The United States has more than 3000 counties, and it is these smaller local governments that actually run our polling places, collect our ballots and count our votes. Increasingly it becomes evident that a safe, free and trustworthy election cannot be taken for granted. As recently as 2016, California was one of 21 states whose election systems were targeted by Russian hackers. In order to address these concerns Supervisor Simitian led the Board’s effort to beef up election security measures prior to the 2018 elections; additionally, to raise awareness and begin sharing best practices, in 2019 he organized the County’s first election security conference.