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We just received word from our man in Montana -- Bob Ream, treasurer of Montanans for the Future.
The number of provisional ballots outstanding is not enough to make up the difference. NPR has called the race for Linda McCulloch.
Montana has a new Secretary of State, and we're four for four in 2006!
The results are in. And we could be looking at four for four.
MONTANA
The final vote count of regular ballots in Montana puts Linda McCulloch over the top by 4,474 votes. Provisional ballots are yet to be counted but it is unlikely that they could change the outcome of this race.
Winning in Montana would be especially sweet because it would mean ousting an incumbent, something that is exceedingly difficult (and expensive) to do. Note that we also ousted an incumbent republican Secretary of State in 2006. That was in the state of Minnesota. If not for that feat, the elected official running the recount in the Franken/Coleman race would be Republican Mary Kiffmeyer and not progressive champion Mark Ritchie. We know Mark Ritchie will make sure every vote is counted.
Linda leads in Montana!
Linda McCulloch (D)
232,070 | 49.25%
Brad Johnson (R)
227,596 | 48.30%
OREGON
The final vote count in Oregon is in. And Kate Brown pulled it off despite a last minute surge - fueled by a massive contribution from the timber industry - by Republican Rick Dancer.
Kate wins in Oregon!
Kate Brown (D)
773,514 | 51%
Brad Johnson (R)
701,245 | 46%
MISSOURI
We now have final tallies in Missouri, where Robin Carnahan picked up an impressive win.
Robin wins in Missouri!
Robin Carnahan (D)
1,743,819 | 62%
Mitch Hubbard (R)
1,003,692 | 36%
WEST VIRGINIA
As expected, Natalie Tennant also won big in West Virginia. Taking an open seat that has been held by a Republican.
Natalie wins in West Virginia!
Natalie Tennant (D)
431,887 | 65%
Charles Minimah (R)
227,784 | 35%
The count is not yet complete, but Linda McCulloch now leads by 4,479 votes!
Results as of 3:32 pm PT: (click here for updated results).
Linda McCulloch (D)
232,066 | 49.25%
Brad Johnson (R)
227,587 | 48.30%
We're still watching the vote count in Montana, where 99 percent of the vote is in -- with 10 precincts still to be counted.
Linda McCulloch leads by just 2,180 votes. If she pulls off this major upset of incumbent Republican Brad Johnson there is not doubt that Secretary of State Project donors made the difference.
Current results:
Linda McCulloch (D)
223,611 | 49.02%
Brad Johnson (R)
221,431 | 48.54%
Natalie wins in West Virginia!
Natalie Tennant (D): 66%(as of 10.58 pm PT)
Charles Minimah (R): 34%(as of 10.58 pm PT)
Click here for updated results.
Robin wins in Missouri!
Robin Carnahan (D): 62% (as of 10.58 pm PT)
Mitch Hubbard (R): 36%(as of 10.58 pm PT)
Click here for updated results.
76% reporting in Montana
Linda McCulloch (D): 49% (as of 10.58 pm PT)
Brad Johnson (R): 48% (as of 10.58 pm PT)
Click here for updated results.
72 % reporting in Oregon
Kate Brown (D): 50%
Rick Dancer (R): 48%
Click here for updated results.
Here's the schedule for polls closing. The two closest races are also the two latest races. We'll post SoS race results as they come in.
4:30 pm PT / 7:30 pm ET: Polls close in West Virginia
5:00 pm PT / 8:00 pm ET: Polls close in Missouri
7:00 pm PT / 10:00 pm ET: Polls close in Montana
8:00 pm PT / 11:00 pm ET: Poll close in Oregon
We're all feeling anxious about whether every vote will be counted on Tuesday. But with reform-minded Secretaries of State running the election in key states, we can rest somewhat easier tonight.
In 2006, together we helped elect five candidates to Secretary of State positions in key 2008 battleground states: Ohio, Nevada, Iowa, New Mexico, and Minnesota. Today those Secretaries of State are a "firewall" against efforts by republican operatives to steal the election.
Stopping voter suppression at the source is the most efficient way to protect the election. But most of what we do happens under the radar. And when we elect a candidate to Secretary of State, the full impact isn't felt sometimes until years later.
Our 2006 candidates are actively working to protect the election. Read below an excerpt from an article about the impact of our work. And consider the impact our 2008 candidates -- if elected -- will have in 2010 and 2012.
Dems' firewall: Secretary of state offices
By: Avi Zenilman
November 2, 2008 08:31 PM EST
In anticipation of a photo-finish presidential election, Democrats have built an administrative firewall designed to protect their electoral interests in five of the most important battleground states.
The bulwark consists of control of secretary of state offices in five key states - Iowa, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico and Ohio - where the difference between victory and defeat in the 2004 presidential election was no more than 120,000 votes in any one of them.
With a Democrat now in charge of the offices, which oversee and administer their state's elections, the party is better positioned than in the previous elections to advance traditional Democratic interests -such as increasing voter registration and boosting turnout - rather than Republican priorities such as stamping out voter fraud.
Perhaps more important, in those five states Democrats are now in a more advantageous position when it comes to the interpretation and administration of election law - a development that could benefit Barack Obama if any of those states are closely contested on Election Day.
The effort began in 2006 when a group of liberal California activists created an independent 527 group designed to elect secretaries of state.
The Secretary of State Project ran independent ads of its own and ensured that donors - many of whom were affiliated with Democracy Alliance, a network of wealthy fundraisers that channels money to liberal causes across the country - knew which candidates deserved donations.
They were frustrated by the ballot-counting actions of former Florida Republican Secretary of State Katherine Harris in 2000, and former Ohio Republican Secretary of State Ken Blackwell in 2004, both former campaign chairmen for George W. Bush who became prominent electoral boogeymen to the left.
"We were tired of Republican manipulation of elections," said Michael Kieschnick, a founder of the group who is also the president of Working Assets, a company that provides credit cards and mobile phone services to progressive organizations.
"It seemed like lots of decisions were made by people who were pretty clearly political operatives."
Update. We've blown through our $250,000 goal and raised $281,940.23 to stop the next Katherine Harris.
With the election just days away, five of our 2006 candidates are protecting the vote in key states: Jennifer Brunner in Ohio. Mark Ritchie in Minnesota. Michael Mauro in Iowa. Ross Miller in Nevada. And Mary Herrera in New Mexico.
But what about the 2010 election. And 2012? Elections being held on Tuesday will determine who runs elections in four key states. Two of our 2008 candidates in Missouri and West Virginia are near victory. Two more - in Oregon and Montana - are fighting their way to the finish.
