Election Security

CVF has been involved with election security since 1999 when staff and board members participated in the California Secretary of State's Internet Voting Task Force. CVF played a significant role in California's move to require a voter-verified paper audit trail and led the effort to eliminate paperless electronic voting in California. Strong post-election audits are also a high priority for CVF.

harassment report graphicCVF's recent work to secure elections includes focusing on the security and protection of election officials themselves, who have increasingly been threatened and harassed in the wake of the 2020 Presidential election. CVF's report, Documenting and Addressing Harassment of Election Officials, shines a light on this troubling development and recommends reforms to implement to protect and defend democracy's frontliine workers.

Below are links to CVF's and others' recommended resources to learn more about election security in the California and the United States. 

Federal Resources

California Resources from the Secretary of State:

CVF Resources

Organizations, Studies and Resources

Content on the CVF web site relating to this topic:

Files: 

PDF icon Letter to President Barack Obama from election verification advocates following the 2012 election
PDF icon CVF Testimony at Voting Modernization Board Hearing, March 15, 2019
PDF icon CVF Testimony at Secretary of State's Voting System Decertification Hearing, March 19, 2019

Sacramento Bee Editorial: Veto AB 840

Excerpt:

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. 

NorCal county registrars say hacking won't happen here

Excerpt:

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."

Letter: Gov. Brown, don’t make it easier to meddle in our elections

Re: “Here’s how Jerry Brown can help protect vulnerable people, voting integrity and local control” (Editorials, Sept. 28) and “Brown should help ensure election integrity by signing this bill” (Another View, Sept. 30): With recent news of Russian scanning of state technology websites, this is not the time to reduce California’s manual 1 percent audit practice, which is designed to detect errors or manipulations in vote-counting software.

Assembly Bill 840 would invalidate a recent San Diego County court ruling (Lutz v. Vu) that all vote-by-mail ballots must be subject to inclusion in the 1 percent post-election manual tally, a ruling which confirms current practice of many California counties, including Inyo, Santa Clara and San Francisco. 

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