CVF in the News

Santa Clara County accidentally unregistered voter

By John Woolfolk, San Jose Mercury News, May 21, 2018

Excerpt:

With Monday’s deadline for registering to vote approaching, Nancy Kops was getting a little anxious. All her friends already had received their mail-in ballots. But although she’s voted in every election since moving to San Jose 10 years ago, her ballot still hadn’t come.

The Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters office said Friday that an employee error resulted in Kops being unregistered to vote.

“This error was caused by a member of our team incorrectly resolving a duplication in registration records,” registrar spokesman Eric Kurhi said.

Kurhi added that “we are not aware of any other voters whose records were canceled in error,” and that the registrar’s office is happy to assist voters to confirm that they are registered to vote.

May 21 is the deadline for registering to vote in the June 5 primary election.

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Get a text ad from a candidate? Invasive, maybe, but it works, say experts

By Darrell Smith, Sacramento Bee, May 20, 2018

Excerpt:

Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert is taking to texts to get her message out in her bid for re-election in June.

Schubert for two months has sought the support of potential voters via messages that pop up on cellphones. Text messaging, said Schubert campaign manager David Gilliard, is just “another tool in the tool box” of a political campaign. Real Justice, which supports Schubert's challenger Noah Phillips, also targets potential voters via texts, said Vince Duffy, Phillips' campaign manager. 

Campaign texts, though not new, are part of a growing base of media strategies raising concerns among voting rights and privacy advocates. Campaigns, they say, have access to an increasing amount of voters' personal information from which to build detailed profiles of potential voters.

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Voting surge expected for California June primary election

By Mike Leury, KCRA TV Sacramento, May 17, 2018

Excerpt:

Neighborhood polling places are history in five California counties: Sacramento, Nevada, Napa, San Mateo and Madera.

They are being replaced by one-stop vote centers, drop boxes and voting by mail. The changes are part of the Voters Choice Act, designed to give Californians more choices on how they can vote. 

At the Sacramento County Elections office, hundreds of ballots are arriving each day. 

“We’ve received nearly 8,000 vote-by-mail ballots voted and back in house,” said Alice Jarboe, interim Registrar of Voters for Sacramento County. “And that’s a record for this time period prior to any election that I’ve been involved with in the past 20 years."

It appears there’s a surge in voter turnout at a time when Sacramento County is going through some big changes. 

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Confusion over 'independent' voters in California prompts redesign of voter registration card

By John Myers, Los Angeles Times, April 5, 2018

Excerpt:

The card millions of Californians use to register to vote is receiving its first makeover in more than a decade, inspired in part by confusion over how to become an "independent" unaffiliated voter — a problem highlighted by a Los Angeles Times investigation in 2016.

"It's an issue that's been lingering for years," said Secretary of State Alex Padilla. "But that was the first time it was really in the spotlight."

The Times found a substantial number of Californians who registered with the American Independent Party wrongly believed they weren't part of any political party — an error that later kept some from casting ballots in the state's 2016 presidential primary.

"A combination of issues prompted us to see if there was a better way," Padilla said.

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NorCal county registrars say hacking won't happen here

California's paper ballots protect voters from hacking

By Mike Luery, KCRA TV Sacramento, March 1, 2018

Excerpt:

Improving voter confidence in the elections process is part of Kim Alexander's mission at the nonprofit California Voter Foundation.

"When they say the Russians are going to come back, I don't think they're kidding about that," Alexander said.

Despite the threat of hacking in the 2018 election, Alexander said California is much better protected than other states because of paper ballots.

"The combination of a paper-based voting system and routine auditing of election results means that if something happened to our vote count and someone tried to intervene with the election, we would likely detect it," Alexander said. "And we would be able to recover from it."

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The Cost of Special Elections

By Scott Shafer, KQED News, for the California Report, January 29, 2018

Excerpt:

The spate of sexual harassment allegations has led two state lawmakers to resign. Local election officials are feeling the burden of special elections to fill those vacancies. (audio)

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Letter: Gov. Brown, don’t make it easier to meddle in our elections

By Kammi Foote, Kim Alexander and Barbara Simons, Sacramento Bee, October 2, 2017

Re: “Here’s how Jerry Brown can help protect vulnerable people, voting integrity and local control” (Editorials, Sept. 28) and “Brown should help ensure election integrity by signing this bill” (Another View, Sept. 30): With recent news of Russian scanning of state technology websites, this is not the time to reduce California’s manual 1 percent audit practice, which is designed to detect errors or manipulations in vote-counting software.

Assembly Bill 840 would invalidate a recent San Diego County court ruling (Lutz v. Vu) that all vote-by-mail ballots must be subject to inclusion in the 1 percent post-election manual tally, a ruling which confirms current practice of many California counties, including Inyo, Santa Clara and San Francisco. 

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Sacramento Bee Editorial: Veto AB 840

Editorial Board, Sacramento Bee, September 28, 2017

Excerpt:

California elections officials are proud of the integrity of this state’s elections. Brown ought to help them keep their record of accurate vote counts by vetoing Assembly Bill 840 by Assemblyman Bill Quirk, an East Bay Democrat. The bill zipped through at the end of the legislative session without a no-vote. Legislators must not have been paying attention. 

But Inyo County Clerk Kammi Foote and the nonpartisan California Voter Foundation note that the legislation would dramatically reduce the number of ballots counties must include in their public counts to show the accuracy of software vote counts. 

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Political Road Map: Knowing who is (and isn't) legally registered to vote in California

By John Myers, Los Angeles Times, August 14, 2017

Excerpt:

Perhaps the biggest takeaway from President Trump’s unproven allegations about the security of elections is that he’s managed to blur the difference between voting records and the act of voting.

Or put another way, it’s a distraction from resolving the challenges in keeping voter registration data accurate and up to date.

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California’s Top Elections Official Continues To Balk At Request From Trump’s Voter Panel

By Chris Nichols, Capitol Public Radio, July 20, 2017

Excerpt:

President Trump said on Wednesday that states such as California that won’t agree to share data with his commission on voter fraud must be worried about what the results will show.

“If any state does not want to share this information, one has to wonder what they’re worried about,” Trump said before the first meeting of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity in Washington D.C. “There’s something, there always is.”

California Secretary of State Alex Padilla is one of dozens of elections officials across the country who have expressed privacy and security concerns about the request.

Padilla told reporters Wednesday in a conference call that he’ll continue to withhold sensitive voter information, such as Social Security numbers, requested by the panel.

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