Here's a summary of our fundraising efforts for 2008 -- both on and offline.
Linda McCulloch in Montana: 620 donors have given $14,584.06.
Kate Brown in Oregon: 582 donors have given $18,046.86.
Natalie Tennant in West Virginia: 534 donors have given $12,363.61
Robin Carnahan in Missouri:546 donors have given $13,457.85
Secretary of State Project strategic fund: donations total $223,487.85
Total donations raised for SoS Project and candidates this cycle: $281,940.23
Linda McCulloch and Kate Brown still need your help. Click here to learn more about donating now.
As Jennifer Brunner works in Ohio to stop rightwing challenges to newly registered voters, it's clear what a difference it makes to have a Secretary of State who is committed to ensuring a fair election. In 2004, Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell was a national co-chair of the Bush/Cheney campaign. There is no doubt that he used the power of his office to create the conditions for a Bush victory in the state by purging voter rolls, deployment of voting machines and numerous other decisions big and small.
The Secretary of State Project has raised over $225,000 in 2008. This money is supporting four reform candidates for the chief election officer position in key states and our strategic work on behalf of clean elections. Over 1,000 donors nationwide are part of our efforts to stop voter suppression by electing Secretaries of State who support fair, free and transparent elections.
Money raised directly for our 2008 candidates:
$11,047 Linda McCulloch
$34,096 Kate Brown
$10,142 Robin Carnahan
$9,043 Natalie Tennant
Linda McCulloch is in a particularly tight race in Montana, where the current Republican Secretary of State is trying to roll back Election Day Registration. A recent fight over the potential disenfranchisement of 6,000 voters -- including service members in Iraq -- highlight the importance of this race. The contribution limit in this race is $310.00. That means small contributions can make the difference.
Kate Brown was considered a safe candidate until her opponent received a massive donation from the timber industry. There are no limits in Oregon which means a late infusion of cash by a single rightwing donor could swing the race.
Robin Carnahan in Missouri and Natalie Tennant in West Virginia have run great campaigns and are poised for victory.
Make a donation now to our slate of candidates -- with particular urgency in Montana and Oregon -- and to the Secretary of State Project strategic fund. Contributions you give today will protect the election tomorrow. Our 2006 campaign is helping to protect the election in Ohio in 2008. Our 2008 campaigns will help us put voting rights champions in charge of elections in states with key elections in 2010 and 2012.
Attacks by the rightwing against nonpartisan voter registration groups are escalating to an alarming degree.
It should be the government's responsibility to maintain a list of eligible voters. The movement to achieve this is called "universal registration." Until we have universal registration, nonprofits have to do the work of government and make sure citizens get on the rolls and stay there.
Community organizations that register a lot of minority, low income and youth voters come under attack by right wingers who want to suppress the vote and maintain our current system of disenfranchisement.
Today's Progress Report has an important round up on recent attacks to suppress the vote by attacking nonpartisan voter registration groups.
In recent weeks, conservatives have escalated their attacks on ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. Conservative lawmakers were able to remove a provision aimed at aiding low-income housing programs from the Bush administration’s $700 billion economic bailout bill by calling it a "slush fund" for ACORN. Before that, conservatives blamed ACORN for "precipitating the subprime crisis." And last week, they alleged that the "purpose" of ACORN is to engage in voter fraud. However, as columnist Joel McNally correctly noted, the "underlying motive for attacking ACORN" seems to be that it is the "nation's largest grassroots community organization of low- and moderate-income people." "It is an organization that engages in that dreaded community organizing," McNally wrote. "It actually tries to give a voice to the poor and most vulnerable among us." Indeed, after years of enacting policies catering to the wealthy, the right-wing seems to be fearful of millions of new low-income voters registered by ACORN casting their ballots in favor of progressive policies.
Read the entire post here.
Thanks to the efforts of Forward Montana, the Republican Party has announced that it will not challenge the votes of 6,000 citizens, including members of the U.S. Armed Services.
BILLINGS, Mont.—Montana Republicans on Tuesday abandoned their challenge to almost 6,000 voter registrations in key Democratic counties, after election officials said they would reject thousands of the challenges as invalid.
Republicans had notified seven counties last week that they were challenging the registrations of 5,977 voters whose addresses did not match a U.S. Postal Service database. Party leaders said they were trying to guard against voter fraud.
The maneuver—just weeks before the November election—drew criticism from state and county election officials who had to investigate the claims. Nonpartisan voter rights groups said there was no proof of fraud in the state and said the GOP effort was partisan-driven.
Read the AP story here.
What did Republican Secretary of State Brad Johnson do to stand up for the rights of challenged voters? Nothing. Linda McCulloch -- the former teacher and librarian challenging Brad Johnson for the SoS office -- had the following to say:
When it comes to protecting our fundamental right to the ballot, Montanans deserve leadership from their Secretary of State. They expect their elected officials to stand-up to obvious partisan manipulation of our election laws that jeopardize our right to vote. Brad Johnson's been silent," McCulloch said. "The Secretary of State has failed to offer leadership to county election officials and he's neglected to defend federal and state election laws. Montanans deserve better.
If you want to see Linda McCulloch protecting the vote in Montana, the campaign contribution limit is $310. Give as generously as you can. And tell some friends.
The Montana Democratic Party filed suit in federal court on Monday to bring a halt to an illegal "vote caging" scheme designed to place obstacles in the path of legally registered voters from Democratic areas of the state. The suit seeks declaratory and injunctive relief and that the court direct Republican Secretary of State Brad Johnson to comply with federal law protecting the legitimate rights of voters.
The scheme, which targets more than 6000 voters from traditional democratic strongholds, was hatched by the Montana Republican Party, which hired a third party, Integram, to check the state voter rolls in those areas against the US Postal Service's National Change of Address Database. The idea is to challenge the registration status of anyone from those communities who has, for any reason, had their mail forwarded.
But federal law specifically rejects the National Change of Address system, which records only changes in mailing address, not actual residency, as a basis for invalidating a voter's otherwise legal registration. The law also forbids mass challenges to the registration status of voters within 90 days of an upcoming election, for the reason that such efforts in the final days of an election invariably lead to chaos, confusion, and often to disenfranchisement of legal voters. This, of course, is the purpose of the effort now underway in Montana.
