Is California now a deep blue state in which moderate conservatives no longer have a chance of victory in statewide elections? Or do such candidates still have hopes if they pass on the two-party system and run as independents apart from the partisan fray?

The former theory has been the topic of recent stories in the national media. But it’s the latter view driving the candidacy of tech entrepreneur Steve Poizner, who was elected California insurance commissioner in 2006 as a Republican and is seeking a second term this year while running as an independent. (Incumbent Dave Jones is termed-out and is running for attorney general.)

Poizner, a resident of Los Gatos in Silicon Valley, is a lock to advance past the June 5 primary to a November general election race against state Sen. Ricardo Lara, D-Bell Gardens. The other two candidates in the race have little name recognition and are lacking in institutional support.

But a Poizner win would seem to be a long-shot in the general election, based on 2014’s results. That year, several Republican candidates ran for statewide office with plausible claims to Arnold Schwarzenegger-style moderate conservatism. Since they were not going up against incumbents, two of these candidates – Fresno Mayor Ashley Swearengin, who ran for controller, and Pepperdine University administrator and civic activist Pete Peterson, who ran for secretary of state – were thought to have decent chances. Both lost by at least 500,000 votes.

Yet Poizner has factors in his favor that those 2014 GOP candidates didn’t.

The first is Lara’s struggle to define the campaign on his terms. Since Poizner got generally good marks as insurance commissioner for balancing the interests of consumers and insurers, Lara has focused on Poizner’s strong anti-undocumented immigrant positions in 2010, when he sought the Republican gubernatorial nomination but lost to former Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman. Poizner now disavows those positions. In endorsing Poizner, the editorial boards of the Sacramento Bee, the San Jose Mercury-News and the San Francisco Chronicle focused instead on Poizner’s readiness to deal with such difficult insurance issues as autonomous vehicles and increasing wildfire risks.

Meanwhile, the “issues page” of Lara’s own campaign website lists nine topics, including transportation and criminal justice – but not insurance. It appears designed for a gubernatorial candidate. Poizner’s website focuses primarily on his dealings with insurers in his previous term and his endorsements.

Lara’s history as co-sponsor of Senate Bill 562 – which would commit the state government to adopting a single-payer health care system – is also proving a double-edged sword. His high-profile support of the proposal has won raves from the California Nurses Association and progressive Democrats.

But SB562, which passed the Senate last summer before stalling in the Assembly, has faced a backlash from across the ideological spectrum for being vague and incomplete. The measure’s language doesn’t specify how its estimated $400 billion annual tab would be covered; how it could overcome a California Constitution provision blocking sharp increases in state spending; and how it would be able to divert federal health dollars for unprecedented use on a single state’s unique program.

Poizner campaign literature suggests questions about the cost of SB562 will be a focus of his fall campaign ads.

Should high-risk homes get insurance protection?

Lara’s similarly populist position on wildfire costs may also play better with progressives than with voters in general. He has proposed legislation to make it more difficult for insurers to consider recent fires when setting rates and deciding on whether to offer coverage in high-risk wilderness areas.

This has won praise from officials and homeowners in rural counties. But the measure has also faced criticism from insurers, who say if Lara’s proposal is enacted, millions of homeowners in low-risk areas would have to subsidize the rates of those in wilderness zones.

Still, Lara has a conventional but potent ace in the hole: his ability to run a fall campaign ad blitz reminding Californians of Poizner’s history as a Republican in a state with a dwindling number of Republicans. The latest state registration data show only one-quarter of voters identify with the GOP – a record low.

A Probolsky Research poll from last month put Poizner ahead of Lara. But most of those surveyed were undecided or didn’t want to take any position.

CalWatchdog.com asked the two candidates a half dozen questions about the job. The responses from both candidates, which are posted in their entirety below, show frequent agreement on the major issues as well as a similar level of caution in the curve balls we threw their way.

Both Padilla and Peterson intend to use technology to improve the office that oversees everything from the state’s election system to business registration. Both the Democrat and the Republican want to increase transparency in the state’s campaign finance disclosure system and promote greater civic engagement in the political process. Both candidates believe it should be faster and easier to start a business in California.

