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Of course, adding these kinds of provisions to contracts will probably only be of benefitto jurisdictions as they negotiate new contracts. Jurisdictions not purchasing new votingsystems in the near future (i.e., the vast majority of counties and states throughout thecountry) are unlikely to secure agreement from vendors to substantially amend theircontracts along these lines.Furthermore, even if all jurisdictions were able to get these kinds of provisions into theircontracts, it would still be important to mandate many of these provisions in regulation.For instance, if a vendor violates the notification terms of its contract with a small countyin Arkansas by failing to inform it of a voting system malfunction in New Jersey, theArkansas County is unlikely to find out about the violation under current circumstances.More to the point, even if it does learn of such a failure, the county is unlikely to bringan action under the contract (for all of the reasons discussed on pages 25 - 26 of thisreport) unless the malfunction brings disastrous results in its own election sometime later.The point of the database and stronger regulation is to minimize the likelihood of suchoccurrences by bringing problems to light before they can cause such significant harm.Implement Stronger State RegulationThe legislature in at least one state, California, has passed legislation requiring vendorsselling systems within its borders to notify the Secretary of State and all local electionofficials using its systems of any “defect, fault or failure” it discovered, within 30 daysof discovery. 284 As of the writing of this report, the legislation awaits a decision by thegovernor, who vetoed an earlier version of the bill in 2009. 285 This bill would empower theSecretary of State to seek monetary penalties against vendors for failing to comply withreporting requirements, and requires the Secretary to notify the EAC of the problem.While the California proposal would not have solved all of the problems identified in thisreport, it would have gone a long way toward forcing vendors to begin to publicly reportproblems with their systems when alerted to them. It could also have provided many of thebenefits (albeit on a smaller scale) that a national centralized database would provide: inparticular, increasing vendor accountability and incentivizing vendors to enhance internalcontrols; benefiting state certification programs by supplying tips for targeted testing andreview of the effectiveness of mitigations proposed by vendors; allowing election officials(in California, anyway) to get up-to-date information about their systems before deployingthem in elections.The California model presents the best legislative attempt we have seen, to date, to addressthe problems we have discussed in this report. We hope the governor will sign this bill intolaw and that other states will follow suit.Still, the limitations of this proposal as compared to a national clearinghouse are obvious.Among other things, the California bill only requires reporting for systems used in40 | Brennan Center for Justice