Last Friday afternoon, as millions of Californians were preparing for their Presidents’ Day holiday weekend, Secretary of State Bruce McPherson quietly re-certified Diebold electronic voting machines for the 2006 elections.

To rush through this re-certification, the Secretary of State had to go back on his word — twice — and violate federal and state law in the process. Compounding this travesty is that the re-certification is based solely on the views and recommendations of people on the Secretary’s payroll.

This is unacceptable!

Urge Secretary of State McPherson to reverse his decision on Diebold — email him today!

Read the rest of this entry »

Late Friday afternoon, I learned that Secretary of State Bruce McPherson has conditionally certified the use of Diebold electronic voting machines in California’s 2006 elections.

Secretary of State McPherson’s release of bad news late on a Friday afternoon before a holiday weekend is a blatant attempt to prevent us from learning about this decision. We were in a similar position the Friday before Christmas last year when the AP ran a story disclosing voting problems from last November’s special election.

But, try as he might, Secretary of State McPherson is not going to succeed in burying this story from the people of California — this is too critical an issue to go away quietly.

With the many problems that have plagued Diebold machines, as well as the complete lack of transparency into this certification process, McPherson’s decision certainly does nothing to restore confidence in California’s elections.

I’ll have much more to say about this Diebold certification in the next few days, and I’ll be inviting you to do your part as well, but for now I just wanted to share this information with you.

Thanks for your continued support.

– Debra

UPDATE: You can see read Debra’s official response to McPherson’s Diebold certification here, and take a look at some of the latest news stories here, here, and here. You can also check out more coverage at BradBlog.

The Menlo Park City Council chamber was packed to the gills with more than one hundred Californians who turned out for Debra’s hearing on voting systems testing Thursday. It was an extremely informative session — even though Secretary of State McPherson and the voting machine manufacturers all boycotted the session.

Debra opened the hearing by articulating three key areas she wanted to focus on: (1) transparency in the testing process, (2) the relationship between voting machine vendors and the federal “Independent Testing Authority” (ITA) — which is funded by the manufacturers whose systems it is evaluating, and (3) the adequacy of the standards that the ITA is testing against.

She then introduced a panel of 4 technology experts — Aviel Rubin, Dan Wallach, David Dill, and Peter Neumann — to testify. Each of the panelists have substantial experience with technology and voting systems, so their input was extremely valuable.

Read the rest of this entry »

Today, Debra Bowen called on Secretary of State Bruce McPherson to appear at a hearing she’s chairing Thursday in Menlo Park to discuss the quality and integrity of the testing process for electronic voting systems in California.

Many experts in the field will be taking part in the hearing, including Professor Avi Rubin, Technical Director of the Information Security Institute at Johns Hopkins University, and head of “A Center for Correct, Usable, Reliable, Auditable, and Transparent Elections” (ACCURATE) funded by the National Science Foundation.

But incredibly, Secretary of State Bruce McPherson is siding with Diebold and the other electronic voting machine manufacturers by refusing to appear at Thursday’s hearing or to even send a representative. It seems unbelievable, but it’s true!

The people of California deserve a fair, open, and transparent discussion about what the Secretary of State plans to do to test our voting systems. Secretary of State McPherson, or his top official familiar with the voting machine certification process, should absolutely take part in Thursday’s hearing.

Send Secretary of State McPherson your own email today, and urge him to show up for Thursday’s hearing!

– Brent

You can now add California for Democracy, the California League of Conservation Voters, and the San Francisco Young Democrats to the rapidly growing list of Bowen endorsers.

Many more to come — each day, more and more people are learning why Debra Bowen is the right choice for Secretary of State!

