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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."

In a major departure from his previous budgets, California Governor Jerry Brown's new state budget includes $134.3 million to fund new voting equipment. 

"This is a welcome development and will help build California voters' confidence in the integrity and security of our voting systems," said Kim Alexander, president of the California Voter Foundation, which has consistently supported increased state funding to help pay for California's election costs since 2013. 

In the final weeks of this year's legislative session, last-minute amendments were made to Assembly Bill 840, authored by Assemblyman Bill Quirk (D-Hayward) which would weaken California's post-election verification law.

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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.