California Common Cause Letter of Support

Common Cause California's Endorsement of Open Voting

California Common Cause, one of the state's most influential nonpartisan good-government organizations, issued a letter of support endorsing the development of open source voting systems. With a decades-long track record of fighting for government accountability, campaign finance reform, and voter access, Common Cause brings substantial credibility and public trust to the open source voting movement. Their endorsement signals that transparent election technology is not a fringe technical concern but a core good-government issue that affects every voter in the state.

In their letter, Common Cause California highlighted that voters cannot fully trust an election system they are not allowed to examine. The organization argued that proprietary voting software, shielded by trade secret protections, fundamentally conflicts with the principle of transparent governance. Open source voting systems, by contrast, allow election officials, independent security researchers, and members of the public to review the code that counts their ballots. Common Cause emphasized that this level of transparency strengthens rather than weakens election security, because vulnerabilities are more likely to be discovered and fixed when the code is open to public scrutiny.

The organization also stressed the financial benefits of an open source approach. California counties currently spend millions of dollars on licensing fees for proprietary voting systems that they cannot modify or maintain independently. Common Cause argued that publicly owned voting software would reduce these costs over time while giving local election officials greater flexibility to adapt their systems to California's unique requirements, including multilingual ballot access and ranked-choice voting in municipalities that have adopted it.