Which means that the Republicans will FINALLY support us in our push to get rid of the damn things.

its not who votes, rather who counts the votes!

Can't we just PLEASE go back to paper ballots, and HAND counting?????? I don't like this for either side. The GOP will rig these machines too.

What does Brown see in this??? We need PAPER ballots - not this arcade game style of voting.

The only thing I can think that would possibly explain this is that people in California really do believe these things can't be hacked or have some other reason to support it. Just as they didn't apporve GMO labeling of foods there.

With big money influence public opinion > generating calls to legislators > creating the bill > passing the bill > Brown agreeing with then...

This isn't just Brown pulling a rabbit out of a hat. Many places think they are a good idea. Not just red states. Fortunately one of the national voting reforms is supposed ot be increased mail ballots. It was strange, they actually came out in person this week to ask voters if they still wanted to vote by mail or wanted to use special touch screen voting. I'm not in CA but I was surprised to see that option being offered.

Mail in ballots in California or nationally will make the touch screen voting hacking problem obsolete. When you can call vote at home with a election booklet and talking ot people you know, and mailing it.

Instead of the current goat rope people are going through with lines, finding the correct pollling place, dealing with the weather, presenting ID and the rest, the mail ballot is much preferred and gets a better turn out.

This may be the last part of a dying system. If CA has mail in ballots, this is no big deal. Don't worry about whatever these machines do or dont' do. It's not necessary, it's merely an anachronym that is going away.

Mail in voting serves those who have long working hours or other problems voting. Going in person has always been a way to disenfranchise people. So many people do not have that luxury.

...Unless you absolutely have to vote by mail (eg., You're going to be out of town on Election DAy, etc.)

Here's just a few reasons why Vote-by-Mail is a terrible idea for democracy: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=6003

as people are looking at them.

It worked so well the damn GOP governor candidate paid people to drive to Democratic areas to try to get them to hand ballots to them. People refused and called up the news media and the state who issued a warning to not break the chain of custody by handing your ballot to anyone you didn't know, or to go and drop them off at official drop-off points or the state offices.

We are familiar with GOP stunts pulled since the Bush years when they literally sent out DHS letters to intimidate voters and also the GOP challenged the right of long-term residents to vote but that also got media and state attention. The GOP lost the elections both time.

We had no stories of two ballots being sent out and we have verifiable machines that keep the paper mail ballots. Our ID is already established and can't be questioned by low-information or Tea Party poll workers.

It all depends on the integrity of state officials, so it's important to keep track of who is getting office, especially any office that effects voting. A Tea Party fanatic was responsible for shenanigans down in OR.

Many people are not capable of running around to find polling places on election day. So I don't agree that your example fits all states.

there is the problem,we need a system that depends on no one official or group but that is open and transparent for all of us

and if you are using electric scanners,it is still a "trust" system

vote by mail is better than no paper touchscreens just because your state's system does not seem to be compromised yet,does not mean it is not vulnerable



The public must be able to see and authenticate these four essential steps for an election to be public, democratic, and valid: (1) Who can vote (voter list); (2) Who did vote (3) The original count; (4) Chain of custody.

Happy to defer to your response to this one. But I'd also throw in the ease of buying/selling votes in Vote-by-Mail systems. Voter intimidation, loss of privacy, etc. and all sorts of other things that the person who posted (forgive me, missed name) that defense of Vote-by-Mail doesn't seem to understand or appreciate.

Yes, it's more convenient. And it'd be even nicer if everyone got $100 for voting. Doesn't make it a good idea. In fact, unless it's actually necessary for someone to do, as stated originally (eg., they're out of town during the election, are to infirm too get to the polls, or they are forced to vote on 100% unverifiable touch-screens at the precinct, etc.), Vote-by-Mail remains a terrible idea.

Any system must have it.

The system being developed for L.A. County (and for sale to the rest of the country) is a touch-screen system that prints paper ballots that can never be verified after an election as reflecting the intent of the voter.

A "paper trail" is not enough. In fact, it's almost meaningless, unless that paper trail is a hand-marked paper ballot that is known to reflect the intent of a voter (unlike a computer-printed paper ballot) and that is, or at least can be, hand-counted after an election.

Otherwise, the machine could tally one way and print out a ticket for the other.

