How California Stole Its Own Primary Election

I found the editors’ of the Wall Street Journal’s account of how the state of California “stole its own election” darkly amusing. Here’s its conclusion:

Only two companies bid for LA’s new voting system because one condition was that it be publicly owned—i.e., socialized. One was U.K.-based company Smartmatic, which got its start developing a new system for Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela in 2004. The other had developed ObamaCare’s Healthcare.gov website, which famously crashed on its launch date. Smartmatic won. Voters lost.

Even considering uncounted votes, turnout is running lower than in the June 2016 primary. So to recap: California Democrats moved up the state’s primary to make it more relevant and reduced voting obstacles to boost liberal turnout. In the end they disenfranchised many Democratic voters, and denied Mr. Sanders the flush of his primary victory. This would be darkly amusing if it didn’t undermine trust in the legitimacy of election results.

I should point out that I’m skeptical of their explanation for the small number of bidders. I strongly suspect that the pool of qualified bidders was pretty darned small to begin with and imposing the requirement that whatever solution they came up with couldn’t be proprietary was just the last blow.

IMO the concept they’re missing is the KISS concept. Keep it simple, stupid. The more complex our voting process, the worse and less secure it will become.