From the complaint:
"On the afternoon of Friday, October 3,2008, two days after Hill County started sending letters to challenged voters, Defendant Johnson finally provided formal guidance to the counties 'that may help you to process any challenge to a voter's registration.' Nowhere in this guidance does Defendant Johnson provide any means to resolve challenges that are unlawful when issued, without causing undue confusion among the electors unlawfully challenged. The Republican Defendants' scheme to threaten voters' registration status using the challenge procedure provided by state law. and Defendant Johnson's failure to instruct county election officials that they are prohibited from undertaking a last-minute mass review of the rolls of voters, has called into question the status of the 6,000 plus challenged voters on the eve of the election. This is precisely what the NVRA seeks to prevent."
Montana is not only a key state in this election, but it is a small state, meaning that the suppression of 6,000 votes there is a very big deal. In fact, in 2006, Democrat Jon Tester won his statewide election to the US Senate by just 3,562 votes. And it's an even bigger deal that the Republican Secretary of State is apparently enabling the efforts of his party's operatives to illegally disenfranchise American citizens.
With the election taking on a fevered pitch across the country, the national media probably sees a scheme to shut 6,000 Montana citizens out of the process as small potatoes. But when Secretaries of State, elected to insure fair and honest elections, and to protect the rights of citizens in a participatory democracy, are instead complicit in efforts to undermine those rights, then the very fabric of our system begins to fray and tear.
Fortunately, Brad Johnson is currently up for re-election, and he is vulnerable. Democrat Linda McCulloch, a former librarian and the current State Superintendent for Public Instruction is challenging Johnson, and she deserves all of our support.
The Secretary of State Project is dedicated to preserving the very nature of our democracy by supporting candidates, like Linda McCulloch in Montana, who will stand up to politically-motivated efforts at voter suppression. Because no one should have to file federal suit against a sitting Secretary of State to insure that they are following federal laws intended to protect our voting rights, and our democracy.
Updated 10/10:
In the face of the lawsuit by the Montana Democrats, state Republicans have apparently withdrawn their last-minute challenges to the 6,000 voters' registration status, and have indicated that contary to their previous claims to the media, they would not instigating additional, similar challenges.
According to the AP
In a letter sent to election officials in seven counties today (Tuesday), Montana Republican Party executive director Jacob Eaton said he was withdrawing the challenges and would be issuing no more.
Congratulations to the Montana Dems, but of course it shouldn't require a federal suit to protect the rights of citizens to vote in accordance with the law. That's supposed the job of the Secretary of State.
In the face of efforts by Republicans to purge voter rolls of citizens whose properties show up on foreclosure lists, Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan is taking steps to protect Missourians by educating the public about their voting rights.
These individuals are no different than any other Missourian nor should their fundamental rights be jeopardized.
“These folks are hurting," Carnahan said in a statement. "The lives they built have been turned upside down because they can no longer provide a home for their families. This is the most crucial time to vote, and the possibility of losing that right should be the last thing they worry about.”
With those words, Carnahan makes clear the importance of supporting candidates for Secretary of State who will protect, rather than threaten Americans’ right to vote.
Of the 27,000 (and growing) Missourians whose homes have been added to public foreclosure lists, many still reside in those homes. Of those who have moved, those who have remained in the county can simply update their address at any time up to or including Election Day. Those who have left the county have the option of registering at their new address (until October 8 in Missouri) or voting absentee under their current registration if they move after the deadline.
Election reformers are currently fighting for a portable, universal system of voter registration that would eliminate the inconvenience and confusion of the current system. But until that is achieved, it is vital that we support and elect Secretaries of State like Robin Carnahan, and candidates like Linda McCulloch in Montana, Kate Brown in Oregon, and Natalie Tennant in West Virginia.
Imagine, at the very moment when eight years of Republican-led economic misrule has resulted in record foreclosures and the physical displacement of hundreds of thousands of Americans, those same republicans are attempting to keep those affected from responding to the crisis through the democratic process. That’s why we need to elect Secretaries of State who will stand up for the voting rights of ALL Americans ALL of the time.
“There is no place in our state for targeting those in foreclosure proceedings and questioning their right to vote,” said Carnahan. “I will not stand for partisan games that aim to prevent eligible voters from participating in this election.”
Voters in Ohio can begin taking advantage of a weeklong window of in-person same day voter registration and early voting today, thanks to court decisions upholding a directive by Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner.
After the Ohio legislature gave the nod to "no excuse" early voting this year, Brunner issued a directive allowing people to register to register and vote during a single visit to their local elections office. The state Republican Party and a pair of local operatives sued to try to prevent the directive from taking effect, but two federal judges have now upheld a decision from the state's highest court allowing it to stand.
Brunner called yesterday's ruling by the Ohio State Supreme Court "a victory for all Ohio voters," and said it "sends a strong message to the forces of confusion and chaos that our top goal must be protecting Ohioans' voting rights."
We couldn't agree more.
This week's same day registration/early voting period in Ohio is expected to bring thousands of new and traditionally underrepresented voters into the democratic process, including students, low income people, people of color and new citizens - the same populations whose voting rights were curtailed by Republican voter suppression tactics in 2004.
What a difference it makes to have a Secretary of State committed to fair and ethical elections. That's why our 2008 slate targets clean elections candidates in Montana, Oregon, Missouri and West Virginia. Your contribution helps us stand up for candidates who will stand up for fairness.
At the Secretary of State Project, one of our goals is to stop the next Katherine Harris. In 2006 we were successful in Ohio, Nevada, Minnesota, Iowa and New Mexico in keeping Republicans out of the office that controls our elections.
This cycle, one of our key states this cycle is Montana. Where a Republican operative who serves as Secretary of State threatens to roll back pro-democracy reforms and suppress the votes of students and minorities.
In the 2006 election, Montana farmer Jon Tester won his Senate race by less one percent, a mere 3,562 votes. The margin can be attributed to increased turnout as a result of Election Day Registration.
Transparency, democracy reform, and fair elections. That's what the Secretary of State Project works to achieve in key states. Election Day Registration in Montana helps more people cast a ballot that counts. and when more people vote -- especially people who have been traditionally disenfranchised like students, low-income folks, and African Americans -- we get leaders who represent all of the people, not just the monied interests.
Take a close look at this year's race for Montana Secretary of State. Linda McCulloch is challenging incumbent Republican Brad Johnson. She wants to help students and Native Americans vote. He wants make elections less fair and limit which citizens can cast a ballot on election day.
She's a former teacher and librarian, and currently holds the statewide office of Superintendent of Public Instruction. In that job she manages more people and a larger budget than the Secretary of State. Who is Brad Johnson? He's a Republican operative and former software salesman. He self-funded his first run for office with $117,000 or 66.37 percent of his campaign funds coming out of his own pocket, according to the National Institute on Money in State Politics. He opposes Election Day Registration which provided the margin for Jon Tester's Senate win in 2006. She supports it.
