California: Software incompatibilities cited in review of missing Los Angeles County voter names | Los Angeles Times

Los Angeles County’s election software was unable to process a formatting change in state voter data, contributing to 118,500 names being omitted from eligible-voter rosters on election day in June, according to an executive summary of an independent review released Wednesday. There was no evidence of a security breach, the summary said. The county paid IBM Security Services $230,000 to investigate the foul-up, which officials said affected roughly 2.3% of registered voters across the county and 35% of voting locations. L.A. County elections chief Dean Logan said in June that the problem had no impact on voter eligibility and that poll workers were instructed on election day to give provisional ballots to people whose names did not appear on rosters. But the omissions prompted elected officials and civil rights groups to demand that the county review its election process.

California: Code, Software, Servers Bedeviled Marin County Election Website | Techwire

Old code, software problems and server configuration in Marin County, combined with heavy traffic, caused the blooper that made it impossible for the public to view results on election night June 5, county officials said this week. “We determined that it was a combination of three things,” said Liza Lowery Massey, director of Marin County’s Department of Information Services and Technology. The Registrar of Voters website, which had been redesigned to feature more graphs and other visual elements to make the data more accessible to the general public, remained inaccessible most of the night. Specifically, Massey said there was some antiquated legacy software code in some of the county’s Web pages.

California: A Fight Over Voter Rights in California | Wall Street Journal

Santa Monica, Calif., with a “well-being index” to gauge the happiness of its residents and a fleet of city buses powered by natural gas, often lives up to its reputation as a wealthy, liberal enclave on California’s coast. But this month, a trial in a Los Angeles courtroom has put the seaside city on the same side as a conservative legal activist who is challenging the state’s voting-rights law. The fight revolves around the city’s at-large election system for its seven City Council seats. Instead of winning office by capturing the majority in any particular district, council members are elected citywide.

California: Marin County officials detail glitches behind election-night web foulup | Marin Independent Journal

Old code, software problems and server configuration combined with heavy traffic caused the blooper that made it impossible for the public to view results on election night June 5, county officials said this week. “We determined that it was a combination of three things,” said Liza Lowery Massey, director of Marin County’s Department of Information Services and Technology. The Registrar of Voters’ website, which had been redesigned to feature more graphs and other visual elements to make the data more accessible to the general public, remained inaccessible most of the night.

California: Prepare to Vote on Android Tablets | San Francisco Weekly

A potential new voting system may not guarantee San Franciscans night-of election results, but agonizing, eight-day waits for a new mayor are likely behind us. That scenario unfolded in June, mostly thanks to the sheer amount of mail-in ballots that streamed in days after the polls had closed. But this past week, voters and the San Francisco Department of Elections had the chance to engineer a smoother, less tedious process on several fronts. For future elections, Dominion Voting Systems has an alternative that will allow voters to select their choices on a huge Android tablet complete with ADA-friendly accessibility options, a language bar, a review page, and companion printer to track their choices on paper. To extend the ranked-choice voting confusion, voters can rank up to 10 candidates on the screen. “This system is much more versatile than the existing system,” says Larry Korb, a sales engineer for Dominion.

California: Incompatible file formats led Los Angeles County to drop 118,000 voters in California primary | StateScoop

Multiple factors contributed to Los Angeles County eliminating more than 118,000 registered voters from the rolls during the June 5 California primary election, according to a report published Wednesday. The document, prepared by IBM Security Services, explains that software incompatibilities and clashing file formats between the state’s official voter list and the county’s system led to the voters being dropped from the roster. At the time, county officials attributed the cut names to a printing error. The affected voters accounted for about 2.3 percent of the county’s registered voters, and were spread across about one-third of the sprawling county’s precincts. The most populous in the United States, the county spans from the city of Los Angeles to the edge of the Mojave Desert, and boasts more than 5.1 million registered voters, more than one-quarter of California’s statewide total. People who showed up to vote but were told their names were not on the rolls were still allowed to cast provisional ballots.