Collecting the paper would allow spot checking of the machines for accuracy. Just the possibility would keep Republicans a little more honest, lest those machines be thrown out completely like they were here in NM.

For those who don't remember, 17,000 of us had our national votes unrecorded in 2004. Our votes for local judges were recorded and that's how we know how many of us were robbed.

You really didn't think Stupid actually won this state, did you?

-- but she won't be there forever.

I saw her in a hearing about electronic vote rigging by the CA GOP, and she was frickin' amazing. I'll have to email her and ask WTF is going on.

United when the Powers to Be have total control of vote counting. California had been making such great strides and now this.

if the people ever got their act together, write-in candidacies, by candidates who forswear contributions,
people who have net worth and social policies more in line with the voting public, who need to be educated
about the real history of vote corruption, then we can send the clowns packing.
crazy?
desperate times.
neither Jerry Brown nor the Fresno County Elections department that blocked/overpriced the Prop 37 recount can be trusted.
And they shouldnt be.
I challenge anyone to explain away the lunar results of the total recall ripoff.

I trust Bowen's judgement...


the bill creates a state certification requirement that is governed by standards to be adopted by the Secretary of State that meet or exceed federal voluntary voting system guidelines set forth by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.

I believe it's all about a requirement that any software used is "non proprietary". This has always been the problem with current e-voting.

California counties currently purchase their voting systems from one of five private vendors. The vendors offer a variety of systems and upgrades which has resulted in a patchwork of technologies throughout our state. The private vendors consider their technology proprietary and limit public access to both the operating software and hardware. As a result, state election officials and the public are completely dependent upon these companies, who are under no legal obligation to notify federal election officials or the public when their voting systems malfunction, have vulnerabilities or defects.

AB 360 paves the way for open source /paper ballot voting systems in California.


http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151850725335817.1073742144.171020735816&type=3

...on the bill. I link to several detailed articles at the bottom of the originally linked post, which discuss Bowen's support.

You also need to read about how that "non-proprietary, publicly-owned" canard was used to mislead about this bill.

For the record, as I detail in my reporting, L.A. County, the largest voting jurisdiction in the nation (and where I live) already has a publicly-owned e-voting system.

WTF??!!

i love du.

In New York State, much of the traction the "Keep the Levers" effort received was from conservatives--if only because they realized how expensive e-voting is.

Private, copyrighted code, no one is allowed to check or verify in any particular machine.
As others are figuring out, nothing short of hand marked, paper ballots will do for truly honest, transparent elections.
If other countries can hand count their tens to hundreds of millions of ballots over night, why can't we? Why do we need to know the 'winners' by the 10 O'clock news, when the poles close at 7:00 or 8:00? Elections have consequences. Accuracy over speed.

I don't want my vote to be unverifiable!!!

Guaranteed.

California has done since deregulation electricity. It's going to be just a big a cluster f*** too.

Too close to call and exit poll data not matching up with voting numbers. Oh yeah, BOHICA baby.

have a mandate to enact Republican ideas too.

OK...anyone else really confused by this?

I live in rural Ohio.

I vote at the fire station.

We have touch voting machines, but they also have a paper printout.

You can check to see if the machine and the paper printout match before finalizing your vote.

I don't think there have been any problems thus far.

You have no idea whether the machine records your vote the way the paper printout reflected it. It's 100% impossible to know on those types of Direct Recording Electronic touch-screen systems.

"I don't think there have been any problems thus far."

You would/could have absolutely no idea if there has been. That's the point of the great concern about those types of voting systems. Just FYI.

True

We have had trouble in the state; 2004 presidential election.

(Help America Vote Act) which as I recall began as a Democratic initiative that in typical GOP fashion was hijacked by Bush-Cheney and their GOP pals and turned into an opportunity to spread proprietary voting machines manufactured by other pals into every state via federal authorization. The long and short of it is that it gives the SoS (Bowen), not the feds, the power of certification. Text of SB 360 here:

http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml;jsessionid=df1b9f8bbca4e03447f5bd6410f8

That's my take anyway. Thanks for the heads up Brad as I hadn't heard about this.

some understandable rationale. Because on the surface it sounds ludicrous.

"The long and short of it is that it gives the SoS (Bowen), not the feds, the power of certification."