This year Brad Johnson is vulnerable, but he's also outspending Linda McCulloch and can go deep into his own pockets to defeat her insurgent campaign to throw him out of office.
Montana has very low campaign contribution limits which means high number of small campaign contributions from the grassroots can make a big difference. Personally, I'm not a big political giver, but I gave $310 -- the maximum allowed by law -- to Linda McCulloch's campaign for Montana Secretary of State.
Electing reform-minded Secretaries of State is the most effective way to ensure clean elections. If you want to stop voter suppression at the source, make a contribution to McCulloch and our Secretary of State candidates in Oregon, Missouri and West Virginia today. Tell your friends who care about stopping the next Katherine Harris to consider us, too. Together we can take back our democracy.
The New York Times ran a story yesterday detailing how the foreclosure crisis is threatening to disenfranchise voters in key states.
But the number of people who have moved, through foreclosure or for any other reason, far exceeds the number of people who have notified their election boards. In Ohio, 375,000 people filed change-of-address forms with the Postal Service, but when state officials sent them cards asking for updated registration information, only 24,000 responded. In Missouri, where 250,000 people notified the Postal Service of their move, only 22,000 told the election board.
Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie and other election reformers have argued for a universal and portable system of registration. With universal registration, the state maintains a list of all voters and your registration is updated whenever you file a change of address form or make a change with the DMV.
Eligible citizens who have filed change of address forms with the post office or who changed their address on their drivers license should not be denied the right to vote simply because they did not file additional paperwork with an obscure county elections office.
Not only is the current system of requiring voters to reregister every time the move inconvenient, but it also shifts the burden of funding voter registration onto the non-profit community which has to reregister voters every single election cycle.
Our system for voter registration is broken and we need to fix it with a system that is universal and allows for Election Day registration.
Already we are seeing litigation in Ohio and Michigan, both states where the Secretary of State Project worked to elect candidates in 2006.
(In Ohio, we won and helped elect Secretary of State Brunner. In Michigan, we lost and Republican Terri Lynn Land is the chief election officer. )
Both states are subject to litigation. Both states are key battlegrounds for the presidential contest. So what about the State Supreme Court? Is there a firewall that would prevent a challenge to key votes (and possibly the outcome of the election) from being decided by George W. Bush's Supreme Court of the U.S.? Unfortunately, in Ohio and Michigan the answer is "no" and "no."
In Ohio, Republicans are suing in response to Brunner's directive that citizens be allowed to register and vote at the Department of Elections during the golden week between the beginning of early voting and the end of voter registration. These votes could be the margin in a closely fought race in Ohio. It's not surprising that Republicans are already working to throw them out.
In Michigan, the ACLU is suing Republican Secretary of State Terri Lynne Land over the use of foreclosure lists to challenge voters over residency. Republicans want to prevent people who have lost their homes in the mortgage crisis from voting in the presidential election. And in a close race in Michigan, voters disenchanted with Republican stewardship of the economy could make a big difference in the final outcome.
In both Ohio and Michigan, the state supreme courts are officially nonpartisan. However, candidates for election are nominated by the two parties.
In Ohio, the all seven justices of the State Supreme Court are Republican. In Michigan, 5 of the 7 justices are Republican, though one is often a swing vote resulting in 4-3, majority Republican decisions despite the 5-2 partisan advantage.
Should it come down to the courts -- and it may well -- there is no firewall at the state judiciary level to stop disputed votes in Ohio and Michigan from going all the way to the Bush Supreme Court.
The election system should maximize, not minimize engagement by eligible citizens. Partisans should not be able to manipulate the election system to guarantee an outcome. Which is why we need to get political operatives out of the Secretary of State office. And off our State Supreme Courts. We're for nonpartisan administration of our elections and our justice system. But until that happens, we're working to get the worst abusers of the process -- Republicans -- out of office and to replace them with pro-participation reformers.
Anyone want to create a State Supreme Court Project? We're happy to share what we know about the logistics of running a non-federal 527 to help leverage national interest to win key downballot races. Just drop us a line at secstateproject at gmail dot com.
Are statewide voter databases potentially a bigger threat to voting integrity than DREs? It probably depends on who is running them.
Wired has posted an article on the statewide voter databases required by the 2002 Help America Vote Act.
Electronic voting machines have been the focus of much controversy the last few years. But another election technology has received little scrutiny yet could create numerous problems and disenfranchise thousands of voters in November, election experts say.
Government databases are always going to present a certain level of error. The problem we can address is how states decide to deal with those errors. In states where election officials have an interest in suppressing the vote, errors will likely mean disenfranchisement.
The Wired article goes on to explain:
The law requires each voter to have a unique identifier. Since 2004, new registration applicants have had to provide a driver's license number or the last four digits of a Social Security number to register (voters who don't have them are assigned a unique number by the state). States are required to try to authenticate the numbers with motor vehicle records and the Social Security Administration database.
But databases are prone to errors such as misspellings and transposed numbers, and applicants are prone to make mistakes or write illegibly on applications. The Social Security Administration has acknowledged that matches between its database and voter-registration records have yielded a 28.5 percent error rate.
What does this mean state by state?
States vary in how they treat applicants whose records don't match, and experts say rules in some states could prevent thousands of eligible voters from casting ballots or having their votes counted in November. Those who don't match in Oregon, for example, can cast a ballot, but their vote for president or any other federal race on a ballot won't be counted. There are currently about 9,500 voters in Oregon who fall into this category, but a state spokesman says matching issues will be resolved with most of them before November so they can vote in federal races. Fewer than 500 voters were affected by this during the state's primary.
Oregon's Secretary of State, Bill Bradbury, is a Democrat. Kate Brown, a progressive Democrat is running for his seat. The Secretary of State Project is supporting her campaign.
In Colorado, a state where our candidate Ken Gordon lost by a handful of votes amidst widespread voting problems in Boulder and Denver Counties, Republican Secretary of State Mike Coffman is in charge of the database. How's that project going?
Colorado -- a crucial swing state -- completed its $13 million database this year after firing Accenture in 2005. A little-known Oregon company named Saber, which has created databases for 11 states, replaced it. Accenture retained its contract in Pennsylvania, though problems occurred there as well. In 2005, one state official called the $20 million system "seriously if not fatally flawed."
And in Florida? Where the Secretary of State is a Republican appointed by the governor, not elected:
Last week Florida, a battleground state, announced a new policy that voting groups say will likely disenfranchise numerous voters. A state law passed in 2005 initially prohibited applicants whose records didn't match from either being registered or voting. But after some 13,000 voters were blocked for bad matches in 2006, and more were blocked in 2007, the state was sued by several groups, forcing it to change its plan.