California: San Francisco Tests New Election Voting System | NBC

A pilot program in San Francisco aims to make the voting process easier both on casting a vote and how that vote is counted. San Francisco residents have until Tuesday to test the pilot program out, which includes electronic voting on large tablets. “It’s absolutely amazing,” voter Charles Esler said of trying out the pilot. “It’s a lot more user friendly.” San Francisco’s Department of Elections is hoping voters will offer plenty of opinions after they come test them out. The machines being used in the new voting process are built by Dominion Voting Systems.

California: Elections business serving San Luis Obispo County has legal issues | The Tribune

A business that for years provided key election services to San Luis Obispo County is barred from doing business in California and has a federal tax lien of $270,000, records show. Now, San Luis Obispo County and five other California counties have contracted for the same election services with what business executives assert is a new company. But there’s evidence the two are related — if not the same business. The new business, Integrated Voting Systems, shares a working name, address and other details with the original business: Integrated Voting Solutions. And for nearly two years, Integrated Voting Systems has done business as Integrated Voting Solutions. In June, that company caused a critical ballot error that required a recount in a Colorado county, leading to news stories that linked the company to the one in “hot water” in California.

California: Could Russia hack California’s elections? It would be hard, but not impossible | San Francisco Chronicle

Although California has received an “all-clear” from government agencies looking into Russian attempts to hack into voting data for states across the nation, safe today doesn’t mean safe tomorrow, a leading computer security expert warned. “The bottom line is, be nervous,” said Matt Bishop, a UC Davis computer science professor who specializes in computer security. California has been pushing hard to make its voting systems more secure and more efficient since Florida’s famous “hanging chad” election of 2000. …  San Francisco’s system is typical, said John Arntz, the city’s elections chief. There’s an “air gap” in the electronic voting machines and the equipment that tallies the votes, he said.

California: State Supreme Court Squashes Bid To Split State Into Three | NPR

California will be staying in one piece, at least for now, after the state’s supreme court ruled that a proposal to divide California into three cannot be placed on the ballot in November. Tim Draper, a wealthy venture capitalist, has spent years arguing that the Golden State would be better off as several smaller states. He says California is too large to be governed effectively and that splitting up would result in “better decision making and real solutions closer to home.” This year, he got enough signatures to put it before voters — although experts said that even if the proposal passed, it would face a range of daunting legal and political hurdles. Then the Planning and Conservation League (PCL), a nonprofit environmental group in California, filed a lawsuit to block the measure from getting to a vote.

California: New law requires voter data breach reporting | Associated Press

Journalists, researchers and political campaigns that receive voter data must tell California officials if it may have been stolen under a new law Gov. Jerry Brown announced he signed Monday. It requires people and organizations that have California voter registration data to report security breaches affecting the storage of that information, which can include names, birth dates and addresses. Counties and the secretary of state’s office provide voter registration information to people and organizations who agree to use the data only for journalistic, scholarly, political or government purposes. The new law directs the secretary of state to develop guidelines for how such information should be securely stored. Additionally, it makes intentionally misinforming a voter about voting locations, eligibility or times a misdemeanor.

California: Fresno ballot vendor has trouble in Colorado, warned by state of California | The Fresno Bee

The company that has a multimillion-dollar contract to provide voting services to Fresno County and others across at least two states is in hot water for printing outdated ballots in Colorado, triggering a manual recount. The company, Integrated Voting Systems, also shares a working name, address and other details with a corporation that owes more than $270,000 in back taxes and is barred from doing business in California. These companies are linked to still more printing companies which have had millions of dollars worth of liens and civil judgments levied against them. For nearly two years, Integrated Voting Systems has done business as Integrated Voting Solutions, both based in Fresno and Dinuba. Although leadership for the former vehemently denies any association with the latter, it’s clear the two companies are related – if not the same business.

California: With Russian meddling in mind, California invests $134 million to safeguard election systems | The Sacramento Bee

Alex Padilla says California’s voting system wasn’t compromised by Russia’s attempt to interfere with the 2016 U.S. election. But the issue is in the back of his mind as he looks to safeguard the integrity of the vote. With increased attention to cybersecurity lately, California is making a sizable investment in its election infrastructure. This year’s state budget provides $134 million for counties to modernize voting systems. It also provides $3 million for the creation of the Office of Elections Cybersecurity and the Office of Enterprise Risk Management. Because the budget was signed so recently, there hasn’t been enough time for counties to request funding and have contracts generated. Even so, the budget allows counties that recently bought new systems to request reimbursement.

