Pennsylvania to require voting machines with paper backup
By MICHAEL RUBINKAM, Associated Press
Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf on Friday ordered counties that plan to replace their electronic voting systems to buy machines that leave a paper trail — a safeguard against hacking — but his budget doesn’t include any money to fund the replacement of the state’s aging, increasingly vulnerable fleet.
The Democrat’s administration said the move to require that new systems include a paper backup will increase the security of voting systems and make balloting easier to audit.
“This directive will ensure that the next generation of the commonwealth’s voting systems conforms to enhanced standards of resiliency, auditability and security,” Acting Secretary of State Robert Torres said in a statement.
The state, however, is not requiring counties to discard their old equipment. The directive only requires them to buy machines with a paper backup if they decide to switch systems. Nor does the Wolf administration’s budget plan , released this week, include any new money to help counties replacing their aging systems.
Marybeth Kuznik, the founder and executive director of VotePA, a nonprofit advocacy group that opposes paperless electronic voting, said counties don’t have the money to buy new machines.
“The General Assembly needs to step up to the plate and budget for this,” she said.
Nevertheless, Kuznik, a longtime election judge outside Pittsburgh, called Friday’s order “a huge step forward for Pennsylvania, for better elections. Just huge.”
Pennsylvania is one of 13 states where most or all voters use antiquated machines that store votes electronically without printed ballots or other paper-based backups that could be used to double-check the vote, according to researchers at New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice.
So-called direct-recording electronic machines make it almost impossible to know if they’ve accurately recorded individual votes or if anyone tampered with the count.
Election officials in 41 states plan to use the older machines in the 2018 midterm elections, the Brennan Center said this week. Most election officials surveyed by Brennan Center researchers said they lacked funds to replace machines that are more than a decade old.
The vast majority of Pennsylvania’s fleet of more than 20,000 voting machines record votes electronically and leave no paper trail, according to a 2014 tally by state election officials.
In 2006, voters filed suit against Pennsylvania to bar the use of paperless electronic voting machines, contending they were unreliable, lacked adequate safeguards against vote tampering and violated a state law requiring “a permanent physical record” of each vote.
The state Supreme Court dismissed the suit, saying the plaintiffs had not shown that direct-recording electronic machines are more susceptible to fraud or tampering than other kinds of voting systems.
Virginia banned the use of touch-screen voting machines in November’s gubernatorial contest over concerns the equipment could be hacked.
The federal government in September told election officials in at least 21 states, including Pennsylvania, that hackers targeted their systems before the 2016 presidential election, but at the time only Illinois reported that hackers had succeeded in breaching its systems.

By KATHLEEN RONAYNE, Associated Press
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia — a #MeToo advocate — took a voluntary unpaid leave of absence Friday, a day after sexual misconduct allegations against her became public.
Garcia, a Democrat, chairs the Legislative Women’s Caucus and has been an outspoken ally of the anti-sexual harassment movement sweeping the California Capitol and the nation. She is accused of groping former legislative staff member Daniel Fierro in 2014, an allegation she denies. His claim is under a formal investigation, and Garcia said she is taking a leave to minimize distractions and avoid appearances of exerting influence.
“Upon reflection of the details alleged, I am certain I did not engage in the behavior I am accused of,” Garcia said in a statement. “However, as I’ve said before, any claims about sexual harassment must be taken seriously, and I believe elected officials should be held to a higher standard of accountability. ”
Fierro accused her of stroking his back, grabbing his buttocks and trying to grab his crotch in the dugout after a legislative softball game. An anonymous male lobbyist told Politico on Thursday that Garcia made a crude sexual remark and tried to grab his crotch at a May 2017 fundraiser.
Both the lobbyist and Fierro said Garcia appeared to be drunk at the time of the incidents.
Garcia, of Bell Gardens, was one of nearly 150 women to sign an open letter in October calling out a pervasive culture of sexual harassment at the Capitol and said that she herself has been the target of groping and inappropriate remarks by people in the building. She slammed two male colleagues accused of misconduct before both resigned last year, and she was featured in Time Magazine’s Person of the Year issue on sexual harassment “Silence Breakers.”
“I refuse to work with (Assemblyman Bocanegra) and anyone who takes part in harassment or assault,” she tweeted in October after news that Bocanegra was disciplined for groping a colleague in 2009.
On Monday, she was one of the featured speakers at a Capitol rally in favor of legislation giving legislative staff members whistleblower protections for reporting sexual misconduct or other misbehavior.
Her outspokenness prompted Fierro to finally share his story in January with his former boss, Democratic Assemblyman Ian Calderon, the majority leader. Calderon reported it to the Assembly Rules Committee for an investigation.
“If the person leading the charge on it isn’t credible it just ends up hurting the credibility of these very real stories,” Fierro told the AP.
About two dozen sexual harassment allegations were made against Assembly lawmakers, staff and lobbyists in 2017 — the most within a single year since 2006 — and at least eight allegations are pending, according to documents released last week.
Fierro, of Cerritos, left the Assembly in 2016 and now runs a communications firm. Calderon, his former boss, is now the majority leader.