Beginning Sept. 8, new registration applicants who fail a HAVA match must mail a copy or bring a hard copy of their ID to an election office before Nov. 4 to show that the ID number on their registration application is correct. Officials plan to send a letter to such voters explaining what to do. Voters who forget or never receive instructions can cast a provisional ballot on Election Day, but it will be counted only if they bring or send a copy of their ID to an election office within 48 hours. ID presented at the poll will not be accepted, which could create confusion since Florida law already requires everyone to show ID at the polls.
Read the entire article here.
Last week there was a lively discussion about the Secretary of State Project over at the Swing State Project (thanks DavidNYC!).
One thing we've learned about SoS Project since we founded it in 2006, is that some people really get the concept right away and love it. For others, it just washes over them like any other collection of down ballot races.
Who gets the Secretary of State Project? Lots of different types of people. But today I'm thinking about the people like the folks who write and read the Swing State Project. These are the infrastructure geeks. The people looking for the leverage play. They aren't just motivated by an amazing politician. They are people who want to change the system and put good people in office for the next 20 years, not just the next cycle.
A few interesting things in the thread at Swing State Project. First, great analysis on the current West Virginia race was posted by a commenter. And a reader chimed in with an update on the Secretary of State Project's impact on the 2006 Minnesota race where we helped elect Mark Ritchie. Finally, a commenter picked up on the fact that even though the Montana race is the most important contest this cycle, Linda McCulloch has the lowest contribution total in our ActBlue slate.
Are you an infrastructure geek? Take a look at our slate and consider making a donation -- starting with Linda McCulloch in Montana. Then tell all your friends who share your approach to progressive politics. Send them our way -- and to our
likeminded friends at the Swing State Project.
The Wall Street Journal reports today that Ohio Republicans have filed suit to block early voting by new registrants.
When the Ohio legislature legalized "no excuse" early voting this year it created an opportunity to bring more citizens into the voting process. In Ohio, early voting starts September 31. The deadline to register to vote in the Nov. 4 election is October 6.
Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner seized this opportunity and issued a directive to allow people to register and then vote early in a single visit to their department of elections. This means that people can register and vote -- essentially a form of same day registration -- between September 31 and October 6.
Republicans in Ohio don't want new voters to participate in the election. They don't want students, low income people, African Americans, unmarried women and others who have traditionally been underrepresented in our election system to vote at the same rate as older, more affluent, and white citizens who are currently overrepresented. And so they are suing to make it harder for people to register and vote in Ohio.
The Republicans in Ohio want to suppress new voters. They want to challenge the votes of citizens whose homes are in foreclosure. Secretary of State Brunner, on the other hand, has opened the door to greater and more equal participation for all of Ohio's citizens.
We need more Jennifer Brunners -- it's time to get partisan politics out of the running of our elections. If you haven't checked out our 2008 slate of reform candidates running for Secretary of State, now might be a good time to take a look.
It doesn't get much lower than this.
Republicans in Michigan are planning to challenge the validity of votes cast by people who have lost their homes to foreclosure. The Michigan Messenger, a project of Center for Independent Media, has the story:
“We will have a list of foreclosed homes and will make sure people aren’t voting from those addresses,” party chairman James Carabelli told Michigan Messenger in a telephone interview earlier this week. He said the local party wanted to make sure that proper electoral procedures were followed.
Imagine it. You've lost your home. You have pressing priorities. You may not have mailed in paperwork changing your address. Perhaps you have rented an apartment a few blocks away. Maybe you move in with family across town. When Election Day comes you go to your old precinct. But a republican party operative is there with a list of foreclosures and your name is on it. When you attempt to vote, he challenges your right to cast a ballot.
Lose your house. Lose your vote.
Unfortunately, voter suppression is cheaper than voter turnout. Some people will do anything to win. Even disenfranchise citizens who have lost their homes to foreclosure.
And of course it's important to note that Michigan is a battleground state with a Republican Secretary of State.
Republicans in Ohio are also exploring this tactic:
Columbus ranked 32nd among U.S. cities in the number of foreclosure filings during the first quarter of 2008, according to RealtyTrac... Other battleground states rank high in foreclosure filings as well: Nevada led the nation in May with one filing for every 118 homes, while Florida was fourth, Michigan fifth, Georgia sixth, Colorado seventh and New Jersey 10th.For the record: Nevada and Ohio -- with help from SoS Project -- have democratic Secretaries of State. But republicans run the election in the key states of Michigan, Florida, and Colorado.
As an organizer, with lots of friends who are organizers, I can tell you that people are still talking about Sarah Palin's comments in at the Republican National Convention.
"I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a ‘community organizer,’ except that you have actual responsibilities,"
I've joined a few facebook groups over the last week. First it was "We are all community organizers." Next it was "Martin Luther King Jr. was a community organizer." The latest group I joined is called "Jesus was a community organizer, Pontius Pilate was a governor"!
Joining Facebook groups is cathartic. But there's a better way to support community organizers. Put them in office.
In 2006, the SoS Project helped elect one of the most progressive Secretaries of State in the nation, Mark Ritchie. How he got his start in politics? As a community organizer.
Community organizers make amazing Secretaries of State. Any organizers out there looking at a 2010 SoS campaign? Let us know at secstate (at) gmail (dot) com.
Ohio's Secretary of State, Jennifer Brunner, elected in 2006 with pivotal support from the Secretary of State Project, reacted last week to news of aggressive Republican efforts to suppress the vote. Brunner issued a directive to local elections officials indicating that returned mail alone cannot be used as a partisan tool to suppress the vote, and that voters must be given notice to update their records instead of simply being told at the polls that they are ineligible.
Brunner's action does not guarantee that voter suppression will be eliminated. Local officials may disregard her directive, training may be inadequate, and Republican suppression efforts may simply bet on a legal challenge. But the directive does give election monitors and individual voters a tool to resist.
One can be sure that Brunner's predecessor, Ken Blackwell - a hard-right partisan who chaired President Bush's reelection campaign in Ohio - would have taken a very different approach.
Once again, a reminder that electing reformers to the position of Secretary of State is the least expensive way to protect the election.
Republicans operatives are poised to challenge the votes of hundreds of thousands of voters in Ohio.
On Friday, election officials in Ohio sent a letter to every registered voter in the state. A state law that was passed in 2005 requires that this mailer - which is marked DO NOT FORWARD - is posted 60 days before federal elections. The purpose is to identify a list of voters for whom the mail is undeliverable. That list can then be used to challenge voters at the polls on Election Day.
