A week after a huge glitch during the California Primary, Los Angeles County moved to modernize its voting system. It comes with a big price tag and a lot of questions.
The mystery of the 118,000 missing names on L.A County voter rosters remains under investigation, yet the troubling lapse did not deter the Board of Supervisors from delivering a huge vote of support to County Registrar-Recorder Dean Logan on Tuesday.
The board voted unanimously to fund Logan’s plan for a massive overhaul of the the voting system. A contractor, Smartmatic, will be hired for terms that could reach $282 million.
Logan said safeguards for the county are built in.“The contract is a performance-based contract based on key deliverables and service-level agreements,” said Logan.
The supervisors said that last week’s massive glitch is symptomatic of an antiquated system.
Logan said that the system is not a panacea, but it will make trouble-shooting much faster.
The system will employ touch-screen ballots. Neighborhood polling sites will be replaced by regional polling centers. Paper ballots will record each vote and be fully auditable. The system will go through mock elections later this year.