BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KERO) — A past president of the California Republican Assembly and a conservative activist is calling for the Kern County Board of Supervisors to demand an audit of voting machines.
Ken Mettler is asking for this to happen as soon as possible claiming the voting machines are the third generation of voting machines used in Kern County and that they have been "tainted with claims of manipulation." He is demanding all future elections should be via paper ballots and hand-counted.
"These voting systems are vulnerable and can be manipulated. However, I think this election really brought it to a head that this is a big problem and it goes all across the United States but it also hits home here right in Kern County."
Mary Bedard, the director of the Kern County Board of Elections issued the following statement in regards to the claims of voter fraud:
As in every election, we have instances in which it appears that voters may have been attempting to vote twice. We will refer these to the District Attorney’s office for further investigation. They will determine if these were actually voter fraud. It does not appear that this occurred any more often this year than in past elections.
We have many processes in place to ensure the accuracy of the election equipment. Prior to each election, our office runs tests on every piece of equipment, both the equipment that tabulates the paper ballots and the ballot marking devices used by disabled voters at the poll sites to produce their paper ballots, to ensure their accuracy. In addition, we also have the Auditor-Controller’s internal audit staff perform a review of the operation of the equipment to confirm the accuracy, and the public is invited to observe this process.
After each election, in accordance with Election Code section 15360, we conduct a one percent manual tally of the votes to confirm the accuracy of the machine tabulation. In this process, one percent of the precincts are chosen at random and the votes are manually tallied to confirm the machine tabulation. This process is open to the public. We conducted our one percent manual tally during the canvass period after the Nov 3 election. No tabulation discrepancies were identified.
