California is on the “cutting edge” of increasing election access and security, U.S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren said Thursday.
Following the ribbon-cutting ceremony, San Jose State hosted an election security town hall with Lofgren and U.S. Rep. Anna Eshoo and California Secretary of State Alex Padilla, moderated by SJSU President Mary Papazian at the Hammer Theatre Center.
“Any voting system used by any county in California first must be tested and certified by the state, that it meets our requirements,” Padilla said. “Among the security requirements we have in California, No. 1 is paper ballots.”
The paper record allows for recounts and audits to ensure the results are accurate, Padilla said.
“We have to have paper ballots,” Eshoo said. “And we saw earlier, even though it’s electronic, the [ballot marking device] at the voting center – that produces a paper ballot.”
The device prints out a paper ballot with the voter’s selections and a bar code for scanners to quickly tabulate the vote.
“Voting systems, by law in California, cannot be connected to the internet,” Padilla said. “The machines we use to mark the ballots, to cast the ballots, to count the ballots, we keep them intentionally offline, making it impossible to systematically hack or rig an election.”
Padilla also touted the audits that counties are required to conduct after each election, in which the votes at 1% of precincts are checked.
Starting with the upcoming primary election, counties can optionally conduct a risk-limiting audit, which “provides a more robust methodology of ballot review,” according to a 2018 statement from the Padilla’s office.
California is already doing all of the right things, Lofgren said.
“The good news is that virtually everything in the [Securing America’s Federal Elections] (SAFE) Act that we passed in the House, California has already done,” she said.
The SAFE Act would provide funding to states to improve their elections infrastructure, including hiring IT staff and performing cybersecurity trainings, according to a summary provided by Lofgren’s office.
The act would require states to ensure that none of their “systems that count ballots or upon which voters mark their ballots” connect to the internet.
The state has taken it one step further by working to fight misinformation and disinformation, Padilla said.
“We have already established protocols with the Twitters, Facebooks and Instagrams of the world to report [disinformation] to them,” he said.
But most importantly, Padilla said, California has shown it is possible to increase both the accessibility and security of elections.
“California believes not just in the fundamental right to vote, but to maintain the security and integrity of our elections while doing more and more and more to increase access to the ballot for all eligible citizens,” Padilla said.
