Yuba County Elections | Ballot drop box camera

The smallest item in the county

Most of what this site documents costs six figures. This one cost $9,541.

On 22 July 2025 the Yuba County Clerk-Recorder and Registrar of Voters asked the Board of Supervisors to approve a two-year agreement with Flock Safety “for video surveillance services”. The subject of the surveillance is one object:

In light of vandalism occurring in Oregon and Washington in 2024, Yuba County Elections recommends entering into a service agreement with Flock Systems, Inc to provide video surveillance services to enhance security for the ballot drop box located at Linda Fire Station #3 in Plumas Lake.

The item gives its reason in its first sentence, and that reason belongs in any fair account of this, which is why it is the first thing quoted here. A county elections office deciding it wants a camera on its drop box, after attacks on drop boxes in two neighbouring states the year before, is not mysterious.

Who paid for it

This service will be funded through an agreement with the California Secretary of State to provide the county with Help American Vote Act (HAVA) Federal funds, administered by the US Election Assistance Commission (EAC) for activities to make election security improvements.

The Help America Vote Act was passed in 2002, after Florida, and it is the federal government’s main instrument for paying to improve how American elections are run. Its money has bought voting machines and voter registration systems and poll worker training for twenty years.

Here, $9,541 of it bought two years of camera service from a private surveillance company, pointed at a box where people put their ballots.

What this page is not saying

It is not saying the camera watches voters. Nothing in the record describes what it covers, and a camera aimed at a metal box on a fire station forecourt is a plausible and narrow thing.

It is not saying the county did anything improper. The item was on a public agenda, with the cost, the vendor, the funding source and the reason all on its face. That is more disclosure than several six-figure purchases on this site received.

And it is not saying the money was misspent. Election security funds paying for physical security at an election facility is squarely within what those funds are for.

What is worth recording is simply that this is what the transaction was. A federal election-security grant, a two-year contract with a company whose main business is a nationwide camera network, and a camera at a ballot drop box. Whether that is happening in one county or a hundred is not a question this page can answer, and it is a better question than anything about Yuba specifically.

The thing we could not resolve

The Registrar’s camera is at the ballot drop box at Linda Fire Station #3.

Thirteen months later, when the Undersheriff listed the county’s plate reader cameras for the board, the list included “2 - Linda Fire Station”.

Those may be entirely different devices at a shared address. The Registrar bought “video surveillance services”; the Sheriff’s list is headed “Automated License Plate Recognition”, which is a different capability. Two agencies putting equipment at the same fire station is unremarkable.

But whether the elections camera sits inside the Sheriff’s platform, whether its footage is searchable by deputies, and whether anyone decided that on purpose, are questions the record does not answer. They are in the records request on this site.