California Secretary of State Holds Firm on Voting Machine Integrity

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Hannah Beth Jackson

When Debra Bowen ran for Secretary of State, she ran on a platform of restoring integrity and confidence in the voting process. Although this may sound like an easy task, supported by one and all, it has been anything but. The county clerks and registrars of voters in many of the state’s 58 counties don’t want her treading on their sacred ground.

Historically, the voting process has been under the singular domain of each county registrar. As an example of their commitment to maintaining their autonomy, they went after Kevin Shelley on 2005, after he made it clear he wanted to assure credibility and accuracy of these alleged (and now proven) unreliable vote counting machines. Of course, Shelley had other significant issues, but his insistence that the county folks play ball with him didn’t help him, either.

Secretary Bowen, on the other hand, has no such baggage. She does have, however, a strong independent streak of her own which, when coupled with her strong commitment to this issue and protecting against the hacking of voting equipment that many of us believe influenced the Presidential race in 2004 (think Ohio, in particular), makes her pretty formidable.

After commissioning a study to see whether the voting machine makers could provide a secure and accurate system, she is following the findings of University of California computer experts hired to see if they could hack into these systems. They could, and did, quite easily. They were able to change vote totals and manipulate the “security” in these machines. After a day of hearings this past week, where all this came out, she announced that she has decertified both the Diebold and Sequoia systems. Lots of fallout yet to come on this one, but for a preview check out the article.