You know, I don’t normally gush over candidates, but I really, really dig on Debra Bowen. She had a conference call yesterday with some bloggers. And never before have I seen somebody who really, really just GETS it. She talked about a few things that I found really great.
- Her bills: She had a couple of bills signed including SB 1235: Absentee votes to be included in the 1% hand sample, SB1747: Machine testing observation by anybody not just representatives of Central Committees, SB 1760: Requires paper trail last 22 months.
Arnold vetoed her initiative reform bill (Bad Arnold, Bad!) and the student pollworker bill. I really don’t get that last one.
- Voting issues: What’s wrong with Inkavote: Many ballots were completely blank because they required very hard pressure, and there were no ink in some of the stylus.
On Diebold: She discussed several issues, including programming the device lack of real security, and the hotel mini-bar key lock system. Yikes all around! Kinda makes you wish for good ol’ fashioned ScanTron voting.
- In the next weeks, she will be going back to basics on the campaigning, working on name ID and turnout efforts. She has a debate with McPherson on Oct 18 (OOPS: I fixed this. It’s not on the 16th, but rather the 18th), I beleive. I’ll double check that one, and promote it when it’s coming up. It’s going to be with the SF Chronicle and will be streaming on CBS5’s website until the election. Full details soon.
Debra Bowen really, really gets the issues in election reform. We need her to be our Secretary of State for precisely that reason. While our match campaign for her has concluded (very successfully I might add), you can still give money to Bowen through our ActBlue page.