California: The November election just got a lot less confusing for California voters | Los Angeles Times

Californians won’t vote on the nation’s toughest privacy protections after all — because the Legislature did its job and handled the matter. That’s one less confusing ballot proposition and hundreds fewer annoying TV ads that voters will be pestered with in November. Same with a complex local tax measure. The soft drink industry was scared of local governments slapping taxes on sugary soda. So soda makers qualified a ballot initiative making it harder to increase local taxes period. But they withdrew the measure last week after the Legislature passed a bill to ban new soda taxes for 12 years. There also won’t be a squirrely ballot measure sponsored by paint manufacturers asking taxpayers to subsidize their lead paint cleanup. Outraged legislators responded to the initiative by introducing bills to penalize the companies. In the end, everyone holstered their weapons and agreed to negotiate.

California: Some Kings County votes counted twice in state assembly primary, recount lifts Salas | KBAK

Some votes cast in Kings County during California’s June 6 primary were counted twice by mistake, Kings County officials say. An ensuing recount resulted in a slight shakeup in the state assembly race for District 32, where incumbent Rudy Salas moved ahead of his conservative challenger, Justin Mendes, after first appearing to have lost. Both men would have appeared on the ballot in November anyway. Neither candidate seemed shaken by the correction. Each say they continue to trust the process.

California: Los Angeles County Selects IBM Security Services to Review Voter Roster Error | SCVNews

Los Angeles County has engaged information technology leader IBM Security Services to conduct an independent review and evaluation of the systems and procedures used in the production and printing of voter rosters for the June 5 Statewide Direct Primary Election. IBM will work with the county’s Chief Information Officer and Auditor-Controller to determine the root cause of the printing error and make recommendations for corrective action. “Our priority is ensuring a thorough and impartial review that is conducted to the highest professional standards,” said Chief Executive Officer Sachi A. Hamai. “Working with IBM Security Services, we are confident we will get the critical information needed to prevent this from happening again.”

California: Los Angeles County Invests $300 Million in New Voting System | MyNewsLA

Los Angeles County officials voted Tuesday to spend roughly $300 million on a major redesign of its voting system in anticipation of the 2020 presidential election, even as an independent consultant investigates a glitch in the existing process that led to nearly 120,000 voters being left off polling place rosters last week. The new system, which has an electronic interface at the polling place but generates a paper ballot for record keeping, is part of a broader update that includes allowing voters to cast a ballot over an 11-day period prior to and including Election Day. The county will also do away with assigning traditional polling places and instead allow voters to drop in at any vote center convenient to them.

California: Los Angeles County officials say entire city blocks were left off voter rolls | LA Daily News

County workers are expediting the count of what is likely to be thousands of provisional ballots Wednesday due to a printing glitch that left nearly 120,000 voters off of Los Angeles Country rolls. A spokesman for the Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk’s office said an estimate of the total provisional ballots was expected to be released late this afternoon and the root cause of the error was still being investigated. In the wake of the problem, members of the Board of Supervisors summoned Dean Logan, the county’s registrar-recorder/county clerk, to answer questions during a weekly public hearing. Logan first offered his “regret and apologies that we fell short … I understand the gravity of it,” before assuring the board that there was no issue related to individual voters’ eligibility to vote.

California: 118,522 voters accidentally left off Los Angeles County polling place rosters | Los Angeles Times

If you are a registered voter in Los Angeles County and poll workers say they can’t find your name on the roster at the polling place when you go to vote, don’t worry — you can still cast a provisional ballot. Some Angelenos needed a bit of reassurance that their votes would be counted in Tuesday’s primary election after 118,522 voters’ names were accidentally left off rosters due to a printing error, according to L.A. County Registrar Dean C. Logan. About 2.3% of L.A. County’s 5.1 million registered voters and 35% of the county’s 4,357 precincts were affected by the error, according to figures provided by the registrar-recorder/county clerk’s office, which was still trying to determine the reason for the printing error. Voters whose names are missing are being encouraged to file provisional ballots, which are verified by vote counters later. 

