Little brother is watching
Wouldn’t it be a super bummer if someone accidentally took home some ballots or voting equipment after a long day at the polls? Well, never fear, voters: Registrar of Voters Dave Macdonald has hit upon a solution to this problem, for use in Tuesday’s election. The county will be the first in California to install RFID tracking tags on its equipment and the memory packs holding everyone’s votes. The tags will let election workers know much more quickly whether something’s missing, and they’ll help streamline the election process, because the tags can be checked using a handheld scanner instead of workers doing the work manually. “I think it’s a big leap forward in terms of security, as well as speeding up the process of counting votes on election night,” Macdonald – who, incidentally, also serves as the county’s information technology director – told the Contra Costa Times’ Chris Metinko. At least one e-voting opponent, Jim March of Black Box Voting, is also sort of supporting this, per Metinko’s telling. Macdonald worked with Motorola and Maryland-based RFID Global Solution to develop the tag-and-scanner system; Motorola’s rundown on the system, called SecureVote, is here.
