California Schedules Conference on Voting Systems Testing

The California Secretary of State's Office has scheduled an invitation-only conference on Nov. 28 and 29 in Sacramento. The agenda includes participation by officials from the U.S. Department of Justice, the National Association of State Election Directors, the state of California, the private sector, universities and non-profits. The conference will be hosted by Secretary of State Bruce McPherson, and moderated by Chairman of the Voting Modernization Board, John A. Perez.

A vendor panel includes Alfie Charles of Sequoia Voting Systems; Ian Piper of Diebold, Ken Carbullido of ES&S; and Michelle Shafer of Hart Intercivic

In a related press release, Black Box Voting, a non-profit non-partisan election watchdog group, today announced that it had been invited by the Secretary of State to attempt to hack a Diebold voting system on Nov. 30. The release takes exception to some of the testing procedures, saying that the machines were to be selected by the vendor, rather than testing a random sample used in the last election.