whether to approve temporary redrawing of congressional lines in response to Texas’ partisan redistricting.
That’s not the case with every election, Siskiyou County Registrar of Voters Laura Bynum said. Special state elections, like the one on Nov. 4 to decide Prop 50, “are typically funded by the state. “The last time we saw this was the 2021 governor’s recall election,” she said.
Otherwise counties and cities foot the bill at least in part for their ballot issues and races, according to Bynum.
Ballots received so far by Shasta and Siskiyou counties
Siskiyou elections staff pulled in 2,160 ballots since they sent them out in the mail on Oct. 6, Bynum said on Monday, Oct. 13. That’s out of her county’s 28,472 registered voters. “Friday alone we had over 900” ballots arrive. “It’s the diehards. No matter the election, they vote,” Bynum said.
Shasta County elections staff received approximately 500 or more ballots as of Friday, Oct. 10, most returned in drop boxes, said staff, who also sent ballots into the mail starting Oct. 6. That’s out of the Shasta’s 116,166 registered voters.
“I voted” stickers are included in envelopes mailed to registered voters in Shasta County with their 2025 special election ballot. The county elections office reported it put ballots in the mail on Monday, Oct. 6, 2025.
Voters can help “save county funds” for staff and processing by using those official county drop boxes, Curtis said.
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Postage costs per California ballot
The cost to mail a ballot in part depends on how many races, measures and propositions are on it. Ballots with only one page of choices are lighter than those with two or more.
For Siskiyou voters, the postage to mail a 2025 special election ballot to the elections office costs just under 94 cents, Bynum said. That includes two cities with local issues on the same ballot: Grenada (Measure C) and Dunsmuir (Measure D). In those cities, both the measure and the state’s Prop 50 fit on the same single ballot page.
The same is true in Redding, with the city’s Measure A joining Prop 50 on one page. Postage on Shasta County’s special election ballot is approximately $1, Curtis said.
Shasta and Siskiyou voters among first Californians to get postage-paid ballots in 2019
Siskiyou and Shasta voters were among the first Californians to receive postage-paid ballots for all elections after state law (AB 216) requiring their provision went into effect on Jan. 1, 2019.
State Senate district 1 voters in the North State received the first mandated pre-paid envelopes in their ballot packages for the March 16 special primary election, as did voters in district 33 in the Los Angeles area, according to the state.
More than half of California’s registered voters requested vote-by-mail ballots in the eight consecutive elections prior to 2019. “For over a decade, Californians have been increasingly choosing to vote-by-mail,” then Secretary of State Alex Padilla said; “Providing prepaid postage on all vote-by-mail return envelopes makes this option even more convenient for voters.”
Jessica Skropanic is a features reporter for the Record Searchlight/USA Today Network. She covers science, arts, social issues and news stories. Follow her on Twitter @RS_JSkropanic and on Facebook. Join Jessica on Record Searchlight Facebook groups Get Out! Nor Cal , Today in Shasta County and Shaping Redding’s Future. To support and sustain this work, please subscribe today. Thank you.
This article originally appeared on Redding Record Searchlight: Who pays postage for Calif. vote-by-mail ballots for Prop 50 election?