[North-NV-Greens] new secretary of state about IRV

[Paul Etxeberri]

Here's some interesting news about our neighbors to the West. A lot of this
is also applicable to Nevada.   Pax,  Paul Etx

>
>Dear friends,
>
>California is about to hire a new Secretary of State, former state Sen.
>Bruce McPherson. His decisions will be crucial to the future of
>California's elections. He will have to decide whether to continue
>reforms to California's election practices begun by his predecessor,
>Kevin Shelley.
>
>Please see below my oped from yesterday's Sacramento Bee, in which I
>give advice to the incoming Secretary of State.
>
>Use this oped for your own letters to the editor and letters to the
>Secretary of State, which you can email at this web form
>www.ss.ca.gov/cgi-bin/print_form.cgi or www.ss.ca.gov/contacts.htm. In
>particular, we want to urge Mr. McPherson to support IRV capability for
>voting equipment, and to support voter verified paper trails (which he
>said he would do in confirmation hearings this week).
>
>Now is a crucial time to ensure that California's elections stay on
>track with the best technology and practices.
>
>Yours,
>
>Steven Hill
>
>*********** 
>
>Voting regulation must be vital to secretary of state
>By Steven Hill
>Thursday, March 17, 2005
>Sacramento Bee
>http://www.sacbee.com/content/opinion/story/12576022p-13430683c.html
>
>California is about to hire a new secretary of state. If former state
>Sen. Bruce McPherson is confirmed by the Legislature, which seems
>likely, he will have to decide whether to continue reforms to
>California's election practices begun by his predecessor, Kevin Shelley.
>
>His decisions will be crucial to the future of California's elections.
>
>Just because Shelley's administration imploded in a cloud of controversy
>does not mean all its programs were flawed. For instance, Shelley
>cracked down on the revolving door between the voting equipment industry
>and government, stopping his staff from working for those they had
>regulated.
>
>Shelley mandated a voter-verified paper trail for all election
>equipment, so each voter could confirm their vote via a paper receipt
>like you receive from an ATM machine. He initiated random field testing
>on Election Day to ensure proper performance of individual voting
>machines.
>
>But his biggest reform was revamping a regulatory regime that previously
>had been characterized by lax standards, arbitrary enforcement and a
>troubling lack of oversight of local election officials.
>
>The secretary of state's office oversees a little-known appointed body
>called the Voting Systems and Procedures Panel. This VSPP is charged
>with managing the certification of voting equipment, not only software
>and hardware but also detailed election administration procedures,
>including testing of the equipment and procedures. They are supposed to
>ensure that election equipment functions accurately and securely.
>
>In past years, the certification process was arbitrarily applied and
>lacked consistent standards. This fostered a lax atmosphere that
>signaled to companies like Diebold that they could insert software into
>their computerized touchscreen equipment that had never gone through
>proper testing.
>
>When Diebold was caught doing this by the Shelley administration, the
>company responded that it was just a software upgrade. While perhaps
>true, it was still unsettling, and, as Shelley alleged, possibly
>illegal. In Los Angeles County, election officials developed their own
>voting equipment, the InkaVote, whose components have never been tested
>by federal authorities. A statewide audit revealed similar problems in
>many other counties.
>
>Shelley attempted to crack down on these practices. But he met with a
>great deal of resistance, not only from companies such as Diebold but
>also from county election chiefs. The latter, led by their lobbying arm
>the California Association of Clerks and Election Officials (CACEO),
>even threatened to sue Shelley over some of his mandates. One county
>elections chief was quoted saying, "We don't need any cowboys" from the
>secretary's office interfering in elections. Others protested, "But this
>is how we've always done things.
>
>Election officials deserve great sympathy, as they have a tough job. And
>certainly there are outstanding election officials in California. But
>there also are too many who regard state oversight as an invasion of
>their fiefdom.
>
>Now county election officials have mounted their latest lobbying effort
>-- to overturn Shelley's mandate for a voter-verified paper trail. There
>is something troubling about county election officials having a lobbying
>agenda focused on elections policy rather than operations efficiency.
>They are supposed to implement the laws, not decide which ones to
>ignore.
>
>The words "special interest" have been overused lately, but election
>officials in California have become one. And that's not how it's
>supposed to be.
>
>As secretary of state, Bruce McPherson should press forward with an
>agenda that safeguards the security and integrity of our elections. He
>should:
>
>. Continue to crack down on the revolving door between the industry and
>regulators.
>
>. Continue requiring a voter-verified paper trail for voting equipment.
>
>. Run his own office as nonpartisan as possible.
>
>. Continue oversight of local election officials.
>
>. Forbid local election officials from lobbying for changes to elections
>policy.
>
>. Make sure that the Voting Systems and Procedures Panel continues to
>have qualified appointees and staff and adequate resources.
>
>Finally, McPherson should make his office a vehicle for reconnecting
>voters to their elected representatives. He should explore ways to
>increase voter turnout and make elections competitive; strengthen voter
>registration laws that will lead to cleaner and more complete voter
>rolls; ensure that all voting equipment in California can handle
>innovative methods like ranked ballots used with instant runoff voting;
>and reform our broken political primary system. He should engage the
>public by establishing a citizens' task force that holds statewide
>hearings about these issues.
>
>Confidence in our elections is a fundamental cornerstone of our
>democracy.
>
>The incoming secretary of state should continue modernizing our
>elections practices, no matter how unpopular it might be with the
>elections industry and some local election officials.
>
>
>About the writer:
>Steven Hill is an Irvine Senior Fellow with the New America Foundation
>and author of "Fixing Elections: The Failure of America's Winner Take
>All Politics."


-- 
Paul Etxeberri

"Forests precede civilizations and deserts follow"   ---Chateaubriand