‘A fundamentally huge blunder.’ California Secretary of State under fire for ballot error

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OOPS! SECRETARY OF STATE’S OFFICE ISSUES CORRECTION AFTER PRIMARY BALLOT SCREW-UP

In a statement issued last Friday, the California Secretary of State’s Office acknowledged a mistake that led to Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Christina Pascucci receiving a “No Ballot Designation” identifier on both the March 5 primary ballot and the accompanying voter guide.

Pascucci, a former Los Angeles TV news journalist, should have received the designation “Local Television Journalist,” according to a statement from Secretary Shirley Weber’s office.

The mistake has been corrected online, but it is too late to fix the ballots or official voter information guides.

Weber’s office said it was “an administrative error” that led to the mistake.

In a statement to The Bee, Weber’s office said that “this oversight was the result of an internal miscommunication. We have worked with the candidate to mitigate the incorrect ballot designation, and reviewed our internal processes to better ensure this does not happen again.”

It’s unclear what steps the Secretary of State’s Office is taking to prevent this from recurring.

Pascucci, 38, already faces a long shot campaign to fill the seat vacated by the death of Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein. She is running against more well known Democratic candidates, including U.S. House Reps. Adam Schiff, 63; Katie Porter, 50; and Barbara Lee, 77; as well as Steve Garvey, 75, a former baseball player running as a Republican, all of whom are polling higher.

But with this mistake, that campaign becomes that much harder.

In an interview with The Bee, Pascucci said her polling numbers halved when she was listed as “No Ballot Designation.”

“Early voting starts in one week, (voters) sit down with a ballot and the two things they see are her name, Christina’s name, and those three words, the ballot designation,” said Steve Churchwell, Pascucci’s election attorney.

Pascucci said that this process has been “hugely distressing” for her, ever since she first learned of the mistake in late December.

“We had the confirmation (from the Secretary of State’s Office), we were good to go. The next thing I know, I see the posted list, it says ‘No Ballot Designation,’” she said.

As Pascucci noted, while Schiff currently holds a small lead in polls, the race for No. 2 is a tight one, and her ballot designation could have a ripple effect. For example, people might decide that they want to vote for a Democratic woman, but choose Porter or Lee instead because they have specific designations, Pascucci said.

“If I were Garvey’s camp, I’d be paying close attention,” she said.

So what should be done?

Pascucci said that reprinting the ballots and voter guides would cost state taxpayers millions of dollars, and that’s something she has no interest in doing. Churchwell said that the campaign requested that Weber’s office use voter emails, where they have them, to contact them and notify them of the correction, but he said that request was declined.

So now, the campaign is working with dozens of voter registrars to see what can be done at the local level.

For University of Southern California professor and political analyst Dan Schnur, there’s only one thing to do.

“The only fair course of action at this point is to reprint the ballots, and if that’s no longer possible because of the secretary of state’s own error, then there should be a serious discussion of whether the primary should be delayed,” he said. “...I don’t know of any other way to make the candidate whole.”

Pascucci stopped short of endorsing that idea, but did say that while she doesn’t want to interfere in the election or waste state money, “I also think it is of the utmost importance that we have integrity in our elections.”

“I see this as such a fundamentally huge blunder,” she said.

NEW CALIFORNIA BILLS AIM TO PROTECT CHILDREN ONLINE, DRAW HEAVY CRITICISM

California Attorney General Rob Bonta joined a pair of Democratic Bay Area lawmakers Monday to unveil two bills aimed at increasing protections for children online.

First up is SB 976, by Sen. Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley.

That bill would require social media platforms to offer parents the choice of whether their child under the age of 18 receives a chronological content feed, from users they follow, or an algorithmic feed that shows people content beyond what they follow.

The bill also would empower parents to block their children from accessing social media platforms or receiving notifications during nighttime or school hours.

Then there is AB 1949, by Assemblywoman Buffy Wicks, D-Oakland.

This bill would strengthen the California Consumer Privacy Act by barring social media companies from collecting, using, sharing or selling the data of anyone under 18 unless they receive informed consent — for users under 13, that consent must come from a parent. Violations of this bill, should it become law, would be punishable by civil penalties of up to $5,000 per violation.

In a statement, Bonta said that social media companies have demonstrated they are willing to subject children to harmful and addictive content for profit.

“As kids and young adults increasingly socialize, learn, and work online, we must create a safer online space for children to learn, explore, and play. This cannot wait. We need to act now to protect our children. It’s time to move fast and fix things,” Bonta said.

Skinner added in a statement that California lawmakers are done waiting for social media companies to act.

“Social media companies have designed their platforms to addict users, especially our kids. Countless studies show that once a young person has a social media addiction, they experience higher rates of depression, anxiety, and low self-esteem,” she said.

Wicks said in a statement that her bill is “a crucial step” toward closing the gaps in California’s privacy laws “that have allowed tech giants to exploit and monetize our kids’ sensitive data with impunity.”

The bills also received praise from Common Sense Media, which advocates for stronger child safeguards online.

“The bills would improve privacy protections for teenagers and address addictive design features of social media platforms,” said Daniel Weiss, chief advocacy officer for the organization.

Unsurprisingly, the bills have received pushback, from both the social media sector and digital civil rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

The foundation, in response to an inquiry from The Bee, released a statement saying that while the EFF has yet to see or analyze the text of SB 976, the group has concerns.

“We recognize the genuine concern for the well-being of children and welcome conversation about how to address it. However, we have raised considerable concerns about past iterations of similar proposals, which run the risk of harming the expression and privacy rights of those they seek to protect. We look forward to reviewing the new bill,” said EFF Associate Director of Legislative Activism Hayley Tsukayama.

The center-left Chamber of Progress, led by former Google executive Adam Kovacevich, released a statement on both bills, saying that they “will actually mean more harmful content and less curation for young social media users.”

“Most parents want to see social media moving in the opposite direction, but chronological feeds reward spam posting rather than quality content. To make matters worse, these bills would violate privacy by requiring online platforms to conduct identity verification on all users, not just minors, in order to comply with the new regulations,” Kovacevich said in a statement.

NetChoice, a trade group representing social media companies like Facebook- and Instagram-parent company Meta, also released a statement condemning the bills.

Carl Szabo, NetChoice vice president and general counsel, said that these “same harmful ideas” were recycled from the 2022 Age-Appropriate Design Code Act, which is currently being litigated and which has been enjoined from going into effect until that lawsuit is resolved.

Szabo said bills such as SB 976 and AB 1949 “are part of an insulting ongoing drumbeat that parents are too weak and stupid to know how to raise their children — and that the government should do it for them.”

QUOTE OF THE DAY

“If square miles voted, this map would matter. People, not acreage, vote. And GOP slippage in the suburbs is what makes this map a picture of failure. Telling yourself this is a map of victory is delusional.”

- Former California GOP Chair Ron Nehring, discussing a map shared by former Donald Trump strategist Steve Bannon showing which counties voted for Trump in 2020, via X, the platform formerly known on Twitter.

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• In November 2022, just 564 votes separated the candidates in California’s 13th Congressional District, a purple stretch of San Joaquin Valley farmland. Rep. John Duarte, R-Modesto, won what turned out to be the second-closest House race in the United States over former Assemblyman Adam Gray, D-Merced. Both are running again, as the only candidates in the March 5 primary, and Democrats are making the seat one of their highest priorities in the nation to flip. Analysts say the race is again too close to call, via Gillian Brassil.