SLO County’s voting machine contract is up for renewal. Election deniers are not happy | Opinion
Election deniers are at it again.
This time, they are trying to derail a 10-year contract extension with Dominion Voting Systems, which provides voting machines to San Luis Obispo County.
The contract includes replacement equipment that will speed up vote counting — something that’s been badly needed, especially with the growing popularity of vote-by-mail. The equipment costs $287,876, but that would be covered by state and federal grants; the county would be out no additional money.
The contract is up for discussion at today’s Board of Supervisors meeting, but it’s unlikely to be a slam-dunk, 5-0 approval.
County Supervisor Debbie Arnold has long been suspicious of the much-maligned Dominion Voting Systems, which was falsely accused of manipulating election results in 2020, costing Donald Trump the election.
The contract was initially scheduled for a vote at the board’s June 18 meeting, but because Supervisor Jimmy Paulding was absent, the item was postponed until today. (Because the contract includes a budget adjustment, it requires at least four votes for approval, and without Arnold’s support, it would have failed.)
Dominion has been a favorite punching bag of the far right, but the company has fought back. In 2021, it filed a defamation lawsuit against Fox News. Fox eventually agreed to pay $787 million to settle the case and acknowledged “the court’s rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false.”
But that vindication hasn’t stopped critics from making allegations against the company or from longing for a return to the “good old days” of hand-counting ballots.
Shasta County even tried to ram that through, but was ultimately foiled by, among other factors, passage of a state law requiring counties to use voting machines in most cases.
Hand-counting is permitted only under limited circumstances: in regularly scheduled elections with fewer than 1,000 registered voters and special elections with fewer than 5,000 voters.
The idea that hand-counting is somehow more accurate and efficient than machine tallying is nonsense. So is the notion that voting machines can somehow be rigged to favor one candidate over another.
It’s absurd that San Luis Obispo County has to waste time dealing with this dead issue and disappointing that one of our county supervisors would continue to spread misleading information.
The other four supervisors should not hesitate to approve the contract extension with Dominion Voting Systems.
This story was originally published July 9, 2024 at 5:00 AM.
