| Pacific Sun |
| Oct 18, 2006 |
Editorial
Secretary of State
In this race Democratic state senator Debra Bowen is challenging appointed Republican secretary of state Bruce McPherson. McPherson is a former state legislator appointed to his position by Governor Schwarzenegger. Bowen has been a leader on issues such as privacy, consumer rights and technology as well as public disclosure. She’s also been a leader in election reform. In 1993, she sponsored legislation to place all legislators’ bills and committee analyses on the Internet. In 1995, she wrote the nation’s first law to help state agencies store their documents on computers, promoting better public access. Her bills to increase public access to more records were vetoed in 1997 and 1999, but led to a voter-approved constitutional amendment that achieved most of Bowen’s goal.
Bowen has regularly taken on complicated, difficult issues. When the state’s electricity market crashed in a failed attempt at relying on private markets, Bowen helped piece the system back together.
McPherson has been widely criticized for his implementation of federal voting legislation. On March 28, Bowen and the League of Women Voters each wrote to McPherson, pointing out figures from Los Angeles County showing nearly 43 percent of all registration forms—representing 14,629 people—had been rejected by the secretary of state’s database, and urged him to alter his regulations and data matching criteria. The following day McPherson’s spokesperson was quoted as saying the rejection rate was 26 percent across the state. Bowen says that county elections officials say historically only about 1 percent of all voters attempting to register to vote are found to be ineligible.
In April, a representative of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University testified that McPherson’s approach in California was “completely unfair,” the most restrictive in the country and “an unmitigated disaster that will unfairly disenfranchise thousands upon thousands of eligible voters.” He has quietly modified key policies since, but his record remains troubling. Bowen’s intellect, experience and passion for reform perfectly suit her to this position. We endorse Debra Bowen.
Link to article
|
Latest News 
