Community News

Your Vote is Not on the Internet

 

by: OC Registrar of Voters
Published: October 13, 2026

 

SANTA ANA...In compliance with California law, all voting equipment used by OCROV in Vote Centers and our office is not connected to the internet, which includes our ballot-on-demand printers, accessible ballot marking devices, ballot scanners, and tally room servers and workstations. 

Our voting equipment and voting system are air gapped from all other systems and networks used by OCROV. And, the equipment lacks any hardware that would allow it to connect to the internet. 

The separate election management system contains the voter registration database, candidate filing information, voting locations and petitions. It does send and receive encrypted voter participation information over secure cloud servers connected to the statewide voter registration system VoteCal and to the poll books used in Vote Centers to check in voters. 

The tracking and sharing of voter participation data in the election management system helps us prevent voters from successfully casting two ballots within Orange County or one within Orange County and another in a second county in the state. 

The election management system and the voting system are two separate and distinct State-certified systems that are not connected to each other. 

The election management system tracks whether a voter cast a ballot in an election. But it does not contain ballot data, votes or results. 

The voting system contains ballot information, including ballot images, cast vote records and vote tallies. But it does not contain voter information, to ensure the votes on every voter’s ballot remain secret even to OCROV.