The pair are so similar on the issues that editorial boards have resorted to tacit endorsements of both candidates and consider each to be an improvement over the embattled incumbent, Debra Bowen, who is leaving due to term limits and has admitted having problems with depression.

“Whether you select Pete Peterson or state Sen. Alex Padilla, our expectation is that a problem-plagued, underperforming office will receive the caliber of leadership that has been lacking under two-term Democratic incumbent Debra Bowen,” the Fresno Bee observed in its editorial endorsement for Peterson.

Praise for Bill Jones, Jerry Brown

The similarities even extend to their opinion of recent secretaries of state.

“Bill Jones successfully used technology to increase transparency, placing campaign finance information online, and posting live election results online in statewide elections,” Padilla said of the Republican who held the job from 1995 to 2003. Padilla also offered praise for Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown, who held the post from 1971 to 1975.

In response to the same question, Peterson, who has said he is modeling his campaign off of Brown’s past secretary-of state campaign in 1970, offered similar praise for Jones.

“Bill Jones is my Honorary Campaign Chair, and in several ways, it feels that we are both approaching the office in similar environments,” Peterson said. “Bill came to an office that had become bureaucratic and antiquated. Over his two terms, he transformed the office into one that used technology (like Cal-Access) to make government more transparent and responsive.”

Both cautious, avoid strong positions on controversial issues

On civic engagement, Padilla said he’d “prioritize greater civic education through schools and community groups.” That’s not far from Peterson’s belief that the state “can be doing a better job in civics education at the high-school level to encourage greater youth civic participation.”

But everyone supports improving civics education. What about a controversial proposal to increase youth involvement in politics by lowering the voting age?

In last month’s Scottish independence referendum, 16 and 17 year olds were allowed to vote. It was a resounding success. Young people took the franchise seriously, registered to vote and then turned out in droves.

“Across Scotland, 90.1 percent of 121,497 16 and 17-year-olds have registered to vote,” one U.K. newspaper reported.

According to the Guardian, “Scotland’s first minister, Alex Salmond, was so impressed, in fact, that he declared there was ‘not a shred of evidence for arguing that 16- and 17-year-olds should not be allowed to vote’.”

Polling showed a huge disparity in public opinion between younger voters who supported independence and older voters who opposed it.

Here in California, neither candidate for the state’s top election post was willing to embrace lowering the voting age. Both candidates demurred — only going so far as to embrace pre-registration for young voters.

Neither candidate champions disenfranchised voters with disabilities

Padilla and Peterson were similarly reluctant to champion the cause of advancing voting-rights complaints by people with disabilities.

Earlier this year, a complaint filed by the Disability and Abuse Project alleged that Los Angeles Superior Court judges used literacy tests to deny voting rights to thousands of people with autism spectrum disorder, cerebral palsy and other developmental disabilities.

The group’s analysis of 61 conservatorship cases in Los Angeles County found that 90 percent of individuals were denied voting rights. With more than 40,000 conservatorships in California, the group extrapolates that thousands of Californians could be illegally deprived of their franchise.

Surely, the candidates for secretary of state would have an opinion about this denial of voting rights?

Padilla seemed completely unaware of the problem, offering a generic statement. “Every citizen has the right to vote and to have that vote counted,” he said. “While many people with disabilities prefer the convenience of vote-by-mail, there are privacy concerns, and some prefer to go to the polls.”

But his reply doesn’t begin to address the disenfranchisement occurring across the state, nor does it offer an opinion on whether “competency tests” should exist.

Peterson proved to be more familiar with the issue but said only that “he was hoping a court or Justice Dept decision might bring clarity to what the appropriate level of capacity should be.”

Peterson offers more specifics on transparency, business fee

About the only difference between the candidates was Peterson’s willingness to offer more specifics about his plans if elected to the position.

Peterson said he’d work to lower the business registration fee from $800 per year to $100, a level comparable with other states. He also definitely pledged to post his calendar online, a move that would aid the press and public, who currently are required to submit formal public records requests to get that information.

