Below is an unofficial transcript of the debate.
Willie Brown:
You have two outstanding candidates for that job, they're here to
seek your blessings and your endorsement.
Let me now invite to this podium, Debra Bowen, elected to the California state assembly in 1992, served in that body from '92 to '99, then elected to the state senate for two terms. Debra Bowen.
Senator Deborah Ortiz from the great city of Sacramento elected to the California state assembly in 1996, elected to the state senate in 1998, state Senator Deborah Ortiz.
Secretary of State's office is always an interesting one in that the whole business of conducting elections, fair and open elections is where the action is. With the advent of all this technology, serious questions are being raised. Advocates have pushed for touch screen voting. The questions around those results, have caused many of us to wonder aloud how best do you get a Secretary of State who will orchestrate a program where fair, open, honest, and accurate elections can be conducted. I will put the question to each of you, start with you Miss Bowen.
What will you do to insure that the elections in this state are fair, open, honest and the results with integrity?
Senator Bowen:
Thank you. Thank you delegates.
I am running to be your Secretary of State for two reasons - Florida and Ohio.
I will secure your vote. I stand for three principles.
Every eligible voter must be registered to vote, every registered voter
must have a convenient way to cast his or her ballot,
and every vote must be counted as it was cast.
The Diebold touch screen machines have no business in California elections.
This is a company that lied to California about what software it was running;
a company whose CEO gave $40,000 to the Bush campaign
and who promised to deliver
Ohio for George W. Bush; a company that
will not let us see the raw vote totals in Alaska because they say they are
so intertwined with their proprietary software that it would violate
Deibold's trade secrets were we
to see the raw vote total for how the vote was conducted in Alaska.
We need open source voting software that is
publicly opened not proprietary. Every aspect of elections from the voter
registration, to who is on the rolls, to who gets purged,
to how the counting is done
must be public except for one thing, and that is how people vote
individually. That's the only piece of elections that should be private.
As the San Francisco Chronicle said last weekend in endorsing me,
I will secure your votes.
Willie Brown:
State Senator Deborah Ortiz
Senator Ortiz:
Thank you. Thank you delegates.
The tenets in voting in this state and across this county are based on
a series of concepts:
accuracy, security, accessible, a sense of ease.
The challenge that we had in Florida was an accessibility issue.
That was a question of whether or not the accuracy of those votes;
the hanging chads, whether one could discern the intent, and
as a result of that Al Gore lost the election.
The perfect storm, the perfect storm, evolved in Florida. You had politics,
you had a lack of security, a lack of accuracy,
you had political intervention and partisan behavior,
and that was a perfect storm that caused us to lose that election
as a result of the deception in Florida.
Audience member:
What about Ohio?
Senator Ortiz
Thank you.
Our challenge is to also make sure that those persons
who are eligible to vote understand how to vote.
Our challenge is to inspire those who have been outside of the system
for generations to be a part of the process. Our challenge is to
assure that we instill confidence in this system,
despite the fiasco in Florida. I hope to inspire those voters across
the state of California who have been outside of the system, who
have been failed by a society that does not include them, to use
the kinds of tools that I have used throughout my career in helping
people become citizens, in giving them the tools to assure them that
this democracy works for all of us. It's going to take all of us
that are Democrats to bring them back into that system and that is
my commitment to you, if I am your next Secretary of State.
Thank you.
Audience member:
Ohio! Ohio!
Willie Brown:
Many of you have read that the database concerning voter
registration in the state of California has presented a problem and a
challenge to the current administration. There is something called a
CalVoter system that allegedly should have a verification of voter
registration names, numbers, etc. with the DMV records. That
apparently is not occurring with any great regularity. The fear that
we will fall out of compliance with the federal requirements or the
money made available to assist in the voter registration and in the
process of convincing people to go vote.
As Secretary of State of California, what will you do to insure that the compliance with HAVA, that act, as well as the database is ultimately produced in a fashion that provides for integrity. We'll start with you, Senator Ortiz.
Senator Ortiz: Thank you Bruce McPherson attempted to deny over 40% of those voters in L. A. county as well as up to 27% or so across the state of California by entering into a memorandum of understanding with the Bush Justice Department that posed disenfranchisement of newly registered voters.
He went beyond what Congress ever envisioned; he went beyond the intent of HAVA, and but for the leadership of registrar of voters across the state of California, but for the leadership of voting rights attorneys from Vallejo as well as the Asian Pacific Law Caucus, but for cooperation with Registrar of voters, we would have disenfranchised those new voters. This man has now entered into a twelfth hour, and he delayed too long to enter into these emergency regulations, and but for the pressure of others across the state of California, we might not have these emergency regs in place. There appears to be, at least by his representation, which we should all question, roughly 95% of the challenges will be addressed.
Our goal, as Democrats and all of us, have to hold him accountable, to make sure that we monitor those rates of successful participation between Registrar of voters to allow those questionable, under that original agreement, voters to be able to vote. Not provisionally, not be denied even a ballot to even know where there polling places are and it is our obligation to hold him accountable.
