County's vote chief in line for state post Alameda Co. chief of voting promoted
Registrar Brad Clark may be California's next overseer of elections

By Ian Hoffman, STAFF WRITER  

Secretary of State Bruce McPherson has reassigned California's chief elections overseer and is expected as early as this morning to name Alameda County Registrar of Voters Brad Clark as a replacement.

McPherson spokeswoman Caren Daniels-Meade declined to confirm either move. But sources said John Mott-Smith was told that he no longer would serve as chief of the state's elections division.

Under Mott-Smith and former Secretary of State Kevin Shelley, state officials conceded that many of the voting technologies employed in California had not been fully tested or approved by state authorities, as required by state law.

State elections workers also bore the brunt of discontent bylocal elections officials who resented Shelley's insistence on tighter security, accountability and certification standards for voting systems.

Clark, a former state elections analyst and 12-year registrar viewed as a dean among local   elections officials, served on McPherson's transition team. He did not respond to phone and e-mail queries Tuesday, but according to a source, he was to be named this morning as Mott-Smith's replacement.

Clark persuaded Alameda County to pay $12 million and become the first major urban jurisdiction on the West Coast to buy touch-screen voting machines from Diebold Election Systems Inc.

At least three elections in 2003 and 2004 were marred by technical difficulties including incorrect vote tallies and breakdowns in voting machinery.

Clark chastised Diebold representatives for those failings, and he privately criticized Diebold CEO Wally O'Dell for writing a fund-raising letter to Ohio Republicans that promised to "deliver Ohio's electoral votes" to the Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign.

But critics of electronic voting nonetheless have questioned Clark's independence from Diebold and his continued faith in paperless electronic voting.

Clark often   has said new mandates, now written into state law, for e-voting machines to produce a paper record that voters can double-check for accuracy are a bad idea.

McPherson, on the other hand, repeatedly has voiced support for the so-called voter-verified paper trail.

"I hope that once Mr. Clark is chief of the elections division he will work to implement the voter verified paper record requirement as mandated by California law and convince other registrars to stop   resisting this much needed reform," said e-voting critic Kim Alexander, president of the Davis-based California Voter Foundation.