SAN JOSE, Calif. — Three of the San Francisco Bay Area’s largest counties will continue to use polling station software that was ensnared in a Los Angeles data breach investigation and resulted in at least four other election jurisdictions ditching the software amid allegations of embezzlement and Chinese data sharing.
Alameda, Contra Costa and San Francisco counties all use the PollChief software – produced by the company Konnech – to manage poll worker schedules and track voting equipment, but not to tabulate votes. Unlike Los Angeles, local elections officials in Contra Costa and San Francisco say sensitive data on election workers was never shared with Konnech and they are confident that other polling station information stored on Konnech servers was kept within the U.S. Alameda County did not return multiple requests for comments.
Last week, prosecutors in Los Angeles accused Konnech CEO Eugene Yu of storing the personal data of thousands of Los Angeles election workers on servers in China, where it was accessed by Chinese contractors.
