Squid votes and votes again with the Assembly District 30 candidates.

Technocracy v. Democracy…While watching the sloppiest Super Bowl playing Squid remembers ever seeing, Squid’s relatively complex brain wandered off. Would a Prius really be a good getaway car? (Maybe.) In a challenge between real broncos and real panthers, who would win? (Squid’s money is on the panthers.) In the four-way race for California Assembly District 30, who will win?

That last question, at least for now, Squid is going to leave to a coin toss. It’s certainly too soon to say, with a full four months until the primary. But the two Democratic heavyweights in the heavily Democrat-leaning district are already out swinging, though maybe they could learn a thing or two from NFL players about sportsmanship.

Watsonville City Councilmember Karina Cervantez Alejo and former Assemblywoman and Salinas mayor Anna Caballero are going toe-to-toe for the seat that Caballero herself held from 2006-10. Cervantez Alejo is aiming to replace her husband, Luis Alejo, who terms out after wrapping up his third Assembly term this year. (Luis, meanwhile, is running for Monterey County supervisor.)

Cervantez Alejo’s campaign staff sends out a press release practically every day trumpeting her latest endorsements and donations. Most of those land in the echo chamber of Squid’s lair, along with every other candidate who’s slowly racking up cash and volunteers and endorsements.

But one on Jan. 30 got Caballero’s attention. It was the announcement that Cervantez Alejo had secured a “pre-endorsement” from the California Democratic Party, meaning the majority of delegates within the district favored her, and will recommend the full party endorse her at the state convention Feb. 26-28.

“People of California’s 30th Assembly District deserve confidence in the integrity of those representing them in Sacramento,” Caballero wrote on her Facebook page Jan. 31. “That confidence was shaken by the apparent lack of organization at yesterday’s Democratic pre-endorsement vote. Numerous ballots had to be reviewed on the spot for legitimacy, and a stack of uncounted ballots was found in the trash half-way through counting the votes.”

One of Caballero’s chief complaints is that delegates can cast votes electronically, and there’s no open process for tallying those votes.

Squid called the California Democratic Party to check in, and spokesman Michael Soller said it was the first he’d heard of these concerns and he thinks the process holds up to scrutiny just fine.

The vote count: 43-2. “It's a pretty overwhelming number of votes,” Soller says.

Caballero does have the option to challenge the pre-endorsement before it’s finalized at the state convention, but it would be a long shot: The pre-endorsement threshold is 70 percent of the vote, and Cervantez Alejo won 95.6 percent.

For her part, Caballero says she’s more interested in moving ahead than doing battle over this endorsement (now that she’s gotten the gripes off her chest on Facebook, that is).

“Although the process was really messy, in the end it’s not going to change anything,” she says. “I’ve got a strategy I’m working on in the campaign, so I’d like to just work on it instead of worrying about idiosyncrasies.”

But idiosyncrasies have a way of rearing their head again and again during a campaign. Take Hillary Clinton’s email trove that just won’t go away. The Assembly District 30 race has its own technologically troubling past. Caballero recently resigned from her position in Gov. Jerry Brown’s cabinet as Secretary of the California Business, Consumer Services and Housing Agency.  

There, Caballero presided over the development of a new IT system called BreEZe—a $96 million project that came in triple its budget and was anything but a breeze.

The Joint Legislative Audit Committee asked for an audit on BreEZe, and State Auditor Elaine Howle released a scathing 135-page audit on Feb. 12, 2015. Basically, everything that could’ve gone wrong? Did.

The project lacked adequate planning and relied on an “off-the-shelf” IT option instead of a custom system; was based on outdated assumptions about the needs of its millions of licensees who require regular state renewals to keep their businesses going; exceeded its original $28 million budget by $68 million; its implementation was delayed, from eight weeks to 11 months; and even then, covered only half the regulatory entities initially planned to be covered by BreEZe, according to the audit.

It leaves Squid wondering: Maybe the California Dems were relying on BreEZe or something like it to cast their e-votes.