The practice is called "vote caging." In it's most noxious forms, voters are purged from the rolls.
Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner - who was elected after the law went into effect -
But the list will be made available to Republican operatives who can challenge any voter on the list at the polling place on Election Day by making the case that the citizen was not voting from his or her current address. Challenged voters will be forced to cast a provisional ballot which may never be counted.
How many voters might this affect? The last time this mailer went out was in March, before Ohio's presidential primary. In five of Ohio's biggest counties, over 600,000 voters were put on the undeliverable list.
Read the whole story at Miller-McCune.
Thousands of concerned citizens have signed our petition to Send Karl Rove to Jail. They agree with us that Rove should pay for his dirty voter suppression tricks. Meanwhile, our allies at Brave New Films created a short video that exposes Rove's recent crimes. Send it around, and sign the petition if you haven't already.
We're also working to eliminate one of the darkest corners of Rove's legacy -- stolen elections. Remember, the U.S. Attorneys scandal happened because Rove asked Republican appointees to shut down minority voter registration drives and disenfranchise voters. There is a way to stop his voter suppression tactics -- by electing reform-minded Secretaries of State to run fair, clean elections.
In 2006, our community of donors gave over $500,000 to seven Secretary of State races. We won 5 of those 7 campaigns. The 2008 elections will be dramatically different because of our success.
If you want to help dismantle Karl Rove's legacy of voter suppression, consider supporting our candidates with a contribution. For Rove, clean elections may be an even worse punishment than jail!
The Secretary of State Project was founded to protect our elections from dirty Republican tricks. So today, we've launched a public petition against Karl Rove. The GOP's master trickster has his fingerprints all over a dirty scheme to suppress progressive votes. And now we have a unique chance to hold him accountable.
Click here to sign our petition calling for Congress to hold Rove in contempt and send him to jail.
Some background:
In 2004, Justice Department lawyers started getting strange instructions from Washington -- crack down on voter registration drives in urban areas. The idea was to harass progressive organizations and keep poor and minority citizens from getting to the polls.
Many Justice Department lawyers, Republicans and Democrats alike, balked at these unscrupulous orders. They refused to carry out a partisan witch hunt. In return for their disobedience, Washington started cracking down on THEM -- firing a host of them and passing up others for promotion, in what came to be known as the U.S. Attorneys Scandal.
And who gave the vote-suppression orders in the first place? A long trail of evidence indicates that Karl Rove cooked up and executed the whole scheme. To uncover the truth, the House of Representatives launched an investigation, and asked Rove to testify. He has repeatedly disobeyed Congress's subpoenas, in violation of the law.
The House is now considering a measure to hold Rove in contempt of Congress. If found guilty, he could go to jail. By holding Rove in contempt, we'll send a loud and clear signal to all Bush's cronies -- America's elections must be free and fair. Voter suppression will not be tolerated.
Join the hundreds of thousands who are calling on the House to take a stand against Rove and his dirty tricks.
The SoS Project's candidate in Missouri, Robin Carnahan, has started a smart new program that proves why Secretaries of State matter.
One chronic problem that all Secretaries of State face is how to staff their elections. Typically, pollworkers are underpaid, undertrained and overworked. Not exactly a formula that attracts new talent. And though pollworkers are at the front lines of protecting votes and facilitating honest elections, there have been few coordinated efforts to recruit competent folks to their ranks (one of the few is Pollworkers for Democracy -- check it out here).
To combat this problem, SoS Carnahan is freeing up $500,000 of federal money to train a new generation of student pollworkers. (See the full story in the Columbia Tribune). This doesn't cost Missouri a dime; the money was already alloted from federal Help America Vote Act (HAVA) funds. Using HAVA money to train students -- a young, energetic, technologically-oriented demographic -- will go a long way to helping Missouri make sure that everyone's vote is counted in 2008. Carnahan should be loudly applauded, and financially supported, for her prescient decision.
Perhaps the most telling quote in the Columbia Tribune article is this: "Carnahan anticipates that in the general election, 80 percent of the state's registered voters may cast ballots." Getting to 80% turnout would be, well, spectacularly record-breaking. Pollsters and political scientists would probably disagree that Missouri can reach those heights. And yet, instead of planning modestly and risking election day disasters -- not enough pollworkers, not enough ballots, not enough machines -- Carnahan has wisely embraced the Boy Scout motto: Be Prepared. More Secretaries of State should follow her lead.
A front-page story in today's New York Times underscores why the Secretary of State Project exists.
"With millions of new voters heading to the polls this November," the article starts, "election officials and voting monitors [fear] long lines, stressed-out poll workers and late tallies on Election Day." Among the potential problems: New voting technologies, changing election rules, and, sadly, not enough ballots.
The truth is, most voting problems can be solved by good Secretaries of State. Printing enough ballots, training enough poll workers and ordering reliable, hacker-proof elections machines isn't rocket science. Unfortunately, if a Secretary of State wants to suppress the votes of young people, African Americans, or low income folks -- like Ohio's Ken Blackwell did in 2004 -- he or she can simply not try very hard to fix those voting problems. Or, even worse, fix them in selective polling places (read: affluent suburbs).
Here at the SoS Project, we're proud to see one of our star 2006 candidates, Jennifer Brunner, taking a strong stand against these kinds of problems. Another passage from the Times article:
Although most of the 30 states with touch-screen machines still do not plan to provide backup paper ballots, others, including Ohio, will do so for the first time in a presidential election. In 2004, hundreds of voters in Knox County, Ohio, many of them Kenyon College students, had to wait more than nine hours after one of the two voting machines at their polling place just off campus broke down. There were reports of lines where the wait was several hours long in at least three other counties.
"We refuse to let that happen," said Jennifer L. Brunner, the Ohio secretary of state, who plans to instruct all counties that use touch-screen machines to order backup paper ballots equal to at least a quarter of the votes cast there in the last presidential election.
That's the kind of problem-solving attitude we need from more Secretaries of State. We think our slate of candidates this year all fall squarely into that category.
If you have a minute, leave a comment on the New York Times site to thank reporter Ian Urbina for shining the spotlight on this pressing issue.
Control the election process, and you can control the election results.
It's a simple strategy, one that Republicans have understood for decades. By getting GOP cronies elected as Secretaries of State in key battlegrounds, Republicans have seized unfair influence over American elections. Remember Katherine Harris?
The Secretary of State Project was formed in 2006 to undo this damage. It is working. Last cycle, we won 5 of our 7 elections. With your help, we can continue our winning streak in 2008.
