San Mateo Co. Elections Division Purchases New Voting System

SAN MATEO COUNTY, CA — The San Mateo County Board of Supervisors approved a contract to lease a new, high-tech voting system to improve speed and accuracy and will be implemented before the Nov. 5 Consolidated Municipal, School and Special District Election, officials announced Tuesday.

The system from Dominion Voting Systems, Inc. is the first update to the county’s voting technology since 2006, the county said.

“Our rigorous, competitive selection process evaluated each system on hundreds of metrics, and each certified vendor provided a multi-day, on-site demonstration of their system," Chief Elections Officer and Assessor-County Clerk-Recorder Mark Church said. "Based on this, I recommended the adoption of Dominion’s Democracy Suite. This system will provide voters with a faster, more intuitive, more accessible voting experience.

"But most important is ensuring that every vote is counted accurately. The security of our voting system was our highest concern, and this system provides state-of-the-art solutions above and beyond the requirements of the law.”

The California Secretary of State’s Office applies thorough voting-system testing and certification, and prior to being certified for use, all voting systems undergo end-to-end testing, including functional testing and source-code review, with red-team security experts trying to “break into” the voting system, officials said.

Each voting center will offer multiple ADA-compliant voting stations, known as a ballot-marking devices, which include modern touchscreen tablets and individual printers.

"Unlike the direct-recording electronic voting machines previously used, ballot-marking devices do not store voters’ selections electronically," the county said. "Instead, after marking their ballots, voters will print their ballots on a printer in their voting booth. The printed ballot will list the voters’ selections and display a machine-readable QR code label. The voters will then deposit their ballot in a ballot box."

Ballot boxes then will be returned to the Registration & Elections Division, where new central high-speed scanners will count paper ballots and tabulate votes. As ballots are reviewed during the canvass, the system creates a complete audit trail documenting how each mark on each ballot was interpreted and tallied, the district said.

County officials noted the new system will not be connected to the internet and will not receive or transmit election data electronically through any external communication network.

San Mateo County has more than 400,000 registered voters, and numbers are expected to increase over the next year in advance of the March presidential primary and the November presidential elections in 2020.

For more information on the Nov. 5 Consolidated Municipal, School and Special District Election, call (650) 312-5222 or visit www.smcacre.org.

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