CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, JANUARY 9, 2015, OR THEREAFTER
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, JANUARY 9, 2015, OR THEREAFTER
BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“GO SLOW ON NEW ELECTRONIC VOTING
EFFORTS”
The reports came in from all across
America during last fall’s election: electronic voting machines were flipping
some votes from Republican to Democrat in some states. From Democrat to
Republican in others. In one state with several close races, Wisconsin,
electronic vote-counting machines registered just 16 votes in a city where
about 5,350 persons were known to have cast ballots.
Other reports came from places as
diverse as Connecticut and Texas, North Carolina and Illinois, but there were
no problems in California. Beware, though, that good news may not last much longer.
Serious potential problems with
electronic voting machines built by companies like Diebold and Election Systems
& Software became a major fear in the middle of the last decade, and it
could happen again.
The earlier worries eased considerably
when outgoing California Secretary of State Debra Bowen conducted a “top to
bottom” review of all voting systems in the state almost eight years ago,
resulting in mothballs for many Diebold, ES&S and other machines that
proved hackable in tests conducted here and in Florida.
For the most part, California went
back to paper ballots which are counted electronically, making for somewhat
slower election results than in many other states, but far fewer questionable
results. In the few areas where some votes are cast electronically, there’s
always a paper trail to ensure they can be counted accurately later, if needed.
So there have been no serious
questions about the outcomes of California elections in about a decade, even
though there are some gripes that the process here is too primitive.
One who believes this is Alex Padilla,
the former Democratic state senator from the San Fernando Valley portion of Los
Angeles who takes over in January as the new secretary of state, California's
top elections officer. Padilla, an MIT graduate and once the youngest president
ever of the Los Angeles city council, last year wrote a new law that will allow
him – in the new office he was eyeing at the time he pushed the bill – to
approve new electronic voting systems that have received no previous
certification at all for use in actual elections.
His bill, known as SB 360 before it
became law, also ended a longstanding requirement that all electronic voting
systems be certified at the federal level before they’re used here.
It allows counties to develop and sell their own voting systems, something
Los Angeles County officials want to do.
Gov. Jerry Brown never explained why
he failed to veto this bill, which cried out for rejection because of the many
problems encountered by electronic voting systems right up through the November
election.
Imagine
the frustration of voters who intend to cast ballots for candidates from one
party, but find when the machine presents its summary of their choices that it
thinks they’ve voted the opposite way. That happened hundreds of times – at
least -- in November. No one knows how many instances went undetected because
voters didn’t review the summary.
In pushing the bill, Padilla said that
“Most California counties purchase their voting systems from…private vendors.
(This) has resulted in a patchwork of technologies throughout our state.”
He correctly pointed out that since
vendors consider their technology proprietary, it’s tough to determine how
easily systems can be hacked. Padilla claimed the answer to the problem is to
let counties develop, own and operate their own voting systems. That, he said,
“will increase voter confidence in the integrity of our elections.”
But there’s no problem with vote
integrity in California today. Ever since Bowen got rid of the problem systems,
there have been no claims of flipped election results.
In short, if it works, why fix it? But
that’s not Padilla’s thinking. Instead, he wants new-fangled devices. But those
could open a Pandora’s Box of expensive recounts, legal challenges and deflated
public confidence in election results.
The upshot is that Padilla now has the
authority to follow up on his own bill, but he would be wise to tread very
carefully. Yes, he could authorize use of some new machines in pilot programs
during coming elections. But if those systems don’t work well, doubts about
Padilla’s wisdom will rise right along with questions about the machines he
wants to encourage.
-30-
Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, go to www.californiafocus.net
Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, go to www.californiafocus.net
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