Voting for the residents of Whitmore was in Millville until the Atkins' precinct was established in Whitmore in the late 1800s. Quintus Atkins was the earliest Atkins' precinct registrant found on the Shasta County voter registration lists. He registered as a resident of Whitmore, on July 10, 1896, at age sixty-five. Atkins had been elected Shasta County Surveyor from 1870 to 1872, and Assessor from 1874 to 1876.

See Chapter 30 for selected precinct lists.

From the 1920s until about 1935 Whitmore had many voters registered in the Socialist party. The Socialist party was founded in 1901 by labor leaders Eugene Debs, Victor Berger, Morris Hillquit, and others. The first paragraph of the Socialist Party Platform of 1912 stated:

The representatives of the Socialist Party, . . . Declare that the capitalist system has outgrown its historical function, and has become utterly incapable of meeting the problems now confronting society. We denounce this outgrown system as incompetent and corrupt and the source of unspeakable misery and suffering to the whole working class.

Clark Hull, a resident of Shasta County and a leader in the Socialist Party defined Socialism as:

The social ownership and democratic control of the means of production and distribution. We want common wealth, instead of the capitalist system. . . .

Hull also said:

Railroads, for instance. The transportation system should be socially owned by a federal thing. But I would want the workers and the public representatives on the governing boards, to run the thing, and not -- as it is now, if you own stock in the company. You don't have to know a thing about it, you're just a parasite. . . . Of course the idea is that a railroader would know more about how a railroad should be run than a New York banker. But as it is now, it's the money people that make the decisions.

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