New county-by-county voting equipment directory and map now online

The California Voter Foundation has published an updated county-by-county directory and statewide map depicting the voting systems used in California's 58 counties.

There are a few significant changes that have been made since the June Primary election. San Mateo County has chosen to implement an all-electronic voting system, manufacturered by Hart Intercivic. San Diego County is returning to electronic voting and will be deploying Diebold's TSx machines in all polling places. Alameda County has permanently switched from electronic to a paper-based, optical scan system, and has also switched vendors, from Diebold to Sequoia. Santa Cruz has selected Sequoia's optical scan system, and Yolo is implementing Hart's optical scan system. Many counties have also acquired new accessible devices in order to be in compliance with state and federal law.

Overall, 35 counties are using paper-based, optical scan systems, comprising 57 percent of the state's registered voters, and 23 counties are using electronic systems, all with voter-verified paper trail printers, comprising 43 percent of registered voters.

Several counties have also upgraded their optical scan systems to provide precinct counts and the opportunity for voters to correct mistakes on ballots. These include Los Angeles, Alameda, Nevada and Santa Cruz. A recent usability report published by the Brennan Center found that precinct-count optical scan voting systems performed the best in terms of minimizing voting errors that result in overvotes or undervotes in the 2004 election.