We, unfortunately, have a Secretary of State that didn't earn that position, our job is to hold him accountable and make sure that these last minute emergency regs that he has put in place may indeed satisfy all of those persons who are going to be denied participation in this June election.
And our job is to monitor and assure, and that is why I have sent him a letter asking him to report to the legislature before the June election to assure that those voters will not be denied the right to vote.
Willie Brown:
When you see me stand up, you know more time has been
taken. ... Senator Debra Bowen.
Senator Bowen:
Thank you. Thank you.
I sense, fellow Democrats, this voter registration problem is not
resolved. The Secretary of State has not changed his regulations.
His emergency regulations that he adopted on
Dec. 12, that have had the result of disenfranchising
huge groups of people.
Several groups in particular. One, married women or women who have a different name on their Social Security card or their driver's license than the name they use, do not match and do not go on the statewide voter rolls. And the second major group, is voters with ethnic surnames; surnames like "De La Torre", like "Su Hue", and yes, like "McPherson", that may be spelled differently or have different spacing and these voters still are not being placed on the statewide voter rolls because the matching criteria are still overly restrictive. California is one of 9 states that entered into the most restrictive criteria in this country, resulting in one out of every four newly registered voters in California not going on the statewide voter rolls.
I called for all of you to assist me, through my website, debrabowen.com, thank you, all of you, who emailing the Secretary of State, who said he could wait until after the June primary to get the experience of a whole election cycle to see how many people were actually disenfranchised before we did anything about the regulations. This is an ongoing issue. Please go to my website and sign up. We need to follow this through. People are not getting their sample ballots. They are not getting their absentee ballots, and if they vote provisionally, they will not have their votes counted until we resolve this problem. We are in the thick of this now and I need your help.
Willie Brown:
One last question for these two candidates. On the progressive side of
almost every candidate, whether Secretary of State or otherwise, but in
particular Secretary of State, there must be answer to the question, of
how you propose to move to produce an increased level of participation
in under-participating communities. Would you include, in such a
proposal if you have one, the Internet as a possible voter
participation tool? We'll start with you, Senator Bowen.
Senator Bowen:
Thank you very much. Actually, I think my answer may surprise you. We
have a huge voter registration problem and no number of voter
registration drives is going to solve it until we pass a Clean Money
campaign bill in California! It return your elections to you the people
of this state!
If we had a Clean Money system, where any qualifying candidate could get 500 or 1000 $5 contributions and then spend the rest of their time campaigning, actually talking to voters, about their ideas, actually registering voters, actually working as I did to close the digital divide by helping bring funding to the community technology policy group, to groups all across this country of underrepresented Californians, we need to use that infrastructure, we need to register, we need to get high school students involved as poll workers, and I am carrying a bill this year that would keep schools from being penalized when high school students go one day out of the year to work at the polls. Schwarzenegger vetoed this bill last year saying losing one day of classroom time was just too big a price for high school students to pay; I say let's get our high school students participating in our democracy now and they'll stay life time voters. Clean money, voter registration, voter education over the Internet but very mindful of the digital divide. We are not close to voting over the Internet. We can't solve the security problem in the polling places yet, we don't need to add voting over the Internet to our series of problems with the technology. Thank you.
Willie Brown:
Senator Deborah Ortiz
Senator Ortiz:
Thank you. Internet voting has been considered and
determined to be lacking the security concerns that would not
make it viable. It deserves consideration, but it is not there yet,
as they say it's not done yet. Let me just say that the challenges of
including people in the process that are traditionally outside the
process really come from an understanding of who is outside the
process. I would propose initiatives in schools, public and private,
civic participation initiatives that in fact educate the
most basic of principles about voter participation. How someone
contacts their local city council member. How they contact their
senator, focusing as well in communities of color and immigrant
communities, people totally outside the system.
I'd use the same tools I've used throughout my career, and those tools really are using my political capital as I have done since City Council, Assembly, and Senate, to register thousands of Californians to become new citizens through volunteer participation programs that have been a model and our manual among my colleagues in the Senate that we have translated in numerous languages
I'd also use the tool that I did to enhance the CalGrant scholarship program that was my legislation and turn that into a workshop, where we have had thousands of students whose families never graduated from high schools or colleges or universities, because poor children in California deserve the right to a quality college education because of the investment I made in those communities throughout my career in every policy and every initiative.
We have much to do. The Internet is not the solution, absentee voting is not the solution, the solution is us as Democrats assuring that those people who don't believe that Democrats offer them a voice in society to take the real values of what we stand for as Democrats and convince those people out there that we are the party for them and that means immigrant communities, new citizens, communities of color, poor people, We have a huge challenge as Democrats. My hope is to inspire Californians across the state to actually believe in this system, not cause fear and hysteria and distrust in our elections. Our goal is to move forward, and that is my dream and my hope and I hope that you will be a part of that as you consider supporting me at this convention as well as at the primary election. Thank you.
Willie Brown:
All right a round of applause for the two candidates for Secretary
of State, Debra Bowen and Deborah Ortiz. Thank you, thank you,
thank you.