“I am committed to putting my calendar online so Californians know what their SoS is doing,” Peterson said.

Padilla didn’t directly answer the question, saying, “I will comply with the Public Records Act.”

While Peterson had more definitive positions on openness and transparency, he was less forthcoming about his vote for governor in the June 3 primary. In the new Top Two system, Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown got the most votes. For the second slot, the battle was between two Republicans: Assemblyman Tim Donnelly and Neel Kashkari. Kashkari won and faces Brown on Nov. 4.

Padilla voted Brown.

Peterson has refused to endorse a candidate, but said he likes Kashkari’s stance on education issues.

Text of the CalWatchDog.com interviews

What follows is the full Q&A CalWatchdog.com conducted with the candidates.

Question: In the June Primary, whom did you vote for governor?

Padilla: Jerry Brown

Peterson: While I’m not endorsing candidates, I can repeat what we discussed in an earlier email exchange, that I like Neel’s focus on jobs and education. And, more recently, I was disappointed with Governor Brown’s decision to oppose the Vergara verdict, which I view (as the judge did, and Neel does) as a civil rights decision.

Question: In Scotland, 16 and 17 year olds were allowed to vote on the independence referendum. Should we lower the voting age in California?

Padilla: I support legislation to allow 15-, 16-, and 17-year-olds to pre-register to vote, so that they are automatically eligible to vote when they turn 18. And to increase turnout among young voters, I will prioritize greater civic education through schools and community groups.

Peterson: I don’t support lowering the voting age, but we can be doing a better job in civics education at the high school level to encourage greater youth civic participation, and I will be making proposals in this area. I do support the pre-registration of 17 year olds, and know we must reform our motor-voter registration system to make this easier to do.

Question: Business documents: As secretary of state, will you commit to putting all business registration documents online? Right now, there’s a processing delay and fee for copies. It’s unclear why the documents cannot be posted online. What other changes can we expect in the area of the office’s business programs?

Padilla: We need to make it easier and quicker to start a business in California. The first stop for entrepreneurs starting a new business is the Secretary of State’s office, and the business filing process should take no more than five business days. In the past, business owners have waited weeks, or even months, to get their registrations approved. That’s unacceptable. And yes, I will work to enable businesses to file online.

Peterson: I am committed to transitioning as many business filing processes to an online platform as soon as possible – particularly business registration and the filing of Statements of Information by LLCs. I am also committed to bringing transparency to how the $800/yr Business Franchise Tax is “spent” in Sacramento, then I will fight to reduce to $100 – similar to other states we compete against for small business jobs.

I am also exited about reforming the SoS office into a data gathering office on our “small business climate”, modifying our business registration and dissolution forms to survey businesses as to why the starting up in, and (unfortunately) leaving the state or closing. I want to make this data available on an annual basis.

Question: Openness and Transparency: Will you promise to post your calendar online? How will your administration interpret the California Public Records Act? Under what circumstances will you pursue an exemption from disclosure? What can voters expect in the area of openness and transparency?

Padilla: I will comply with the Public Records Act. I have proudly sponsored legislation to increase transparency and help restore trust in government, including requiring weekly disclosure of all campaign contributions and online disclosure of all advertisements. I will continue to push for greater disclosure if elected Secretary of State.

Peterson: First, I am committed to putting the SoS budget up online in a format that’s understandable by a 10-year old and an 80-year old. I have done some of this work with cities, and advise a data visualization company in Mountain View called OpenGov.com. Whether that platform or similar, we need transparency to how money is being spent in this agency.

I am committed to putting my calendar online so Californians know what their SoS is doing.

I’m not sure how to answer the PRA question. I have been a long-time advocate for government transparency, and promise to bring this perspective to the SoS office.

On a related matter, I am committed to fully cataloging the data resources compiled by the SoS office (in both voter engagement and business engagement), and making that data available (in a secure but “open” format) to all Californians who want to develop their own applications and visualizations. I look forward to working with civic tech organizations (like MapLight, others) to help them develop applications that are helpful to all Californians – whether in campaign finance reporting or business data reporting.

Question: Of recent CA Secretaries of State, who do you think did the best job, and most closely reflects your approach to the office?

