By Daniel Larios
Staff Writer

September 26, 2014 – In what is Santa Monica’s first online political endorsement vote, Residocracy members began weighing in on their candidate choices for City Council Wednesday.

Between 1,500 to 1,600 members who had joined the group by its July 28 City Council Candidates Forum (“Council Candidates Face Tough Questions at Slow-Growth Forum,” July 30, 2014) have received email notifications that they are eligible to vote for endorsements at Residocracy.org.

This will be the first political endorsement  made by the slow-growth group that was responsible for a successful drive to halt a major new development at the old Papermate site.

“It’s exciting, and it’s putting residents first,” Residocracy founder Armen Melkonians told the Lookout Thursday.  “This is the first time the residents have an endorsement process like this.”

“I want to see how it Pams-Out,” joked Melkonians, referring to the group’s opposition to Mayor Pam O’Connor’s reelection bid, whom it sees as too pro-development.

All candidates for Council were offered an opportunity to complete a questionnaire crafted by the Residocracy Advisory Board (“Residocracy Vies to Become Political Force in Santa Monica,” May 5, 2014) which focused on “issues of concern to residents,” such as large development projects, the Santa Monica Airport and Government Transparency..

Only nine candidates who completed the questionnaires are eligible for endorsement. They are incumbent councilmember Kevin McKeown; Parks and Rec Commissioner Phil Brock; Planning Commissioners Sue Himmelrich, Richard McKinnon and Jennifer Kennedy; former mayor Mike Feinstein; former Lookout Columnist Frank Gruber, perennial candidate Jon Mann and media and communications professional Zoe Muntaner.

Before voting, the organization’s advisory board recommended Brock, Himmelrich, McKeown and McKinnon as its top choices in the race for three open Council seats.

“These recommendations are not endorsements by Residocracy and are intended for informational purposes only,” reads a disclaimer on the website.

“These recommendations represent the four candidates that the RAB believes are qualified to best represent your interests as a resident,” the website states. “The ultimate decision in the Residocracy Endorsement for the City Council race will be made through our Membership Vote.”

The voting period will end at midnight Tuesday.  The official endorsements will follow shortly afterwards.

 Residocracy’s use of electronic voting to make endorsements has piqued interest in its possible use for official elections.

In the era in which technology becomes more and more sophisticated, advocates argue that online voting is the right thing to do.

"We've voted the way we have for the past 200 years because we couldn't do any better than that," said former IBM IT professional Rob Weber in an interview with CNN. "Now, we have this technology that has revolutionized the rest of our lives ... (and) can revolutionize our voting system and could revolutionize our political system."

However, concerns about security and dependability of technology are also being raised.

"Online voting is a very unsafe idea and a very bad idea and something I think no technological breakthrough I can foresee can ever change." said Avi Rubin, a professor of computer science at Johns Hopkins University who specializes in computer security, told CNN.

"People's computers are not getting more secure; they're getting more infected with viruses. They're getting more under the control of malware."

In the early 2000s, the U.S. military began testing the Secure Electronic Registration and Voting Experiment, which would have let service members stationed overseas vote online.

However, the project was scrapped by Pentagon officials after studies suggested that the security risks were too great to continue.