Our special coverage of Donald John’s Trump Senate Impeachment trial continues on today’s BradCast, but we interrupt that coverage briefly at the top of today’s show with some breaking news out of California, on a story we’ve been covering closely. [Audio link to show follows summary below.]
After we revealed last week that Los Angeles County’s new, 100% unverifiable touchscreen computer Ballot Marking Device (BMD) voting systems were found by the Secretary of State’s independent testers to have failed to meet more than 40 requirements of the California Voting System Standards, we called on Sec. of State Alex Padilla to deny certification of these horrific systems and to require a verifiable HAND-MARKED paper ballot system instead for all voters in the nation’s largest voting jurisdiction. We called on listeners to send Public Comment to the SoS before the Public Comment period for certification ended this past Monday for L.A.’s new $300,00,000 touchscreen “Voting Solutions for All People” or VSAP system.
I sent my own comment and, in doing so, cited a comment from the brainchild behind L.A. County’s new voting system, Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Dean Logan. As we noted in that comment, Logan promised me a year ago, in January of 2019 via email, that “The equipment/system components [for VSAP] are/will be … in compliance with California’s voting systems standards that exceed the federal voluntary system standards.”
That vow from the County’s top election official now turns out to have been untrue. Today, incredibly, Sec. Padilla “conditionally” certified [PDF] the VSAP system for first-time countywide use in the March 3rd Super Tuesday primaries, despite all of its many flaws.
He did, however, include a very curious — and, for now, confusing — condition, stating that “Los Angeles County shall make available in each vote center a sufficient number of blank write-in paper ballots for any voter that requests to cast a hand-marked paper ballot”…
What that means exactly, and whether this now means that every voter will be able to vote in any party’s primary with a verifiable hand-marked paper ballot simply by requesting one at one of the 1,000 new Voting Centers (which replace the 5,000 community precincts we’ve always used in L.A. in previous years) remains to be seen. I have queries out to both the Secretary and Registrar and will report back whatever I can learn when I do.
In related news, the City of Beverly Hills announced Thursday they will sue the County, due to the fact that the VSAP system, as we explained last week, only shows four candidates in each race, before a voter is required to hit a “MORE” button if they wish to see additional candidates in the same contest. That “MORE” button, however, is very close to the “NEXT” button on the touchscreen, and takes voters to the next race without ever showing them all candidates in the previous one.
Padilla’s conditional certification calls for mitigation to this enormous design flaw, but not until five months from now when “a plan” must be presented to the SoS regarding redesigned “functionality and usability”. That means this flaw — and the others –will be there for the critical March 3rd primaries and potentially changed before the crucial Presidential election in November. Whether that design change will actually be independently tested to ensure it has not introduced other problems also remains to be seen. But Beverly Hills, which has an upcoming election for City Council with five candidates on the ballot (one who will be hidden on Page 2 of the touchscreen for this race) has now filed a legal complaint, announcing they “are deeply troubled that voters will be disenfranchised by the new VSAP system.”
Then, it’s back to the ongoing mess on the East Coast in Trump’s Impeachment Trial. We share the powerful and impassioned closing remarks from Thursday night’s session from Rep. Adam Schiff. The lead Democratic House Manager spoke directly to Republican Senators about the internal dilemma that many are almost certainly facing in realizing the necessity of removing Trump before he cheats again on the 2020 election as he did in 2016 and, as Democrats have proven beyond a shadow of doubt, that he attempted to do in his unlawful pressure scheme with Ukraine to force them to announce an investigation seeking dirt on Joe Biden and an evidence-free claim about the 2016 election. Sadly, despite the power of those remarks, nobody who watches Fox “News” saw them because, as Media Matters found, the pretend “news” outlet showed live coverage of the actual, historic Senate trial “during its evening programming (between 7 p.m and 11 p.m. EST) for a total of just 22 seconds.”
We’re joined today by the great HEATHER DIGBY PARTON of Salon and Digby’s Hullabaloo to help us make sense of the past week of the trial as Democrats wrap up their opening (and perhaps closing) argument; what we can expect from the President’s attorneys who begin their own presentation in response on Saturday; our best analysis of what comes next; and why Parton predicts “jury nullification” and believes “shamelessness is their superpower”…
CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!…
[audio:http://BradBlog.com/audio/BradCast_BradFriedman-VSAP-SOSCert-BevHillsSues_HeatherDigbyParton-ImpeachTrialDemWrapOpen_012420.mp3]
(Snail mail support to “Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028” always welcome too!)
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the response I got from Padilla’s office:
Voting Systems
Fri, Jan 17, 8:55 AM (7 days ago)
Your public comment has been received. Thank you for your comment.
The voting system is still under consideration for certification by the Secretary of State.
This office puts all voting systems through rigorous testing and review which includes functional, usability, accessibility, privacy, source code, security and volume testing. The Secretary of State is transparent and thorough in its review, which includes posting consultant test reports detailing the system tests. Any findings or issues are set forth in these reports and posted online. Findings or issues can be mitigated through processes and procedures.
In making a determination on whether to approve a voting system, this office considers the consultant reports, staff reports and recommendations, mitigations, processes and procedures, and public comment.
A system must be approved by this office before it can be used by any county. Ballots cast in California are primarily cast on paper ballots. If a system is a direct record electronic system, it must have a voter verified paper audit trail (VVPAT) for audit, recount, and manual tally purposes. No voting system can be connected to the internet at any time.
In addition, this office requires:
• All voting systems be deployed with dual-installation architecture (“air gappingâ€). This process physically separates two installations and all associated devices, establishing an air gap.
• Voting system vendors, security consultants and county officials to follow strict chain of custody requirements for voting system software and hardware throughout the testing and certification process.
• The “trusted build†for any certified system to be distributed by SOS staff to the recipient county officials.
• Performance of logic and accuracy testing on voting systems prior to each election.
• No part of a voting system can electronically receive or transmit election data through an exterior communication network of any type.
• A post-election audit comprised of either a manual tally of one percent of the precincts or a risk limiting audit.
Thank you for contacting our office.
Hi Bradblog,
Appreciate your common sense blog & dedication. WOW. Let’s hope it is as it states WE will be able to vote by paper ballot. I will Thank Alex Padilla when you verify with us the details of. I was going to request an absentee ballot but now I will go early and vote by paper. Below is MOST of the comment I sent. I might have been a little HARSH:)
Dear Secretary of State Alex Padilla,
mr. trump is guilty of murder by proxy or if you will advocacy. If you are an advocate of or certify electronic voting you will be allowing some Southern & Mid Western states to continue to suppress, hack & control voters votes, especially lower income Democrats votes by enabling them. In essence if you go forward with this continued theft of peoples votes NATIONWIDE you will be guilty by proxy/advocacy of suppression, by right wing fanatics, of the will of the people, to live simple normal lives.
With Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s election and now leadership of bringing Latino voters to the polls are you now going to continue the Democratic failure of selling out, as the bossman on the plantation?
The CA Dem Party is going to rig the primary and screw BOTH Bernie Sanders and Cenk Uygur.
Just watch.
This is how progressives are defeated—-By TREACHERY.
DonL –
For the record, I see no evidence of the CA Dem Party rigging the primary. Of course, the point of hand-marked paper ballots is to make it more difficult for anybody to rig anything. But given the immense amount of disinfo I’ve seen out there, charging that the Democratic Party “rigged” the 2016 primary in CA, I just thought I’d offer you my thoughts in response to yours.