Voters register with mobile touch-screen devices
Published 10:32 pm Friday, May 14, 2010
SAN JOSE, Calif. — The Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters made history Friday when it allowed eight county residents to register to vote by writing their signatures on iPads, iPhones and other mobile touch-screen devices.
It was thought to be the first time an election official in the United States, possibly in the world, permitted anyone to register to vote that way.
Voting rights advocates cheered the news as a major milestone in making it easier for millions of people to register to vote, but critics worry digital signatures could be difficult to verify and pave the way for voter fraud.
County Registrar Jesse Durazo made the decision to permit the electronic signatures after the county Board of Supervisors and county counsel gave their blessings to the proposal by Verafirma, a Silicon Valley company.
The company has been stymied in court in its efforts to allow Californians to sign initiative petitions on mobile devices rather than on paper petitions in front of supermarkets. So Durazo’s decision was a welcome victory for the fledgling company.
“It’s truly awesome and fantastic that a county registrar is allowing this to happen. It’s a huge, huge step,” said Thomas Gates, vice president for civic engagement at Rock the Vote, a Washington, D.C.-based organization that registered 2 million new voters in the 2008 election. “We’re supportive of anything that modernizes the antiquated voter-registration system in our country.
Barry said Verafirma will now move ahead and try to make the technology available in every one of California’s 58 counties by the November election.
Some election officials have raised concerns about possible voter fraud, as well as privacy and security issues, in regard to electronic signatures. But the founders of Verafirma point out that Wells Fargo Bank is so confident in the technology that it allows customers to open a bank account with an electronic signature.
The signatures will not be stored electronically. They’ll simply be printed out.
After the new voters sign their ballots at the polls or mail in a ballot, those signatures will be compared against the printouts.
