Mail-in ballots dropped into the postal system on Tuesday, and California Secretary of State Alex Padilla held a press conference to announce the steps the state was taking to ensure the November 6 election would be untainted by foreign influence. His office had conducted a "tabletop" exercise for elections officials statewide that presented scenarios like internet disruption or rumors of long lines. Santa Barbara County Elections czar Joe Holland was among the participants.
A 16-year veteran of county elections' corner office, Holland was sanguine about the exercises, stating that elections predated websites, and lines of communication were well-established in the county. But the hour-long drill did "force you to think of different scenarios for potential crises." All Santa Barbara polling places were assigned cell phones, he said, and field supervisors toured each of them throughout Election Day. He reassured that all of California used paper ballots per the state election code. "I've been adamant that they remain," he said. "What's nice about paper ballots is that you can always recount them." In fact, ballots in every race in one percent of randomly chosen county precincts are re-counted by hand before the election is certified, he said. In all his years, he'd yet to see an error found.
As for cybersecurity, which was the theme of Padilla's news conference, Holland said he'd had Homeland Security in for a visit last spring to see if they could hack into Santa Barbara's system. The ballot-counting apparatus has no link with the internet — and is therefore hack-proof — but voter registration and other elections information are freely available on the web. He said the Homeland hackers could not get into the system, but when given employee access, they were able to penetrate a couple of places. He declined to discuss them but said they'd been fixed.