Santa Clara County Register of Voters’ Spokesperson Explains Why People Can Register to Vote Online with Electronic Signatures but Can’t Sign Initiative Petitions the Same Way.
Matt Moreles, spokesperson for Santa Clara County, California, Registrar of Voters Jesse Durazo, told Etopia News this afternoon why eligible California citizens can use the Internet to register to vote but still cannot use the Internet to sign online initiative petitions.
In a brief phone interview, Moreles talked about how Santa Clara County, the home of Silicon Valley, had received, and accepted, an e-mail with six attached .pdf files on Friday, May 14, 2010, from Verafirma, a San Jose, California, -based company. These .pdf files contained images of digitally-signed Federal Voter Registration forms, as well as additional “embedded” digital information attesting to the fact that they had been electronically signed and that the document they were embedded in had not been altered or tampered with since it had been signed.
Under California law, said Moreles, these digitally-signed documents were acceptable as a way for those signing them this way to register to vote. This judgment was made by Registrar of Voters Durazo and agreed to by the Santa Clara Board of Supervisors.
Once accepted, these documents were printed out and the forms were treated like any other signed voter registration card. Those registering to vote digitally, Moreles said, would receive a voter’s card confirming their official registration just like anyone submitting a manually-signed form.
Moreles distinguished between the submission of a facsimile copy of a manually-signed voter registration card, which is not acceptable under state law, and a .pdf file containing a digitally-signed image of one, because the latter includes “signature dynamics” information allowing for the replay of the actual signing process, and other digital information confirming that the document had not been altered since it was electronically signed.
This “embedded” information complies with state laws governing the acceptability of electronic signatures, and therefore qualifies a voter registration card signed in this manner for the purpose for which it is intended: to add a person to the voting rolls.
“This is a new process,” Moreles said, “but there is nothing that prevents it from being used” for the purpose of signing voter registration cards.
He further explained that there was a “legal difference” between the laws governing voter registration cards and those controlling the signing of initiative petitions. These two processes, he said, “are governed by different laws, which allow this procedure for voter registration, but not for initiative signing.”
California Secretary of State Debra Bowen, who, with the assistance of California Attorney General Jerry Brown, filed an amicus brief opposing the use of electronic signatures on initiative petitions in a case brought by Michael Ni against Mr. Durazo’s San Mateo County counterpart, Warren Slocum, was not consulted on the acceptance by Santa Clara County of these electronically-signed voter registration cards, and has not tried to stop the process, according to spokesperson Moreles.
Since the two processes are “governed by different laws,” Santa Clara County, says Moreles, has “no plans to accept” electronically-signed initiative petitions.
Monday, May 17, 2010
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Cyber War explaination for Dow Jones plummet?
James Carlini discusses the possibility that the recent precipitous drop in the Dow Jones was caused by deliberate or inadvertent cyber war hacking, recorded from East Dundee, Illinois, on May 11, 2010
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Kathay Feng at California Common Cause Briefly Explains and Defends Proposition 11
an abbreviated interview in which Common Cause of California Executive Director Kathay Feng talks about Proposition 11, which created a citizens' redistricting panel, and efforts to repeal it, recording from Los Angeles on May 4, 2010
Kathay Feng at Common Cause of California Explains and Defends Proposition 11
Kathay Feng, Executive Director of Common Cause of California, explains Proposition 11, which established a citizens panel to do legislative redistricting, and defends it against its critics, recorded from Los Angeles, California, on May 4, 2010
Monday, May 3, 2010
Paul Davies talks about "The Eerie Silence: Renewing Our Search for Alien Intelligence"
Paul Davies, Chair of the SETI Post-Detection Taskgroup, discusses his book, "The Eerie Silence:
Sunday, May 2, 2010
Joe Mathews Previews the 2010 Global Forum on Modern Direct Democracy
Joe Mathews, Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation, talks about the 2010 Global Forum on Modern Direct Democracy, scheduled for July 31st-August 4th in San Francisco
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Chief Deputy County Counsel Explains Insufficiency of Verafirma’s Electronically-Gathered Signature of Initiative Petition
Brenda Carlson, Chief Deputy County Counsel for San Mateo County, California, spoke this afternoon with Etopia News to explain the reasoning involved in Judge George A. Miram’s April 5, 2010, decision denying Michael Ni’s petition to require San Mateo County Chief Elections Official Warren Slocum to accept as valid his digitally-signed initiative petition asking that the Tax Cannabis 2010 Initiative be placed on the California ballot. That initiative has qualified for the state ballot with other, traditionally-sourced signatures.