Padilla: I admire Jerry Brown for sponsoring legislation to reform campaign finance reporting, and when that failed, he worked with citizen groups to pass the Political Reform Act of 1974.

I respect Bruce McPherson [Republican secretary of state from 2005-07] for visiting with election officials in each of California’s 58 counties, as I have during my campaign. Listening and learning from local elected officials is crucial to understanding how our elections work on the ground.

Bill Jones successfully used technology to increase transparency, placing campaign finance information online, and posting live election results online in statewide elections.

Debra Bowen did the right thing in decertifying unauditable electronic voting machines when legitimate questions were raised about the reliability and security of the vote.

Peterson: Over the last 20 years, Republicans have proven to be excellent Secretaries of State. Bill Jones is my Honorary Campaign Chair, and in several ways, it feels that we are both approaching the office in similar environments. Bill came to an office that had become bureaucratic and antiquated. Over his two terms, he transformed the office into one that used technology (like Cal-Access) to make government more transparent and responsive. He’s also known by “good government” advocates as conducting the operations of the office in a non-partisan way. He worked well with staff, and demonstrated a real commitment – again, over two terms – to the office.

I also know that Bruce McPherson was an excellent Secretary of State in his (almost) two years in the office. He, too, brought a non-partisan commitment to the office.

Question: In late July, Pete Peterson said he was “looking into the story” of disabled citizens being denied their right to vote. The complaint alleges people with disabilities were barred from voting. What are your thoughts on the disenfranchisement of disabled voters?

Padilla: Every citizen has the right to vote and to have that vote counted. While many people with disabilities prefer the convenience of vote-by-mail, there are privacy concerns, and some prefer to go to the polls. For those who prefer poll voting, counties are working to accommodate people with disabilities. In some counties, for example, there are provisions for curbside voting.

Peterson: I think what I said is that I wanted to “[follow] the case” as I was hoping a court or Justice Dept decision might bring clarity to what the appropriate level of capacity should be.

Question: Should Debra Bowen resign? Are you concerned about the administration of the upcoming election?

Padilla: The nuts and bolts of elections are administered at the local level, by county clerks and elections officials. I’ve met with elections officials in every one of California’s 58 counties and they are prepared for the November 2014 election.

I do not think it is necessary for Secretary Bowen to resign and I believe it would be disruptive this close to the election. During Secretary Bowen’s eight years in office, we have had 7 regular elections and 46 special elections, and we have not had controversies such as butterfly ballots or hanging chads. I intend to be a more active and visible Secretary of State as we work to modernize the office.

Peterson: The premise of my campaign has been that the office has not had committed, creative leadership for many years, and has regressed (relative to other states) in both voter engagement and business engagement. As of today, I don’t think we have a clear sense of how much time the Secretary is committing to the operations of the office, so I can’t say to what degree administration of the office is suffering.

Pete Peterson, the Republican candidate for Secretary of State, plans to use the entrepreneurial qualities of Californians to reignite the greatness of the Golden State.

Two months before Californians go to the polls to choose a governor, the state’s top elections official tearfully acknowledged Friday that she has been consumed by a “debilitating” depression that has often kept her away from the office.

Secretary of State Debra Bowen, who oversees statewide voting, told The Times that she has a history of depression and has moved out of the two-story country home she owns with her husband. She now resides in a trailer park on the outskirts of Sacramento. …

The secretary said she is receiving professional help, is comforted by support from friends and has not been hospitalized. She described her new living accommodations as a refuge, characterizing the mobile home park as one containing “extended-stay cottages.” …

Her trailer at Arden Acres has cracked windowsills, and some windows have cardboard behind the glass to block the sun. Behind it is a storage yard with a giant, rusting shipping container pressed against the other side of the fence. On Thursday, her state-issued Buick was parked outside, the back seats and front passenger seat full of cardboard boxes brimming with clothing and household goods.

