Elec. Code, § 19205 · Article 1. Procedures for Certification of Voting Systems
Elec. Code, § 19205
Text — As published in the Legislative Counsel's database, tables dated October 18, 2026 (pubinfo_2025.zip)
A voting system shall comply with all of the following:
(a) No part of the voting system shall be connected to the internet at any time.
(b) No part of the voting system shall electronically receive or transmit election data through an exterior communication network, including the public telephone system, if the communication originates from or terminates at a polling place, satellite location, or counting center.
(c) (1) No part of the voting system shall receive or transmit wireless communications or wireless data transfers.
(2) A network connection to any device not directly used and necessary for voting system functions shall not be established. Communication by or with any component of the voting system by wireless or modem transmission at any time is prohibited. A component of the voting system, or any device with network connectivity to the voting system, shall not be connected to the internet, directly or indirectly, at any time.
(d) (1) The voting system shall be used in a configuration of parallel central election management systems separated by an air-gap.
(2) For purposes of this subdivision, “air-gap” includes all of the following:
(A) A permanent central system known to be running unaltered, certified software and firmware that is used solely to define elections and program voting equipment and memory cards.
(B) A physically isolated duplicate system, reformatted after every election to guard against the possibility of infection, that is used solely to read memory cards containing vote results, accumulate and tabulate those results, and produce reports.
(C) A separate computer dedicated solely to this purpose that is used to reformat all memory devices before they are connected to the permanent system again.
Notes and commentary — not statutory text
History
Amended by Stats. 2024, Ch. 605, Sec. 13. (SB 1328) Effective September 25, 2024.
Source of truth
- Edition
- As published in the Legislative Counsel's database, tables dated October 18, 2026 (pubinfo_2025.zip)
- Official file
- https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=ELEC§ionNum=19205.
- Text hash
- sha256 6b4a98a04d4cff81bf81f9a9c4e4f34049536c18b5bfbb9eda3b327bc23bf2ae
- Composed by
- compose_ca.py 2026-10-22: the Legislative Counsel's CAML content files read by a tokenizer (caml_readers.reader_a); an independent xml.etree reading (caml_readers.reader_b) agrees on every section
Procedural information only. Not legal advice and not a substitute for the advice of an attorney. Confirm the current text with the official publisher before relying on it.