Who Supported the Ban on Hand Counting?
County Clerks, the majority party, and a slew of powerful lobbyists backed the California Legislature's recent bill, AB 969
In June, I wrote about how the Legislature was making a move to make hand counting of votes "impossible," but not quite illegal, with the introduction of AB 969. The original version of the bill was drafted in response to Shasta County's decision to terminate their contract with Dominion Voting Systems and had language that simply required counties to have a replacement contract in place before terminating an existing one. It read, "A county board of supervisors shall not terminate an existing voting system contract without a transition plan and a replacement contract in place." After numerous amendments in both houses, the final bill results in a de facto ban on hand counting, imposes computerized voting systems on all counties, and mandates further regulations that affect both the Secretary of State and county Elections Officials.
Governor Newsom signed the bill into law on October 4, 2023, and as an "Urgency Statute", the bill went into effect immediately, thereby preventing Shasta county from enacting their resolution to count ballots by hand in future elections. Because AB 969 was passed as an urgency statute, it cannot be repealed by referendum vote, per the California Constitution.
Now that the Legislature has prevented all counties from hand counting ballots, let's have a look at who supported this law.
The Majority Party Defends the System that Put It in Power
The California Democrat Party came out in favor of this bill, submitting a letter of support in time for the bill's final hearing on the Assembly floor on September 8, 2023.
Aligning with the views of the California Democrat Party, whether in committee or up for vote on the Assembly or Senate floor, legislators voted along party lines on AB 969, with Democrats voting for and Republicans voting against, with the exception of Republican Assemblywoman Diane Dixon of Orange County, who voted with her Democrat colleagues in favor of the bill.
People Who Count the Votes Align with the Democrat Party
The California Secretary of State Dr. Shirley Weber, the Shasta County Registrar of Voters Cathy Darling Allen, and the private nonprofit organization California Association of Clerks and Election Officials (CACEO) all submitted letters of support for the mandate that counties use computerized voting systems. While Cathy Darling Allen is a current member of the advisory council to this organization, according to the publicly-available 2017 tax return for CACEO, the bill's author, Gail Pellerin, was also on the advisory council of this organization. As provided for in our state constitution, County Registrars of Voters (or Election Officers) are nonpartisan offices, but when it comes to how votes are counted, they stand with the California Democrat Party.
Powerful Lobbyists Align With the Democrat Party
Despite claims of being nonpartisan, the following organizations align with the California Democrat Party when it comes to mandating computerized voting systems and banning counties from exercising local control over the decision on how to count votes: The League of Women Voters of California (LWV-CA), California Common Cause, ACLU California Action, and Disability Rights California expressed support for the bill.
AFL-CIO
A labor union of state employees—AFL-CIO (American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees)—joined the California Democrat Party to lend its support, disregarding the opinions of Shasta County voters who wish to have votes counted manually as "reactionary pressure from constituents who believed misinformation." Supporting an elections-related bill isn't an obvious fit for this union, as how elections are conducted is not a topic mentioned on their web page entitled "What We Care About."
League of Women Voters
The LWV-CA also disagreed with voters with opposing opinions in a strongly-worded support letter, stating "[w]e cannot allow the irrational passions of uninformed political actors to disrupt the voting process and undermine our elections." While the National League of Women Voters (LWV) claims to be "a nonpartisan, grassroots organization", they align with the California Democrat Party in support of flagship issues such as the Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare") and universal access to abortion on demand. Regarding elections, LWV supports same-day registration and mail-in voter registration expansion, eliminating the use of voter ID, and extending voter registration deadlines. Its history also boasts key support of national legislation such as the "motor-voter" bill and in 2002 LWV "helped draft and pass the Help America Vote Act (HAVA)," which put in place today's computerized voting systems. When it comes to elections, the LWV is historically invested in the system in place today. Not only did LWV-CA oppose the bill in Sacramento, its members also showed up in Shasta County to oppose grassroots efforts of Shasta County citizens who petitioned their Supervisors to implement hand counting.
California Common Cause
Unlike the above lobbyists, California Common Cause (CCC) does not claim to be nonpartisan. The organization claims to lead and define "the democracy movement in California, promoting solutions already succeeding in some communities to shift power to the people" using "grassroots organizing," leading "with values of inclusion and equity." In 2019, CCC joined forces with the Brennan Center for Justice in opposing cleaning up inflated voter rolls in Los Angeles. The organization's national arm, Common Cause, boasts an Election Protection Program which protects voters from voter suppression by recruiting and training "social media monitors" that gather and report "social media disinformation."
Opposition Letters Cancelled
The Senate Floor Analysis dated August 23, 2023 lists opposition letters submitted by the Shasta County Republican Central Committee and from 44 individuals. However, the subsequent September 6 analysis submitted to the Assembly Committee on Elections omitted the letter from the Shasta County Republican Central Committee and two of the 44 individuals. This means that, if the Assembly Committee on Elections only read the later analysis to make their decision, they likely would not have seen those opposition letters and the arguments made by their authors.
Excerpt of the August 23, 2023 Senate Bill Analysis showing a list of support and opposition, including letters from the Shasta County Republican Central Committee and 44 individuals. View the full PDF.
Excerpt of the September 6, 2023 Assembly Analysis showing a list of support and opposition, missing the letters from the Shasta County Republican Central Committee and 2 of the original 44 individuals. View the full PDF.
1% Is Not Enough
The California Democrat Party, the Secretary of State, Elections Officials, and prominent lobbyists have supported the Legislature's move to shut the door on voters who prefer to have their votes counted by hand. Now California's ruling party and the people who count the votes are all-in for computerized voting systems. In an interesting twist, a 2018 MIT Study referenced by the Secretary of State Dr. Shirley Weber—as justification that hand counting is historically inaccurate—also finds a significant error rate in computerized voting systems. The study's authors conclude that while "the average scanner is more accurate than the average human in counting ballots on election night," the regression technique developed by the study's authors "suggests that . . . 0.85% of ballots, or one out of every 117 cast, would have been shown to be in error." In other words, in order to catch errors in computerized voting systems, an elections official would need to audit 117 ballots before finding an error in the voting system's performance. Fortunately for the California Democrat Party and the elections officials and lobbyists who align with it regarding AB 969, only 1 out of every 100 ballots is audited in the quality control check of computerized voting systems.