Clerk-recorder candidates at odds over role
On Wednesday, Juan Pablo Cervantes, a candidate for the County Clerk-Recorder job, sent out an email claiming that fellow candidate Tiffany Hunt Nielsen had incorrectly stated that the county clerk position is appointed by the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors.
In a newsletter, Hunt Nielsen wrote that “The Elected Official is the Recorder. The Clerk and Registrar of Voters have been appointed by the Board of Supervisors — the Recorder is the Department Head over the Clerk and Registrar of Voters. This is why it is so important that the next Recorder has experience Recording.”
In an email to the Times-Standard, Hunt Nielsen noted that “on the California State Association of Counties website I found that County Clerk is permitted to be defined in many ways, depending on the local (Board of Supervisors). Highlighted, the Clerk, Registrar or Recorder may be either elected or appointed by the (Board of Supervisors).”
The California State Association of Counties documentation Hunt Nielsen sent via email only stated that generally, depending on the county, a clerk, registrar or recorder can be either elected or appointed.
In Humboldt County, the clerk and recorder positions are held by an official who is elected by voters, according to current ClerkRecorder Kelly Sanders, who added that being the registrar of voters is a function of the clerk’s office.
“The voters will decide who gets to be the next registrar of voters. And so it seems it’s shocking to think that one of the candidates running for that office believes that the Board of Supervisors gets to make that decision and not voters,” Cervantes said.
Fourth District Supervisor Virginia Bass told the Times-Standard that the Board of Supervisors does not appoint the clerk position, but that Hunt Nielsen might be correct if she was speaking in a historical context, as aspects of the Clerk-Recorder’s responsibilities used to have appointments by the Board of Supervisors.
Hunt Nielsen pointed to “how the office evolved over time,” noting county documents state the offices of the Recorder and the Clerk were consolidated in 1997. The Registrar of Voters was added to the mix in 2002 by a board of supervisors vote.
The clerk-recorder’s job is to maintain important county records such as birth and marriage certificates, while the registrar of voters is responsible for election management, such as registering voters and ballot processing.
Cervantes’ full list of concerns with the newsletter can be found at https://bit. ly/3w7GOqd.