Solutions
100 Percent Voter Registration
Every eligible voter should be registered. As Secretary of State, I will take steps toward the goal of increasing voter participation through registration.
In California, we have just over 17 million voters with more than 23 million eligible. More than a quarter of eligible voters are not part of the system. For more than a decade, we have been about six million registrations short of optimal registration. To put this in perspective, President Barack Obama won a historic election in 2008 in which he captured all of California’s electoral votes. The reality is that only about 1/3 of the eligible voters in California actually cast a vote for him.
Most elections in this country are decided with a majority vote of a small minority of the people eligible to vote. As someone who didn’t think I could make a difference in the political process, I am very familiar with how people come to this conclusion. It is a lack of understanding, a lack of role models and a lack of leadership.
The cost of not voting is too great. Our state is crumbling as the elected leaders in Sacramento fail to understand the problems that are felt by millions of Californians. The people of California don’t want partisanship; they want leadership.
As Secretary of State, I will work with the federal government, the State Legislature, community groups and communities of faith to register people to vote.
For decades, the solution to this problem has been to elect a politician out of the Legislature to the office of Secretary of State. That is not the answer. California must put someone in office who is uniquely qualified to personally seek out those people in neighborhoods where voting is not a family tradition.
Has any Secretary of State in the past 50 years been intimately associated with traveling to the inner cities of California to register people to vote? As Secretary of State, I will go to parts of the state where people need to register and ask them personally to register. This will be the focus of my administration.
Fair and Open Elections
The California Secretary of State is responsible for assuring fair and open elections. We need to make it easy to vote and impossible to cheat.
It is my belief that electronic voting systems can be made to work in such a way to provide a secure and safe way to administer an election. I will make sure that the Secretary of State’s office embraces technology and works with county registrars to implement these voting systems.
In order to ensure fair and honest elections, we must require ID at the polls. There is a security threat that exists in every single polling place in California because we do not require identification to vote. It is not an undue burden to require potential voters to produce identification prior to voting.
Many feel that fair and open elections only happen at the polls. That is not an appropriate view of the election system. Californians also need to have transparency applied to elections. As Secretary of State, I will make improve the ability for people to more easily track contributions and expenditures, as well as the Statements of Financial Interest. Our current system is nothing more than a 1990s solution with a new cover graphic. In a time when technology is improving everyday, we are stuck in the last decade.
Jobs – Secretary of State As the Business Leader
The Secretary of State is responsible for all the business filings in California. As Secretary of State, I will use my business experience to evaluate which companies are leaving the state and why. I will then report my findings to the Legislature as part of a package of reforms that will lead to job growth in California.
California, like every other state government, has been looking for solutions to problems that have developed as a result of the economic recession.
The Secretary of State’s office needs to be using the information it holds to be an advocate for jobs in the state. I will use my office to focus attention on the businesses that are leaving California to Texas, Nevada, Utah and other western states. When the Governors of other states are personally calling business leaders in California asking them to expand outside of California, we are not competitive in economic development as a state.
This will be the role I will focus on as Secretary of State.