This week the Little Hoover Commission, a bipartisan group tasked
with making recommendations to the Governor and Legislature on
state government operations, released a new report on improving
election infrastructure. The report, California Election Infrastructure: Making a Good System
Better, found that the state takes many actions to
secure elections, but could be more aggressive in updating voting
equipment, proving election results, and innovating election
systems.
The report points out that state and federal funding for election
equipment is sporadic, coming only twice in the last twenty
years, which “does not allow election officials to plan for
maintaining, upgrading, and replacing their voting equipment on a
continuous basis.” The report also urges the state to do away
with the traditional manual audit of one percent of votes in each
election. Instead, they advocate for the implementation of
risk-limiting audits, which counties may currently conduct
voluntarily, but which, again, would benefit from state funding
assistance for full implementation.
Perhaps most striking are the questions the report raises about
election system innovation. The Commission heard witness
testimony about the disincentives for updating security,
including the Secretary of State’s re-certification process and
the equipment manufacturer’s profit structure. As the report
notes, “some witnesses suggested California fund a digital public
works project to develop publicly-owned election technology…
[and] stressed the benefits of making that technology open
source, in this case meaning that individuals could examine the
source code and identify security flaws, but only authorized
personnel could make changes to the code.” The report suggests
that the kind of strategic planning evident in other policy areas
could also be implemented to plan and implement some of these
best practices consistently across the state.
Some Little Hoover Commission reports result in legislative bills
and budget proposals, while others are never formally considered
by policymakers. Counties will wait to see whether the Governor,
Legislature, or Secretary of State move to implement any changes
raised in this report.