California: Facebook Tried to Rein In Fake Ads. It Fell Short in a California Race. | The New York Times

Regina Bateson had just finished an Easter egg hunt with her children on April 1 when her phone started buzzing. Take a look at Facebook, messages from her friends and colleagues urged. Ms. Bateson, a Democrat running for Congress in the California primary on Tuesday, quickly opened up the social network. There, she saw what appeared to be a news article that painted her as underhandedly trying to torpedo the campaign of a rival Democratic candidate. When Ms. Bateson clicked through the article, she was directed to a Facebook page run by Sierra Nevada Revolution, a local progressive group she had clashed with in the past. The article was not a news story, she found, but a political ad paid for by Sierra Nevada Revolution. And while Facebook rolled out new rules on April 6 mandating that campaign ads be clearly labeled and say who had purchased them, Sierra Nevada Revolution’s ad about Ms. Bateson continued to be targeted to local voters throughout that month without any of those disclosures.

California: Election Officials Enlist Data Scientists in Election Monitoring Bid | Bloomberg

Southern California officials are turning to data scientists for help spotting suspicious trends as voters head to the polls in primaries on Tuesday and cyber experts warn that Russia will seek to meddle in this year’s midterm elections. As part of a pilot project, the Orange County Registrar of Voters is shipping some of its data to researchers at the California Institute of Technology through a secure pipeline. They’re developing analytic tools that could help election officials review voting data for irregularities. California is one of eight states holding primaries Tuesday and Orange County alone has nearly 1.5 million registered voters. The aim of the California project is to help local officials pinpoint any “anomalies” in their data, providing “metric-based evaluations” on the integrity of elections, according to Michael Alvarez, a Caltech political science professor. The Caltech team will post its data analysis on an online dashboard.

California: In a handful of California counties, polling places are giving way to a sweeping new election system | Los Angeles Times

The neighborhood polling place, a staple of American elections, has disappeared as election day arrives in five California counties — the first sites to transition to a sweeping new system dependent on absentee ballots and a limited number of all-purpose voting centers. It is a major change, far beyond the tinkering in years past. And when it spreads to California’s most populous cities and communities in 2020, the new system probably will lead to a rethinking of what it means to conduct an election. “Forget everything you know about the voting process and create an all-new one,” said Alice Jarboe, Sacramento County’s interim registrar of voters.

California: California is making it easier to vote — even if you forgot to register | The Tribune

Thinking about voting in the June 5 election but forgot to register? Or maybe you moved and forgot to update your address. Don’t worry. For the first time in a California general election, voters who missed the registration deadline can still vote for sheriff or a favorite candidate for governor — thanks to a new conditional voter registration process. That’s because of state legislation that went into effect in 2017. It’s part of what Secretary of State Alex Padilla called, “a simple way we’re continuing to expand voting rights and opportunities in California.” All would-be voters need to do is fill out a same-day registration card and cast their ballots on or before Election Day.

California: Fate of Judge Persky, symbol within #MeToo movement, heads to voters | San Francisco Chronicle

No California judge has been recalled from office since 1932, when Los Angeles voters removed three Superior Court judges accused of taking kickbacks. None has been recalled because of an unpopular ruling since 1913, when San Franciscans ousted a judge who had set a low bail for a man charged with sexual assault. But history may not provide much shelter for Aaron Persky, a Santa Clara County Superior Court judge who faces a June 5 recall vote primarily because of a single decision: the six-month sentence he issued two years ago to former Stanford swimmer Brock Turner, convicted of attempted rape and two other felonies for sexually penetrating a drunk and unconscious woman outside a fraternity party in January 2015. Furor over the sentencing spread nationwide, fueled by a heart-wrenching courtroom statement from Turner’s victim and the widespread view that Persky, swayed by his own background as a former Stanford athlete, had let Turner off far too lightly.