That has absolutely ZERO to do with the issue. The fact is that the CA Sec. of State already held the power to certify or decertify prior to the passage of SB 360. The only difference is that the SoS could not certify a system that had not already been certified at the federal level first.

In short, before SB 360, there were two independent levels of certification testing before a new e-voting system could be used in CA. It had to be approved by the feds and then it had to be approved by the state. If you consider passing muster at the federal level before it can be considered for state use to be a bad thing, I'm not sure how to respond.

Given that ALL of the systems we have in use today in CA have been approved first by the feds and then by the state and then LATER DISCOVERED TO HAVE MASSIVE FLAWS AND SECURITY ISSUES not discovered by either entity, I can't imagine why anyone who cares about election integrity would want LESS independent testing, rather than more.

Moreover, SB 360 allows HAVA money to be used to develop L.A. County's new 100% unverifiable touch-screen voting system. Previously, that money could only be spent on systems that had been approved at the federal level. So this will bring MORE of HAVA to CA, not less.

Sorry.

Here's a rough illustration: text of the bill with the term "Secretary of State" highlighted. Maybe this link will work, maybe it won't, but the point is that it's mainly concerned with assigning to the SoS certification and review rights currently residing with the Feds. If it works you'll see the text of SB 360 with its 100+ instances of "secretary of state" highlighted:

http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=201320140SB360&search_keywords=Secretary_of_State

If it doesn't work Ctr+F should do the job. In any case it's a quick way of showing that while the provisions are not necessarily unalarming -- I'm not questioning your judgment -- it looks like an effort to give SoS Bowen more latitude in the exercise of her responsibilities. Not that that's necessarily good. You've studied this at length, and I'm not questioning your characterization, just trying to figure out what's going on. I've seen this kind of legislative move before, in local initiatives where beleaguered city officials try to untie their hands so they can fix things. I typically vote against such initiatives but this one deserves closer scrutiny so more later. . .

"it's mainly concerned with assigning to the SoS certification and review rights currently residing with the Feds."

Unfortunately, that's not the case either. Under previous law (before SB 360 as signed by the Governor over the weekend), the Sec of State already had both "certification and review rights", as you describe it, for all voting systems in California.

The *only* essential difference, in that regard, is that systems also had to be certified by the federal government before the certification process could begin in CA. SB 360 will allow the SoS to approve new voting systems for use without the fed needing to sign off first (or ever), and it will then also allow the SoS to approve a system for use in a real election that has not been certified at EITHER the Fed *or* the State level.

Moreover, this bill has almost nothing to do with current SoS Bowen who is termed out next year. In fact, her office did not even come around to finally support the bill (somewhat begrudgingly, as I've come to understand it) until a number of changes were made to it late in the game.

If you're looking for something to explain "what's going on" here, I'd suggest you read these two articles of
mine which go into some of those reasons in some detail:

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=10242
...and...
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=9979

The top link discusses, among other things, the need to change the existing CA law so that L.A. County can free up money to for the development of their planned new, 100% unverifiable touch-screen system. The second link, my interview with L.A. County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Dean Logan, discusses (among other things), the County's attempt to work around federal testing at the EAC on what EAC officials described to me in my reporting (as quoted at length in the article) as inaccurate reasons.

In short, the testing/certification process for e-voting systems can be an arduous process, as it *should* be. Witness all of the system failures we've had with systems that HAVE gone through the full testing/certification process! Now that the County is developing it's own system, it seems they'd simply like to avoid that arduous process altogether. And the man running for 2014 SoS, state Sen. Alex Padilla, would like to facilitate that process for Los Angeles -- the largest voting jurisdiction in the nation.

I understand your concerns Brad, and I appreciate your valiant efforts to raise public consciousness of the issue generally and this piece of legislation particularly, and I'm glad you brought it to our attention. And I don't disagree with your general perception of the players though in the interests of full disclosure I must confess that I once ran into Alex Padilla's mother at the Burbank Home Depot or maybe it was Lowe's where she was looking into vinyl windows. Nice lady. Anyway my reading of the bill is less alarming than yours though as I say I don't necessarily dispute your account.

We need one system nationwide. Whether it is democrats or republicans this is wrong. It is antidemocratic.

I can only hope.

Thanks for the thread, BradBlog.