The county has yet to implement the software, whose purchase and proposed use drew the ire of a handful of Republican poll workers who have attended meetings for almost a year to complain about the software and ask officials to terminate its use.Board member Michael Mellon, R-Munster, made the motion to end the contract and stop the annual software maintenance fees. The county already has paid the maintenance fee for 2023. The motion passed unanimously.
“I think the pushback from the community obviously made us look at the software; and in reviewing the software, we realized we weren’t utilizing it,” Mellon said, adding if the software is not being utilized, maybe it is just time to cancel it. “What I am doing is looking at a piece of software we are not using. I’m canceling the contract because it is a cost we do not need to incur.”
According to a news release from the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office, Konnech Corp. CEO Eugene Yu was taken into custody Oct. 4 after it was alleged that contrary to the contract for the poll worker management software with the county calling for the company to securely maintain the data with only U.S. citizens and permanent residents having access to it, the information instead was stored on servers in the People’s Republic of China.