A new report argues that Alameda County’s elections supervisor shouldn’t also serve as its chief IT officer.

A committee studying the dual role of Alameda County’s registrar of voters and chief information officer has found there is a “lack of capacity” to do both jobs optimally, despite the ROV and his staff’s “commitment and dedication.” 

“The performance of the office taken as a whole since the roles were combined suggests that the dual responsibility is on balance a negative rather than a positive, measured by ultimate results,” said the report. It would threaten “voter confidence” to continue with the dual role in the same way, it said. 

The ad hoc committee was created in 2024 by the Alameda County Elections Commission in response to years of complaints about the registrar’s performance. The report’s principal investigator, Zabrae Valentine, a nonprofit strategic adviser and a member of the elections commission, told The Oaklandside that she hoped the county’s board of supervisors would take the recommendations seriously. 

“ We spent a ton of time preparing that report,” she said. “As you can see, it’s a compendium of the work of the groups, including [The Oaklandside’s] reporting, that work to make sure that voters have the information they need to vote.” 

The report was first provided to the registrar of voters in February. The registrar, Tim Dupuis, told The Oaklandside on Tuesday that he and his team are preparing their response, which will be provided at the commission’s meeting on May 14. Members of the public are invited to attend the meeting, which will be held at the Alameda County Training & Education Center in Oakland, 125 12th Street, Suite 400.

Dupuis said his team now had the time to focus on the report, having spent the last two months on the special election. That election was certified on Friday. 

The report recommends that the county registrar either have “no other commitments” other than his ROV job or have a “second set of commitments that is less demanding than the present arrangement.” When other California county ROVs have multiple responsibilities, the report said, they typically moonlight as county clerk or recorder. 

CIOs in government tend to manage all aspects of technology and are involved in improving county systems against cybersecurity threats, procuring and testing new tech, and building long-term strategic plans. Dupuis has worked in the tech and voting arenas for over 30 years.

The two other recommendations from the report are to hire a public information officer to help the ROV provide more timely information to the public and media; to work with the Elections Center, a national organization run by former officials that supports elections officers with trainings and policy reviews; and to improve ROV department productivity and efficiency, which could include ways to increase the budget. 

The public information issue became a point of acute frustration earlier this decade. In 2020, the changes to larger election centers from traditional polling places were not well-communicated, with regular citizens at times having to create their own information placards to hang outside the old stations. When some voters were incorrectly allowed to go home with uncounted ballots in East Oakland the same year, it took the ROV months to describe what had actually happened, including the specific procedures about how those disenfranchised voters were approached. 

All of these issues led to several nonprofit organizations, including The Oaklandside and the ACLU of Northern California, to sue the county to force the registrar to produce public results and explanations about his process. 

The commission asks that the supervisors act upon its recommendations over the next 12 months so that they are implemented in time for next expected election, in fall 2026.

Until 2009, the main voting and technology jobs in the county were staffed by different people. County budget deficits forced the board of supervisors to merge the positions to save money. Dupuis took control of that consolidated position late in 2012 after serving as the CTO for many years.

The commission came about after years of complaints about the ROV’s dual role from major voting access organizations and individuals, including the Asian Law Caucus and the ACLU of Northern California. 

In the past decade, there have been problems — “or the appearance thereof,” as the report put it — about dozens of voting-related tasks and rules. They have included lack of language access to non-English speaking populations, incorrect parole voting information, unavailability of ballot drop boxes, poor voter training that led to uncounted votes, and even inaccurate ballot counts. 

Valentine said that it’s notable that Alameda County elections officers serve a large and diverse population of people who are voting in an increasingly complicated and more labor-intensive environment. 

For example, Alameda County is the only county in the state that runs ranked-choice voting in more than one city at a time.

“ None of it is personal,” Valentine said, “but [dual ROV/CIOs] do not have the capacity by multiple definitions to do that work well if ‘well’ is defined as serving the voters of Alameda County and spending their taxpayer dollars as well as possible.” 

Last year, ahead of national elections, former supervisor Keith Carson told The Oaklandside that while the current dual job was not optimal, it was important to consider the wide range of benefits of having an ROV with deep tech experience. He noted that Dupuis has addressed some specific previous criticisms, including a lack of access to online educational materials about ranked-choice voting. 

The Alameda County Elections Commission committee, composed of Valentine, Allie Whitehurst, and Judy Belcher, will discuss its report at the full commission next week. The commission may vote on whether to forward the report to the board of supervisors or amend it further. Valentine said she expected the supervisors to act upon their recommendations soon. 

“ You know, we can continue talking to the registrar, and the supervisors can talk to them if they want to,” Valentine said, “but we may just decide to not let perfect be the enemy of the good.  [We don’t want it to] take the rest of the year, and I don’t think anyone wants to do that. I think we need to move on.”