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Public commenters urge county review of Dominion voting system and ballot security; officials record concerns
Summary
Several members of the public urged Kern County supervisors to investigate the Dominion voting system, external seals, ballot watermarks and disposal of old equipment; county did not take formal action during the meeting but recorded the comments for follow up.
Multiple members of the public used the meeting's public presentations period on June 24 to raise concerns about the Dominion election system and related security and chain-of-custody issues.
Jess Sanders said she had reviewed Dominion system documents and alleged that a 2020 set of system changes was signed "by a designee" of the California Secretary of State and that the changes limited county control over verification of county data. Sanders told the board those changes were made less than a year after an earlier Dominion submission and said the county’s jurisdiction over data was "usurped by the state."
Other speakers asked the board to review external security seals on machines, confirm disposal destinations for retired voting equipment and verify ballot-watermark recognition before scanning ballots. Glenn Clayton asked that the elections office explain vendor relationships (including DFM Associates, EIMS and Dominion) and urged the board to review chain-of-custody for ballots and equipment.
Charles Shen and other public commenters urged the county to explore alternative voting-system providers as a possible cost and reliability measure, noting state- and nationwide incidents of equipment or provider failures in recent years. The board did not act on the requests during the meeting; the comments were recorded in the public-record segment for the clerk and elections office.