At this point, we're looking for feedback from supporters across the country. We are currently tracking four important Secretary of State races, plus numerous county clerk races. But we don't have eyes and ears everywhere. If you know of an county clerk or SoS race we should target, we would like to hear from you. Email secstateproject - at - gmail - dot - com with your suggestions. We read every email, even if we don't have time to respond to all.
Natalie Tennant won a decisive victory in the West Virgina Democratic Secretary of State primary.
She campaigned on a platform that included making it easier for students to vote, increasing citizen participation in the pollworker program and encouraging peer-to-peer get out the vote programs.
A former television news anchor, Tennant beat out Senate Majority Leader Joe DeLong, even though he outspent her $263,528 to $41,684 (according to the latest campaign finance reports).
She faces Charles Minimah, the republican nominee, in the general election. Minimah was unopposed in the primary.
If Tennant is elected, she will replace Republican Secretary of State Betty Ireland who decided not to run for another term. Ireland is currently working hard to oppose Election Day Registration in West Virginia.
Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner -- elected with help from the Secretary of State Project -- can claim a new victory today.
CLEVELAND (AP) - The elections board in Cuyahoga County says a hand-count audit of votes from the presidential primary matches the results from scanned paper ballots.
A sample of 30,000 paper ballots from 99 precincts were hand-counted by teams composed of Republicans and Democrats last week.
Board of Elections Deputy Director Pat McDonald said Monday that the voluntary audit was part of a pilot program of Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner to help determine consistency and performance of high-speed optical scanning.
Cuyahoga County switched to high-speed optical scan from touch-screen electronic voting for the March 4 primary.
It was SoS Brunner who required Cuyahoga County to switch from DREs to optical scan ballots. Finally Cuyahoga County can count.
On Monday, the Supreme Court showed once again why Secretaries of State matter. In Crawford v. Marion County Election Board, the conservative Court gave Indiana the green light to impose draconian photo ID requirements for voting. Despite no evidence that any fraudulent votes had ever been cast in-person in Indiana, it is now constitutional for Indiana to force voters to show an ID at the polls. This will surely prevent many eligible citizens from casting a vote that counts.
Who will be affected? Poor and older voters who do not have drivers licenses. Young people. Minorities. What's worse, now that the Supreme Court has approved Indiana's ID law, Republicans will try to pass similar laws in other states. This will help them game elections by suppressing the vote of some of our most vulnerable citizens.
What does this have to do with Secretaries of State? One of the most vocal champions of requiring voters to show photo ID; is Indiana's Republican Secretary of State Todd Rokita. In 2005, he helped pass the voter ID bill that made its way to the Supreme Court. He's also the president of the National Association of Secretaries of State.
As an influential Republican operative, Rokita's Supreme Court victory may lead to a wave of similar laws in other states. If passed before the 2008 election, new photo ID laws could even deliver a decisive margin in the 2008 presidential race.
Once again, the GOP has shown its command of an immutable political truth - he who controls the machinery of elections can control the outcome of elections. It's time for progressives to fight back.
In 2006, the SoS Project raised $500,000 for seven low-visibility but high-impact Secretary of State races. Every battleground state with a chief elections officer position at stake was contested. Dollar for dollar, we proved to be one of 2006's smartest political investments, winning five of our seven campaigns in battleground states.
Our efforts ensured that Democrats dedicated to clean elections became the chief elections officers in the following states: Iowa, Ohio, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico. Our candidates lost in Colorado and Michigan.
>Did our work make a difference? Take Jennifer Brunner, for instance, our winning candidate for Ohio Secretary of State. We raised over $200,000 for Brunner, helping her replace Ken Blackwell. This equaled nearly 10 percent of her budget and close to the $220,000 fundraising advantage she achieved over her Republican opponent. Since taking office, Brunner has:
• Fired the corrupt Cuyhoga County election board that botched the 2004 and recount
• Replaced Cuyahoga County's DREs with paper ballot machines
• Made it possible for any Ohio voter to request a paper ballot in the 2008 election
• Ordered Ohio's public universities to provide utility bills for all students – an easy form of ID to make sure students are not turned away from the polls as they were in 2004
Having proven in 2006 that the SoS Project model works, we are looking to build on our success by supporting candidates committed to reform in 2008. Our targeting is still in process, but we are monitoring races in Oregon, Missouri, Washington, Montana and West Virginia. We are also researching a few county election official races in 2008 battleground states.
We invite suggestions for additional races of interest. Send us an email with your ideas to secstateproject-at-gmail-dot-com.
Republican Secretary of State candidates handily beat their Democratic opponents in yesterday's election.
In Kentucky, despite a big win for new governor Steve Bashear, Democratic Secretary of State candidate Bruce Hendrickson went down 42 to 57. Incumbent and now two-term Secretary of State Trey Grayson is a rising Republican star. Had Kentucky Democrats fielded a progressive, reform-minded candidate for the office, Trey Grayson might have lost his office on the coattails of a sweeping victory for Steve Bashear.
In Mississippi, Republican Delbert Hosemann easily cruised to victory over Democrat Rob Smith. Hosemann has listed voter ID as one of the "reforms" he wants to bring to Mississippi elections.
SOS Project declined to make endorsements in either race, absent candidates with strong agendas for progressive election reform. This points to the importance of primaries -- we can't win these offices if we don't have candidates who can restore the public's faith in free and fair elections and attract the support of progressive donors and activists.
There's a front page story (below the fold, but still the front page) in today's Boston Globe about ActBlue.com. ActBlue has revolutionized democratic political giving and helped the Secretary of State Project raise over $500,000 for 7 candidates and our strategic fund in the 2006 election cycle.
While the article focuses mostly on fundraising for federal candidates, quotes from founders Matt Debergalis and Ben Rahn try to shift the attention to where their greatest chance for impact lies: nationalizing downballot races.
But Rahn and DeBergalis believe ActBlue's great potential lies in its ability to "nationalize" local races in the 23 states in which the PAC operates. They note that Congressional districts will be redrawn again in 2010. With state legislatures drawing those lines, they say, strategic donations to Democratic state legislative candidates could have a major impact on the fate of the national party.
"At that level, the relative impact is massive," DeBergalis said. "An entire class of novel ways to tackle political and social problems is sitting there waiting for that catalyst that we can bring."
While the quote is about legislative candidates and redistricting in 2010, ActBlue's first case study in nationalizing a downballot election came courtesy of the Secretary of State Project. This is from one of ActBlue's first blog postings (note that we raised over $85,000 in checks, making our total fundraising over $500,000):
One of the initiatives we're most proud to have been part of in 2006 was the Secretary of State Project, which used ActBlue to raise $415,000 for seven Democratic candidates for Secretary of State in 2008 presidential battlegrounds.
