Making your voice count and every vote accurately counted
In “Our View” on Sunday, Feb. 5, The Californian’s Editorial Board listed steps needed to ensure “Kern voters that their votes count and every vote will be accurately counted.”
In brief, the steps are:
■ Supervisors should create an independent elections department.
■ Auditor-Controller-County Clerk Aimee Espinoza should report to the board on Feb. 28 how the elections division can be improved — and if Kern should continue using Dominion machines.
■ Election division-specific needs should be identified plus how the process can be made quicker.
■ The goal of Espinoza’s report and the board’s review must be focused on making Kern elections the best they can be.
These comments from the Editorial Board’s “Our View” summarize WHAT needs to be accomplished. HOW to do so has been purposely omitted from this summary. To be of assistance in this critical process, HOW to do so can be provided by recommendations and counsel of our Citizens’ Committee for Election Integrity. Until the strategic goal and operational objectives are adopted, it is premature to speculate HOW to accomplish each.
To facilitate this process in a collaborative manner, our local Citizens’ Committee for Election Integrity has been formed. Its members are each highly informed and prepared — with various areas of expertise — to be of significant assistance to Ms. Espinoza and her staff members to assure the outcome expressed in the above strategic goal is quickly, proactively and perpetually achieved. Also, it should allay the fears and concerns of citizens such as those at the recent meeting of the Board of Supervisors.
The committee is chaired by Gary Simmons, and members are Joe Kandle, Vince Maiocco, Terry Maxwell, Tom Pavich, Greg Perrone and myself.
The editorial board’s summary of WHAT is needed to accomplish this goal is excellent. However, the key to the long-term success of this effort will be determined by HOW we, as a county, accomplish these key objectives.
Moreover, it’s critical to do so in cooperation and collaboration with county leadership — not by conflict, confrontation, or worse, as occurred recently at a meeting of the Board of Supervisors. Such negative actions demonstrate the importance and strong feelings about accomplishing this goal — but they clearly are not a path to accomplishing election integrity.
As work evolves in this effort, additional opportunities for continuous system improvement — including increased integrity — will no doubt emerge.
What is critical is that improvements implemented be monitored and tracked over time to assure their perpetuation and that no new vulnerabilities are permitted to damage or reduce system integrity. Our Citizens Committee could perform this key function.
Most committee members have worked in this arena for a decade or longer and possess extensive knowledge of what works and what does not. Other members have special skills to help move the integrity process forward.
Moreover, a national expert in addressing these same issues has indicated his willingness to be of assistance to our committee and, more importantly, to the county’s election department.
Operational objectives are under study to lead to this goal in a cooperative and collaborative manner. They include — but are not limited to — the following:
■ Determine the current State of California statutes pertaining to election systems and processes within which our committee must work.
■ Identify those California statute provisions that work against election integrity and lobby for their reversal.
■ Identify current voting system vulnerabilities and susceptibility to fraud — and steps needed to avoid such outcomes.
■ Apply existing Kern County’s system of continuous improvement and elimination of waste — Lean Six Sigma — to our election system and its multiple processes.
These and additional objectives will enable this citizens’ committee to achieve its overall strategic goal of helping county staff continuously improve and protect the integrity of Kern County’s voting system and its multiple processes.
That should prove to be a win-win outcome for the county as well as for each voter throughout Kern County.