California: More Santa Clara County voters discovering by surprise they are not registered | The San Jose Mercury News

Since Santa Clara County elections officials last week admitted accidentally deleting a voter’s registration, several other residents have reported that they too were quietly dropped from the voter rolls without their knowledge. Santa Clara County elections officials could not say Tuesday what happened in those other cases, but they and officials in other counties urged voters who haven’t received a mail-in ballot or voter guide to not despair. Even though the deadline to register for the June 5 primary was Monday, elections officials said voters may still be able to vote provisionally if their registration was canceled by mistake. “Our office is here to assist voters so we ask those with questions to please contact us,” said Eric Kurhi, a spokesman for the Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters.

California: Santa Clara’s current voting system isn’t fair, judge says | San Jose Mercury News

In a declaration that may force Santa Clara to deal with long-standing complaints about equal representation on the City Council, a judge on Tuesday said the city’s current election system isn’t fair to minority voters. Superior Court Judge Thomas Kuhnle leaned in favor of the group of Asian Americans who sued Santa Clara last year claiming the city’s at-large election system discriminates against Asian Americans by diluting their vote. “Based on the evidence presented at trial, the court finds that plaintiffs have proven by a preponderance of the evidence that the at-large method of election used by the city impairs the ability of Asians to elect candidates as a result of the dilution and abridgment of their rights as voters,” wrote Kuhnle in a proposed statement of decision Tuesday. “Having found the City liable for violating the [California Voting Rights Act], this action will now proceed to the remedies phase.”

California: California is quietly disenfranchising thousands of voters based on their handwriting | Slate

California is not typically viewed as a hotbed of voter suppression, and not just because it’s California. Over the past few years, its legislature has passed sweeping reforms to protect residents’ right to vote with the strong encouragement of Gov. Jerry Brown. Democratic Attorney General Xavier Becerra has praised these measures and sued the Trump administration for attempting to abridge “our fundamental voting rights.” But even as Becerra attacks Trump for disenfranchising Americans, he is voluntarily defending a California scheme that nullifies tens of thousands of votes on the basis of dubious handwriting analysis. How did California, of all states, wind up suppressing so many votes? The problem lies in the state election code’s rules for counting absentee ballots. All registered voters can choose to vote by mail in California if they want to; they need only request a ballot, fill it out, sign the ballot envelope, and drop it in the mail. Unbeknownst to most voters, however, is the stipulation that their signature on the envelope must match the signature on their voter-registration form. If it does not, election officials do not count the ballot.

California: Non-citizens voting in San Francisoc school board elections to get immigration warning | The San Francisco Examiner

San Francisco’s implementation of non-citizen voting in school board elections this November will come with a warning — federal immigration enforcement officials could obtain the voter registration information. Voters approved a ballot measure in 2016 to allow non-citizens to vote in school board elections beginning in November, but there are concerns over how the federal government could use the information as President Donald Trump has targeted California and San Francisco over sanctuary policies. San Francisco plans to issue a warning in 51 languages to non-citizens before they register, including on a Department of Elections affidavit they would need to sign to register and on the Department of Elections website.

California: Counties Hardening Defenses Against Vote Hacking | Techwire

In Southern California, home to some of the nation’s most competitive congressional contests, that threat of Russians cyberhacking this year’s midterm elections is being taken seriously. Consider just a few of the many new security protocols being adopted by election officials in the four-county region encompassing Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties. Office emails are being encrypted and networks buttressed. Election employees are randomly being mock phished to see if they’ll fall for simulated online invaders. Federal officials are being invited to inspect and test the region’s many voting systems.

California: Voter fraud conviction inspires bill loosening oversight of lawmaker residency | The Sacramento Bee

Four years ago, Rod Wright resigned from the California Senate and served 71 minutes in jail after being convicted of eight felonies, including perjury and voter fraud, for living outside the district where he ran for office. Wright argued that he had done everything necessary to establish as his legal “domicile” an Inglewood home that he owned and where he registered to vote. But using photos of another house in the upscale neighborhood of Baldwin Hills, with his Maserati parked in front and closets full of his clothes, Los Angeles County prosecutors convinced a jury that Wright actually lived several miles away. The conviction upset many of Wright’s colleagues, who point out that the definition of a “domicile,” which establishes the eligibility of someone to run for a particular legislative seat, does not include the word “live” anywhere in it: “that place in which his or her habitation is fixed, wherein the person has the intention of remaining, and to which, whenever he or she is absent, the person has the intention of returning.”