In what
seems to be a growing trend, Contra Costa, California, Registrar of Voters Joe
Canciamilla today expressed support for SB 450, a bill to re-vamp California’s
voting system, saying “I like the concept,” but also said his support for the
legislation would be contingent on the form it finally takes.
He cited
three recent special elections in the county with low turn-out as motivation to
try something new.
He said
what mattered to him was that the state avoid “micro-management of the process”
and allow the counties necessary “flexibility,” particularly in regard to the
required numbers of drop boxes and vote centers in their respective
jurisdictions.
He also
said that the public outreach process, as contained in the bill’s current
incarnation, might be hard to implement in its entirety in the more rural and
suburban counties.
He said it
would be “hard to find locations in public buildings” to house the vote centers
and that schools were becoming less willing to host voting sites, least of all
for an extended voting period as contemplated under SB 450.
Asked why
it was necessary to have physical vote centers at all in an all-mail-in
election, Canciamilla said that there were two reasons for having them: to provide disabled voters with opportunities
to vote independently and to ease the over-all transition from a
polling-place-centric to an all-mail-in election.
Like
Orange County’s Registrar of Voters Neal Kelley,
Canciamilla believes that a fully-functioning VoteCal system is essential to
the success of the SB 450 plan, but, unlike the Southern Californian official,
he’s not so sure it will be ready in time.
Asked how confident he was that VoteCal would be up-and-running in time
to support the electoral transition, the long-time public official told Etopia
News, “based on the state’s track record [deploying computer systems] on
Consumer Affairs and the DMV, not very, but there’s always a first time.”
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