After a series of independent tests in other states discovered massive security issues with the same family of Diebold systems that Shelley had decertified, and after McPherson's own state testers subsequently both confirmed those security flaws and found 16 other bugs they described as "a more dangerous family of vulnerabilities" which "go well beyond" what was discovered elsewhere, Schwarzenegger's hand-picked Sec. of State McPherson went ahead and recertified the Diebold touch-screen systems for use anyway in 2006. He ignored the dire warnings from his own security and testing team. Later, after Democratic Sec. of State Debra Bowen was elected and her landmark "Top-to-Bottom Review" of all CA e-voting systems discovered even more enormous security flaws in those very same systems in 2007, the same touch-screen systems were decertified by the state once again.
It is for a good reason that state law, until SB 360, made it impossible for a single person to approve electronic voting systems for use in actual elections without independent testing by a federal body. There was a well-considered reason that California had some of the most stringent rules requiring systems to be federally certified before they could even be considered for use in a state election. Those reasons, it seems, are apparently of little concern to the current crop of Democratic elected officials in the state legislature. SB 360 passed both chambers on strict party lines (with one exception) on Friday and will become state law on January 1, 2014, if signed by Gov. Jerry Brown.
JB: What are the chances of Gov. Brown 'getting' the issue enough to veto this bill?
BF: The chances are slim that he'll veto it, unless there is a loud public outcry. Reason: It's a Democratic-sponsored bill, passed along party lines (with one exception, a Republican who voted for it) and it's supported by both outgoing Democratic SoS Debra Bowen and a number of the larger election integrity and voting rights group (mistakenly, in my opinion).
On the other hand, some who watch Brown in Sacramento closely say he can be reached with an appeal to logic and reason. The fact that this terrible bill (SB 360) will do away with all federal testing of voting systems used in CA, and even allow a Sec. of State to approve new e-voting systems for use in real elections with NO certification testing at all, even by state testers, is just madness. I hope that Governor Brown takes a look at that point.
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