– Brent

From her hearing on open source software to a dinner that she had with bloggers in Los Angeles last Friday, Debra is certainly building some buzz in the blog world. Here are just a few blogs talking about Debra:

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/
2006_02/008199.php

http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/techbeat/archives/2006/02/
california_mull.html?campaign_id=rss_blog_blogspotting

http://www.montereycountydemocrats.org/wordpress/2006/02/08/voting-the-perfect-use-of-open-source-software

http://steveaudio.blogspot.com/2006/02/going-back-to-houston-houston-houston.html

http://jnork.livejournal.com/167928.html

Have you found other people blogging about Debra? If so, let us know in the comments below.

– Brent

Yesterday, Debra chaired a hearing in Sacramento to discuss the use of open source software in electronic voting machines — a potential solution for restoring the public’s confidence in our elections system.

You can read more about the hearing here and here.

This is just another example of the kind of leadership that Debra is providing for elections reform here in California — and just more evidence that Debra is the best person to become our next Secretary of State.

Next Thursday, February 16th, Debra will continue to lead the charge, holding a hearing in Menlo Park to talk about the state’s flawed process of certifying new voting machines. The hearing will feature a number of expert witnesses, including “researchers from across the country who are studying voting technology.”

– Brent

P.S. Keep those emails to Secretary of State McPherson coming! Already hundreds of people have participate — but we need thousands of people to stand with Debra and urge the Secretary of State to release all documents about the security & reliability of electronic voting systems! If you’ve already sent your own email to the SOS, invite your friends & family to do the same.

Today, Senator Debra Bowen launched a new online advocacy campaign, urging Secretary of State Bruce McPherson to “come clean” with the people of California about the integrity of our elections system by releasing all documents his office has about the reliability, security, and performance of electronic voting machines.

I hope you’ll join us by forwarding your own email to Secretary of State McPherson today.

Then invite everyone you know to join us.

Thanks for your help!

– Brent

On Wednesday, Debra chaired a hearing of the Senate Elections and Reapportionment Committee to gauge California’s progress in complying with the “Help America Vote Act” (HAVA). Unfortunately, the hearing revealed a lot of troubling issues:

• Only 5 of California’s 58 counties have electronic voting machines in place & certified for the June 6th primary election — despite requirements of HAVA and state law that disabled voters have systems to vote independently, and that every electronic voter machine be equipped with a verified paper audit trail
• The slow approval pace of new voting machines by California’s Secretary of State and federal authorities is hampering counties’ ability to comply with federal and state law
• Voting machines manufactured by Election Systems & Software have been shown to count more ballots than voters, while frequently recording the wrong choice for voters with long fingernails
• Diebold’s optical scanning systems are susceptible to hacking
• The Secretary of State’s office has not been forthcoming with information about problems in the state’s election system

This is a huge problem because, as Debra said on Wednesday,

“It’s the middle of January and we still have counties that don’t have any idea how they’re going to run an election.”

The hearing was covered by a number of news outlets, including the San Francisco Chronicle, the Los Angeles Times, and The Daily Review.

Wednesday’s hearing provides even more evidence that we need new leadership in the Secretary of State’s office to clean up California’s voting system and restore the public’s trust in state elections.

– Brent

I had intended to blog about Thomas Jefferson, King George, the roots of democracy, and Jefferson’s Academical Village established at the University of Virginia in 1822. I spent three years at the University of Virginia School of Law, and being steeped in Jeffersonian democracy has had a profound impact on my work in the public sphere.

I will blog about that soon, since it is fresh for me after a recent visit to Charlottesville, Virginia and to Monticello, Jefferson’s home after his presidency.

But this evening I am reflecting on the rescue of an animal that had a Ruffles bag stuck on its head. I was driving down the levee road in the rain on my way home from the Capitol this evening, and as I came around a bend in the river, there was … something furry, I couldn’t tell what … with what appeared to be a paper McDonald’s cup stuck on its head. This scene instantly brought back memories from high school of a pet raccoon named Floyd, who got his head stuck in a cup while pursuing the last few delicious drops of a vanilla Geri’s milkshake. My brother and I released him, and later that summer we released Floyd to the wilds.

Read the rest of this entry »