Problems festered, never got solved

This may fully or partly explain her utter diffidence as secretary of state over the past seven and a half years. As the LAT story noted …

She has been criticized periodically for being distracted on the job, most recently during her 2010 reelection campaign. Republican challenger Damon Dunn noted then that the time it took her office to process business filings had more than tripled. (Bowen said a backlog was due to budget cuts.)

In addition, a project that now allows online voter registration was four years behind schedule. Bowen had said it takes time to find the right contractor.

Open-government advocates bashed her for failing to upgrade California’s online campaign finance reporting system, which is antiquated and unwieldy.

‘Embarrassing shortcomings and backlogs’

Her years of disinterest in trying to minimize business paperwork delays produced a harsh rebuke from the Sac Bee edit page in March 2013:

If Texas can process an application to form a limited liability company in five days, even less if the registration application is filed online, why does it take California six weeks? In California, home to Silicon Valley, the most sophisticated collection of high-tech companies in the world, why can’t the state process business filings online?

Why does a business owner in Los Angeles have to deliver papers to the secretary of state’s office in Sacramento to get expedited over-the-counter service? Why doesn’t the secretary of state have counter service in Los Angeles or Fresno or San Francisco?

California Secretary of State Debra Bowen blames state budget cuts for the many embarrassing shortcomings and backlogs in her office. Lack of money should not have been a problem. After all, the business portal side of Bowen’s office – the place where entrepreneurs seeking to form corporations or limited liability companies or partnerships file their paperwork – is entirely fee-based. It’s supposed to be self-supporting. The businesses pay for the cost of the operation.

In fact, California charges among the highest fees of any state in the nation for what appears to be perhaps the worst service, as a limited survey by The Bee’s Jon Ortiz suggests.

I sure didn’t see this coming. In 2006, I voted for Bowen over appointed Republican Secretary of State Bruce McPherson after being put off by McPherson’s hauteur and arrogance in an interview.

Mature, persistent leadership during energy crisis

It wasn’t just McPherson’s manner. I also was impressed by Bowen’s persistence, patience and maturity during the state’s bizarre 2000-01 energy crisis, the fiasco that so damaged then-Gov. Gray Davis that it paved the way for his 2003 recall. Bowen, a Redondo Beach Democrat, was chair of the state Senate’s Energy, Utilities and Communications Committee. In early 2000, after hearings by her committee, she warned that California’s faux energy dergulation bill of 1996 was going haywire.

But Davis was more interested in posturing and blaming utilities and power suppliers than acting decisively to address both soaring energy costs and supply limits that produced regional blackouts. He was such a dithering dolt that in December 2000, 75-year-old former Secretary of State Warren Christopher — an Edison board member — harangued him at a private meeting about needing to figure out the basics of public leadership.

Bowen played an important role in the cleanup, especially when she resisted attempts to rush through a flawed fix. As she noted, it was the rush to pass the faux deregulation bill in 1996 that created the mess.

I wasn’t just observing from afar. I was then a government and politics reporter for The Orange County Register, which sent me to Sacramento in late January and early Februrary 2001 to bolster our coverage as the crisis crested. In a Capitol dominated by a dilettante (Davis) and a wack job (Senate President John Burton), Bowen stood out.

Based on her performance in the Legislature, I never expected her to disappear after she got a promotion. But that’s pretty much what happened.

Missing-person report: SOS for the SoS

In May, when I met Pete Peterson, the brainy, impressive GOP reformer who hopes to succeed Bowen in November’s election, I told him how surprised I was that Bowen was such a fiasco in statewide office. I said someone should file a missing person report for the secretary of state.

Peterson laughed, and so did I. But I wouldn’t tell such a joke now. I hope Bowen gets the help she needs — and that California finally gets the great secretary of state that it needs and deserves.

Peterson could be that good. He’s already won a long list of endorsements from newspapers left and right. Don’t hold the LAT’s applause against him.

The complaint, which was filed by the Disability and Abuse Project, alleges that Los Angeles Superior Court judges used literacy tests to deny voting rights to thousands of people with autism spectrum disorder, cerebral palsy and other developmental disabilities. The group’s analysis of 61 conservatorship cases in Los Angeles County found that 90 percent of individuals were denied voting rights. With more than 40,000 conservatorships in California, the group extrapolates that thousands of Californians could be illegally deprived of their franchise.

