Safeguard LA County’s Voting System for the 2020 Election
The Challenge
The Los Angeles County Registrar (Office of Elections) was in need of updating their county wide, aging voting equipment due to me-chanical issues and failures. There was doubt if the current election system would make it through the presidential elections in November 2020 without having any major equipment malfunction. They needed to upgrade the county’s voting equipment in a short timeframe.
The Antenna LGMQM4
The LGMQM4-7-38-24-58 is a high-performance MiMo antenna that con- tains nine isolated antenna elements; four ultra-wideband LTE elements covering 698-3800MHz; four dual band Wi-Fi elements covering 2.4/4.9- 6.0GHz; and a high performance GPS/GNSS antenna with an integrated 26dB gain LNA.
The antenna does not require a metallic ground plane, and maintains a high level of performance even when mounted on a non-metallic surface.
The Client
The Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk (RR/CC) is one of 37 depart- ments in Los Angeles County, California which serves a population of over 10 million. The Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk is respon- sible for registering voters, maintaining voter files, administering federal, state, local and special elections and verifying initiatives, referenda and recall petitions. Los Angeles County is the largest and most complex county election jurisdiction in the USA with over 500 political districts and 4.85 million registered voters.
The Solution
The LA County Registrar deployed Cradlepoint AER
series branch routers with dual LTE modems positioned
in the voting centers throughout Los Angeles County. The County utilised two LGMQM4 antenna that worked with the Cradlepoint device with dual-modem/dual-carrier capabilities and software, which allows LA County to manage every endpoint from a centralized location.
With LTE routers and Panorama Antennas, LA County has secure networking to keep ballot data and sensitive citizen information safe and the ability to quickly spin up a secure network connection, no matter where the vote center is located, and utilise software to monitor each of thenetworks from one location.
A Wi-Fi bubble was also created at each voting site to allow election volunteers a secure network to connect to. Since voter look up and registration is now conducted using tablets and laptops the WiFi connectivity was an added bonus to the router deployment.