The result: Democratic victories in Ohio, Minnesota, New Mexico, Nevada, and Iowa, and with them hope for fair 2008 presidential elections in these states. (One of the project's common refrains was "No more Ken Blackwells!")
The Secretary of State Project is a great example of how you can use ActBlue to bring national attention to local candidates. Normally, raising money for a down-ballot candidate in another state is a hard sell. But by simultaneously fundraising for candidates across the country around a related theme, you create a national cause whose importance will be readily apparent to your prospective donors.
If anyone out there is interested in running a downballot campaign by using ActBlue to promote a national slate of local candidates feel free to hit us up to share our experience at secstateproject-at-gmail-dot-com. And congratulations to ActBlue on much deserved recognition for the role it plays in funding our movement.
The Great Falls Review reports Linda McCulloch, superintendent of schools in Montana, has announced a bid for Secretary of State.
Brad Johnson, the incumbent republican Secretary of State in Montana was first elected in 2004. He has been an ardent opponent of the state's Election Day Registration system. While EDR in Montana is not as liberal as we would like - you have to go to a county office to register and vote on Election Day, you can't do it at the polls like you can in Minnesota for example - it's a positive step forward.
According to the Montana blog Left in the West, here's what Secretary of State Johnson has to say about Election Day Registration:
It encourages procrastination, discourages informed voting, and creates chaos for election workers - chaos that endangers the integrity of our elections.
Not only that, but Johnson is currently serving as the state chair of Romney for President, taking a high profile partisan role in an election that he is charged with running impartially. For more about the increasing attention paid to Secretaries of State who play partisan politics see our earlier post "you can't be a player and a referee."
McCulloch has pledged to defend Election Day Registration and make youth registration a priority. The Great Falls Review article reports:
McCulloch said her priorities will be young voter participation, finding more election judges, heightening civics awareness, and forming citizen councils to "develop more effective ways to do the business of the office.''
She announced plans for a youth vote project, and pledged to request legislation in 2009 allowing state high school students to serve as election judges to combat a dearth of such officials.
"It's a win for the student, as well as for the elections process in Montana,'' McCulloch said.
It's worth noting that John Tester won his 2006 Senate race by only 3500 votes, and his winning vote count included many student ballots cast as a direct consequence of Election Day Registration rules. We'll be closely watching the Montana race as we make decisions about our 2008 targeting. If you are working on the McCulloch campaign or with any other potential democratic challengers in the Montana Secretary of State race, contact us at secstateproject-at-gmail-dot-com.
The role Katherine Harris played as both chief elections officer in Florida and co-chair of the Bush/Cheney campaign, was one of the reasons we founded the SoS Project. When the 2000 election hung in the balance, she had dual loyalties - to the voters and to the Bush campaign. She chose the Bush campaign, and thus began one of the most disastrous presidencies in history.
In yesterday's New York Times, Ian Urbina writes:
Across the country, state voting officials routinely participate as candidates in races they are responsible for overseeing or act as leaders in their political parties. In the last presidential election, the secretaries of state in Arizona, Kansas, Michigan, Missouri and Ohio, were chairmen of their states' re-election campaigns for President Bush.
Reform-minded Secretaries of State - like SoS Project success stories Mark Ritchie in Minnesota and Jennifer Brunner in Ohio - are running on platforms that specifically reject this kind of double dealing. But unfortunately SoS Project values are in the minority among today's Secretaries of State. The new president of the National Association of Secretaries of State is Indiana's Todd Rokita. He's currently the co-chairman of his state's finance committee for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. With leadership like that, who needs ethics reform?
There are efforts to legislate a solution to this ethics crisis, but opposition is deep and widespread within the community of elections officials as well as the Republican party, an opponent to voting rights in recent history.
Representative Susan A. Davis, Democrat of California, has introduced a bill prohibiting chief state election officials from serving on the political campaigns of federal candidates. When Ms. Davis submitted the bill to the National Association of Secretaries of State for its support, she said she was initially told that they would present it for discussion at the annual convention. Later, however, she was told that it would not be because opposition was too strong...
A similar bill in the Senate is sponsored by Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California. Mrs. Feinstein's bill has 11 co-sponsors, all Democrats, and is expected to face significant Republican opposition, as is the House bill. Neither bill would prohibit election officials from overseeing elections in which they are candidates. Aides to both Ms. Davis and Mrs. Feinstein said such provisions might raise First Amendment or states' rights challenges.
And neither bill is likely to pass anytime soon. The SoS Project is currently working on its targeting for 2008. Electing reform-minded Secretaries of State is the single most effective way to take back our elections and restore transparency, fairness and uniform protection of civil rights to our democratic process.
Rep. Davis describes the crisis among Secretaries of State simply:
"No one likes anyone to meddle in their jobs," she said. "But you can't be both a player and a referee at the same time."
Since taking office, Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner has cleaned house at the Cuyohoga County Board of Elections.
[Brunner fired] all four members of the Cuyahoga elections board - two Democrats and two Republicans - because of a series of problems, including the criminal convictions of two board workers for their handling of a recount.
Among the casualties was Ohio Republican Chairman Bob Bennett. Cuyohoga County - with over one million voters - is the biggest voting jurisdiction in the state that delivered the 2004 presidential election to George W. Bush.
Brunner is clearly taking on Ken Blackwell-era corruption. The Cleveland Plain Dealer reports that she is seeking return of over $80,000 in farewell bonuses issued by Blackwell before he left office. Attorney General Marc Dann has declared the bonuses illegal. Progress Ohio has the complete story.
Mark Ritchie - arguably the most progressive Secretary of State in America - faced a set back two weeks ago. At the close of Minnesota's legislative session, the Governor Tim Pawlenty (a Republican vice presidential hopeful) vetoed all of Ritchie's election reform bills which had passed both the House and the Senate.
The bills vetoed included a plan to help soldiers vote from overseas and measures that would have reduced the costs of running elections. The most frustrating veto of the package was for a bill that would have introduced "automatic registration" a significant advance in election administration reform. Automatic registration would mean that anyone with a drivers licese or other state ID card would be automatically registered to vote unless they specifically opted out.
On a recent visit to San Francisco, Ritchie attended a gathering of Secretary of State donors and discussed his efforts to lead election reform at the state and national level. Additional donor events with Ritchie will be scheduled for New York, DC and possibly Los Angeles, scheduling allowed.