“What is happening in Los Angeles is the tip of the iceberg,” Thomas F. Coleman, attorney and legal director for the project, said in a prepared statement. “The problem of voting rights violations of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities is not isolated to Los Angeles. Such civil rights violations are occurring elsewhere in California.”

L.A. County routinely denied voting rights

As first reported by the Associated Press, the case stems from problems in the administration of limited conservatorships, “legal arrangements in which parents or guardians assume the right to make certain decisions for people who lack the ability to manage their financial and medical affairs.”

The Voting Rights Act complaint alleges that courts determined voting competence based on whether an individual could complete a voter registration form without assistance. Such a practice would violate federal law, which allows individuals to receive help in completing voter registration forms. California’s voter registration form (pictured above; a larger version is at the bottom of this article) even includes a section providing special instructions for those who receive assistance with the process.

“The Department of Justice has said that, under the Americans with Disabilities Act, states must offer auxiliary aids and services, including ‘assistance filling out forms,’ to people with disabilities when necessary to help them participate fully in state programs such as voting,” said Samantha Crane, director of public policy at the Autistic Self Advocacy Network. “California is not only refusing to provide this assistance to people with disabilities, but is denying voting rights to anyone who gets help with filling out a form from someone else.”

The investigation into voting rights violations began after Teresa Thompson saw her son, Stephen, lose his voting rights in a limited conservatorship case.

“Just before he turned 18, I was advised to file a petition for a limited conservatorship so that I could make financial and medical decisions for Stephen after he became an adult,” Thompson said. “I had no idea that by seeking a conservatorship for him that I would cause him to lose the right to vote.”

Thompson said her court-appointed attorney informed her that the concept of conservatorship was incompatible with the right to vote. That didn’t sound right to Thompson, who sought the help of disability advocates at the Spectrum Institute’s Disability and Abuse Project.

Disability groups demand action

Leaders of prominent disability advocacy groups said voting is one of numerous fundamental rights frequently denied to people with developmental disabilities.

“This issue is a longstanding and concerning one — many autistic people and those with other developmental disabilities are denied fundamental rights, like voting, due to guardianship,” Ari Ne’eman, president of the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, told CalWatchdog.com. “We’re pleased to see this issue highlighted and will be urging the Justice Department to act on the complaint.”

According to a 2012 study published in the Lancet, adults with disabilities are more likely to be physically and sexually abused than adults without disabilities. “People with mental illness are about four times more likely — and people with intellectual impairments are about one-and-half times more likely — to get abused than non-disabled adults,” the study found. That’s reinforced by the 2012 National Survey on Abuse of People with Disabilities, which found more than 70 percent of people with disabilities claiming to be victims of abuse.

But, without voting rights, people with disabilities aren’t a political force that can demand action on problems affecting 15 percent of the population. That was no different in this case. Disability advocates asked state and local officials to address the voting rights problem, but were ignored.

“We reached out to the ‘powers that be’ both locally and at the state level to correct this problem,” said Coleman, the attorney for the project. “Nothing has changed. So we are ‘making a federal case out of it.'”

Should competence tests exist?

The case could spark a broader debate about whether voter competency tests should exist at all.

Not every state imposes competency tests for voting. According to a 2008 report, “VOTE. It’s Your Right: A Guide to the Voting Rights of People with Mental Disabilities,” published by the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law and National Disability Rights Network, 11 states have no disability-related restrictions on voting. As of 2008, eight states — Colorado, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Vermont — had no voter competence requirements, according to the report.

Other public participation experts believe voting should require a certain level of competence. Pete Peterson, executive director of Pepperdine University’s Davenport Institute for Public Engagement and Civic Participation, said that voting requires “a certain capacity for thoughtful and intentional decision-making.”

“Our voting laws must balance the latest in this research, taking into account these gradations, while understanding that voting itself is an act of both a ‘head and heart,’ said Peterson, who is running for Secretary of State. “I look forward to following this case, and hope it does bring greater clarity to these issues.”

What might be the best way to determine voter eligibility?

