Editor’s note: This story, originally posted on June 28, was updated on June 30 to add to and clarify some of Curro’s comments
When Angela Curro, assistant county clerk, got up before the San Benito County Board of Supervisors on June 27 to give a briefing on the responsibilities of the County Clerk, Recorder and Elections Departments, there was an interesting question posed to her near the end of the report when a county supervisor, seemingly in jest, asked her about alleged Russian election hacking. Curro acknowledged that “there has been a lot of coverage of election hacking in recent months,” but downplayed the possibility that local ballots could be tampered with.
During the 2016 general election, she said, the local elections office processed more than 22,500 ballots, retained more than 90 percent of the volunteers from the previous election, and increased provisional voting by more than 500 percent.
“Was that from the Russian hackers?” Supervisor Anthony Botelho asked, drawing some chuckles from the room, but Curro used her response to drive home a point.
“No, that was for voter participation,” Curro answered without losing a beat. “That was people eager to vote who weren’t on the active roll.”
She pointed out what she sees as a false narrative from the media regarding Russian hacking.
“What must be understood is that while the news reports imply your vote has been manipulated, it just hasn’t happened, and it is not true,” Curro insisted. “The ballot-counting system is completely stand-alone. It’s not connected to the Internet in any way and cannot be hacked by any outside source.”
She said that each state’s voter registration database, as well as the county’s, are separate systems. The county’s is behind a firewall and cannot be accessed by outside entities, she noted.
“We see this as low-risk,” she said, addressing email attacks. “The recently-reported NSA leaks implied that the voter registration was hacked. In fact, the vendor’s mailing list was hacked and from that the hacker sent out attacks against people who were on that list. Our IT department is working diligently to keep virus protection updated in the county and educating the staff on best practices for email.”
At the beginning of her presentation, Curro said, “The relationship between the people and government is the key component of the clerk-recorder-elections team,” adding that one of the consolidated department’s key goals is to use current technology at the lowest cost to assure transparency.
Curro reminded the supervisors that in 2012, the budget was cut across the three departments, which resulted in intense cross-training of county employees, as well as a major reduction in hours that the offices were open to the public. She said that as of now, everyone is cross-trained and the hours of operation have returned to normal, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
She showed the board the percentages of each division’s expenditures and revenues, indicating that the County Clerk’s office represented 8.8 percent of the overall budget and 3.1 percent of the revenues. The Recorder’s office was 51 percent of the budget and 73.2 percent of the revenues. And the Elections office was 34.1 percent of the budget and 19.2 percent of the revenues.
“Our current combined budget is $1.2 million in revenues and $1.6 million in expenditures, with a net county cost this year of approximately $400,000,” she said. “The three divisions’ major services include the processing over 400 different types of official records, including all land transactions and vital records.”
The Elections Office conducts all federal, state and local elections for the county, and maintains all voter registrations, records and voter outreach. Curro noted that more than 150 years of information is stored in the Hall of Records.
She explained in detail how the three divisions interact with other county departments. While there has been an overall decrease in the number of land recordings, she said that due to all the new construction going on there has been an increase in recordings involving land transfers.
“In this calendar year, we anticipate over 15,000 recordings with over a $625,000 collection of documentary transfer taxes going to the General Fund, which is not included in our budget,” Curro said.
The Recorder receives all official records and the County Clerk makes them available to the public. Because of the increase in the population in San Benito County, there has also been an increase in activity at the County Clerk’s office.
The Elections Office is primarily funded through the General Fund, Curro said. Schools, cities and special districts do contribute a portion, and pending legislation seeks to bring state funding for local elections and will require voter approval during the 2018 general election.
“Our primary concern is that we don’t lose out on any of this potential revenue and we will watch this legislation very closely,” Curro said. “While we look at potentially renting or leasing new voting equipment, we will watch it to make sure we don’t lose any of it.”