Steve Churchwell, of DLA Piper in Sacramento, attorney for plaintiff Michael Ni, co-founder of San Jose-based Verafirma, which makes the technology he used to allegedly sign the “petition,” (quotation marks are the judge’s) had argued in his brief to the court that using the Verafirma technology was a valid means by which a registered voter could “affix” his or her signature to an initiative petition. Election Code Sections 100 and 9020 require that a petition signer “shall personally affix” his or her signature to a petition. San Mateo County counsel had argued that Mr. Ni had NOT personally “affixed” his signature to a valid petition.
Ms. Carlson said that the court was “not persuaded” that Mr. Ni had in fact affixed his signature to the petition. In fact, she said, the judge had ruled that what had been submitted to the elections office was “not even a petition,” but only an “image” of one. She said that what had been submitted was “not designed to comply” with the relevant statute and was no more valid than a rubber stamped version of a signature. She also pointed out that even on the image of the petition, the digitally-generated signature had been used twice (once for the signer as signer, once for the signer as circulator) and that the requirement that the signer’s address also be personally affixed had not been met because it appeared to have been typed in.
Judge Miram’s decision did not directly address the question of “affixing” the signature. He denied plaintiff’s request to order Mr. Slocum to accept the signature on the petition on the grounds that what was submitted was invalid because it did not contain a required one-inch margin on each page and because there was no way of validating the legitimacy of the process used to sign it without considering “extrinsic” evidence, something that the county election officials are explicitly prohibited from doing.
Ms. Carlson pointed out that the Elections Code had been updated in 2007, when the Legislature could have included digital signatures as a valid way of signing official petitions, but did not. She also referenced former Governor Pete Wilson’s veto message rejecting a 1997 bill calling for a task force to study Internet voting and the electronic signing of petitions (written by this reporter in an earlier incarnation) as evidence that the digital signing of petitions was not allowed under state law.
The fact that the state’s Government Code allows for the use of digital signatures in certain circumstances does not, she said, mean that it is a valid means of signing initiative petitions. Also, she pointed out, one condition necessary for the use of digital signatures under the terms of the Government Code is that it be agreed to by both parties to the transaction in question. Clearly, the Chief Elections Official of San Mateo County had not agreed to the use of an electronic signature in this case.
Ms. Carlson told Etopia News that, as of April 28th, her office had “not received any notice of appeal” of Ni v. Slocum.
Steve Churchwell, of DLA Piper in Sacramento, attorney for plaintiff Michael Ni, co-founder of San Jose-based Verafirma, which makes the technology he used to allegedly sign the “petition,” (quotation marks are the judge’s) had argued in his brief to the court that using the Verafirma technology was a valid means by which a registered voter could “affix” his or her signature to an initiative petition. Election Code Sections 100 and 9020 require that a petition signer “shall personally affix” his or her signature to a petition. San Mateo County counsel had argued that Mr. Ni had NOT personally “affixed” his signature to a valid petition.
Ms. Carlson said that the court was “not persuaded” that Mr. Ni had in fact affixed his signature to the petition. In fact, she said, the judge had ruled that what had been submitted to the elections office was “not even a petition,” but only an “image” of one. She said that what had been submitted was “not designed to comply” with the relevant statute and was no more valid than a rubber stamped version of a signature. She also pointed out that even on the image of the petition, the digitally-generated signature had been used twice (once for the signer as signer, once for the signer as circulator) and that the requirement that the signer’s address also be personally affixed had not been met because it appeared to have been typed in.
Judge Miram’s decision did not directly address the question of “affixing” the signature. He denied plaintiff’s request to order Mr. Slocum to accept the signature on the petition on the grounds that what was submitted was invalid because it did not contain a required one-inch margin on each page and because there was no way of validating the legitimacy of the process used to sign it without considering “extrinsic” evidence, something that the county election officials are explicitly prohibited from doing.
Ms. Carlson pointed out that the Elections Code had been updated in 2007, when the Legislature could have included digital signatures as a valid way of signing official petitions, but did not. She also referenced former Governor Pete Wilson’s veto message rejecting a 1997 bill calling for a task force to study Internet voting and the electronic signing of petitions (written by this reporter in an earlier incarnation) as evidence that the digital signing of petitions was not allowed under state law.
The fact that the state’s Government Code allows for the use of digital signatures in certain circumstances does not, she said, mean that it is a valid means of signing initiative petitions. Also, she pointed out, one condition necessary for the use of digital signatures under the terms of the Government Code is that it be agreed to by both parties to the transaction in question. Clearly, the Chief Elections Official of San Mateo County had not agreed to the use of an electronic signature in this case.
Ms. Carlson told Etopia News that, as of April 28th, her office had “not received any notice of appeal” of Ni v. Slocum.
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