“If somebody can articulate in whatever way … that they want to vote, that they have an interest in voting, that’s the only test that should be applied nationwide,” Coleman said at a press conference earlier this month.

For more information on the Voting Rights Complaint, visit the Disability and Abuse Project’s website.

It’s been frequently ignored, but a late amendment to Assembly Bill 1436 required officials to conduct a statewide voter review before California’s same-day voter registration law can be implemented. According to the Legislative Counsel’s digest for the bill, it becomes operative “on January 1 of the year following the year in which the Secretary of State certifies that the state has a statewide voter registration database that complies with the requirements of the federal Help America Vote Act of 2002.”

The law was expected to take effect in 2014. However, to be operative for the 2014 general election, the Secretary of State needed to complete its HAVA compliance by December 31, 2013. Last month, Bowen took to Twitter to explain why the state won’t be adopting California’s landmark same-day voter registration law anytime soon.

“That law (CA Elections Code section 2170) will likely take effect in 2016 or later,” Bowen tweeted on Jan. 13.

VoteCal: Voter registration database debacle

The state’s HAVA compliance has been illusory, and the statewide voter registration database project nothing short of a debacle. VoteCal, the project for a new statewide voter registration database, began in 2006 as a replacement for the system built in 1995.

Kim Alexander, president of the California Voter Foundation, has been critical of the project and worries the technology will be out-dated by the time it’s completed.

“VoteCal has been in development since 2006 and already failed once,” Alexander wrote in a November 2013 blog post comparing the project to the federal government’s troubled Obamacare website, HealthCare.gov. “It is not scheduled to be in operation until 2017. It’s hard to imagine the technology they are planning for today will still be state-of-the-art by 2017 and that assumes the project is not further delayed.”

Same-day voter law not as extensive

Same-day voter registration is expected to boost voter turnout. But just how much — that’s up for debate.

“We expect same-day registration to be an important factor in helping to increase everyone’s participation in the electoral process,” said Mindy Romero of the California Civic Engagement Project at UC Davis. “In general, states with same-day registration laws have shown higher turnout rates. It should be noted though that California’s same day registration law is potentially not as extensive of a reform as similar laws in other states.”

In California, a provisional ballot will be issued to same-day voters and counted only upon later verification.

Secretary of State Candidates: Yet another tech problem

Bowen is term-limited and cannot run for re-election. Three of the candidates running to replace Bowen as Secretary of State criticized her office for the voter database delays.

“This is yet another example of the Secretary of State’s problems with technology,” said Republican Pete Peterson, who serves as executive director at Pepperdine University’s Davenport Institute for Public Engagement and Civic Leadership.

Democrat Secretary of State candidate Derek Cressman, a former vice-president of the good government group Common Cause, said the implementation delay was further proof that better management is needed at the top elections office.

“This is why it is imperative that our next Secretary has both the policy background and management experience to implement a new registration database without further delays,” said Cressman, a supporter of same-day voter registration.

Other reforms delayed with VoteCal

Same-day voter registration isn’t the only electorial reform put on hold by the state’s vote registration database. Other laws being delayed include the ability for 17 year olds to pre-register to vote and the email delivery of a sample ballot.

“Same-day registration is one of numerous election reforms enacted in recent years in California that are on hold as we wait for the state’s new voter registration database to be built and deployed,” Alexander said. “California is one of only two states with no statewide voter information lookup tools. These are online tools that let voters check if they are registered to vote or registered at an old address, find their polling place, check the status of their vote-by-mail ballot and see what contests will be on their ballot.”

At least one Secretary of State candidate has experience sidestepping bureaucratic delays related to the voter registration database. In 2011, State Senator Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, authored the state’s online voter registration law. Yee’s hugely successful SB397, which helped register more than a million new voters in 2012, was drafted because an earlier measure — SB381 in 2008, by State Sen. Ron Calderon, D-Montebello — couldn’t take effect because of VoteCal delays.

“I look forward to the day in California when eligible voters will have the opportunity to walk into their local polling location, and immediately be able to cast a ballot and participate in our democracy,” Yee said.