Voice of the Voters: The Bonifaz Blog
Submitted by Ofer Inbar on Thu, 08/31/2006 - 12:14pm.
I went to the Medford Democrats' candidate forum yesterday evening anticipating Secretary Galvin's participation, only to find out to my surprise that "Galvin is stuck in New Bedford" and did not show up.
I've called Secretary Galvin's office twice today to find out why he missed the forum. Once, I got a volunteer who was under the impression that he'd had another event planned for a long time, and wasn't planning to come. Another time, I got a staffer who said he didn't know. Both of them took my name and number, but so far, no real explanation for Galvin's no-show.
As David of Blue Mass Group says, "this is getting ridiculous." That's pathetic. Come on, Galvin. You're the Secretary of State, fer chrissakes - you're supposed to be into elections. At least make a show of caring about your own. Bill Galvin has been avoiding facing John Bonifaz in front of the voters all year... which reminds us of the way he stayed out of sight during the clean elections law debate, while Bonifaz defended clean elections in court... or the way he stayed out of sight when Lawrence city councilors appealed for help, and John Bonifaz went to court on their behalf...
Will Galvin show up tonight in Worcester, or will he stay hidden?
[Update: Nope. He stayed away from Worcester too.]
Submitted by Ofer Inbar on Tue, 08/29/2006 - 2:24pm.
We weren't sure it would ever happen, but today Bill Galvin confirmed that he will appear at a candidate forum with John Bonifaz - the first time in this campaign that voters will be able to see both Democratic candidates for Secretary appear together!
The televised candidate forum, hosted by Medford Democrats, is open to the public. It will take place at Medford City Hall (second floor) on Wednesday, August 30th starting at 7:00pm.
Candidates will answer questions from panelists, including representatives of the Medford Transcript and the Medford Daily Mercury. The forum will be broadcast live on Medford local cable, and we believe it will be rebroadcast on Somerville cable later. We'll also try to get a video, or portions, to post online. Please email us if you plan to come tomorrow evening to support John Bonifaz!
P.S. Galvin may join Bonifaz at another forum, or debate, in Worcester on Thursday night...
Submitted by Ofer Inbar on Mon, 08/28/2006 - 5:36pm.
The Massachusetts Primary will be on Tuesday, September 19th. To be allowed to vote, you have to register at least 20 days before the election: that means that if you're not already registered to vote, you must register by this Wednesday, August 30th.
This weekend at brunch, I asked my friends if they were registered to vote - and gave out three voter registration forms. Are you registered? What about your friends, family, co-workers, and neighbors? Now's he time to ask. And to carry some forms with you. Why not pledge to register at least one more voter in the next two days?
For all you ever wanted to know about registering to vote in Massachusetts, read on...
Submitted by Ofer Inbar on Wed, 08/23/2006 - 10:58pm.
Bruce Taub, Massachusetts state coordinator for Progressive Democrats of America, writes on Blue Mass Group, John Bonifaz, the only truly progressive Democratic candidate for statewide office in the 2006 Democratic Primary, has recently been endorsed by the Massachusetts Progressive Democrats of America.
Bruce is referring to a consensus decision made by all of the PDA chapters in Massachusetts to support John Bonifaz.
PDA was founded in 2004 by former members of Ohio Representative Dennis Kucinich's presidential campaign, in coalition with grassroots progressive groups that formed out of Dean's and other campaigns. Congressman Kucinich, former chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, this week also endosed John Bonifaz: "We need more citizen leaders like John in elected office -- Democrats who are not afraid to stand up to
entrenched interests. John Bonifaz was the first to stand up in my home state of Ohio in the aftermath of the 2004 presidential election. He came to Ohio and demanded a full recount of the presidential vote when few others had the courage to do the same.
We need to take back our democracy and no position is better suited to lead this fight than that of Secretary of State. I stand with John Bonifaz in his vision for what our democracy should be about: public funding of elections to level the playing field for all of us, early voting to ease the burdens of voting on a workday, proactive enforcement of the Voting Rights Act and other reforms that will return voters to power." P.S. Are you a Blue Mass Group regular? If so, please recommend Bruce's post!
Submitted by Ofer Inbar on Wed, 08/09/2006 - 8:22pm.
The Boston Phoenix went looking for campaign videos on YouTube, the online video sharing service. They noted that a couple of other progressive campaigns had posted videos,
But the real video savant this election year is John Bonifaz, the voting-rights advocate who’s challenging Secretary of the Commonwealth Bill Galvin in the Democratic primary.
“YouTube is another step forward in the power of the Internet,” said Bonifaz campaign manager Juan Martinez. “It’s a great way to reach out to voters and to spread information, to get people more politically active and educate people about politics in general.”
And about John Bonifaz in particular — even when YouTubers are looking for information about his opponent. If you search for Bill Galvin, the site displays two videos about … wait for it … John Bonifaz. ![[The Phoenix's screenshot of Bonifaz videos on YouTube]](http://www.johnbonifaz.com/system/files?file=bonifaz_youtube.jpg)
Here's the screenshot from the Phoenix - click on it to see the video search they did. The reason John's videos show up is that each video's description has a brief intro to who John is and what he's up with, including this sentence: "His opponent in the September 19th primary is incumbent Bill Galvin." It turns out that these are the only two videos on YouTube currently that have the words "Bill Galvin" in their descriptions.
Have you seen John Bonifaz's convention speech & convention video yet? Go ahead, play them now!
Submitted by Ofer Inbar on Wed, 08/02/2006 - 9:01am.
"Microsoft's surprise decision to support ODF could be in reaction to a recent government mandate in Massachussets that will require all state agencies to save documents in a vendor-neutral, standards-based format," wrote Linux News earlier this week.
Late last year, Massachusetts' Chief Technology Officer Peter Quinn tried to move Massachusetts to adopt the Open Document Format, but was forced to back down, then resign. Massachusetts appeared to buckle under to pressure from Microsoft. In an interview, Peter Quinn pointed at Bill Gavin's office as one of Microsoft's supporters in opposing the Open Document Format: "Senator Pacheco and Secretary Galvin's office remain very heavily influenced by the Microsoft money and its lobbyist machine, as witnessed by their playbook and words, in my opinion." In the wake of Quinn's resignation, an alliance organized to promoted the Open Document Format, and earlier this year, Massachusetts reversed again, deciding to adopt it for all 50,000 state computers. In response, Microsoft was finally forced to budge. The technology publication The Register explained in a July article, Microsoft is reluctantly lending its name to a project for interoperability between Office 2007 and desktop productivity software using a non-Microsoft supported file format.
[...]
The alliance was formed following the Commonwealth of Massachusetts debacle, which saw Massachusetts mandate that all state IT departments dump proprietary document file formats for standards-based offerings by 2007. In a decision that caused concern among other government users, Massachusetts subsequently reversed its decision amid much politics.
John Bonifaz was one of the leaders who responded to the debacle. This spring, Bonifaz endorsed the Open Document Format, writing, "We should not allow Microsoft or any other corporate entity to dictate how our electronic archives are stored. These changes cannot be made overnight, but we must take practical steps to ensure the integrity and accessibility of digital public information. Use of open standards based data formats will foster government transparency and accountability, ease citizen access to public information, create greater competition for government business, improve interoperability between applications and organizations, and ensure the archival integrity of digital information." In his Voters' Bill of Rights, Bonifaz pledged to Make government more accessible to all of us. Standing up to Microsoft and adopting the Open Document Format is a step in that direction.
Submitted by Ofer Inbar on Wed, 07/19/2006 - 9:58pm.
Catherine Crier's recent report on CourtTV about election integrity problems covers a lot of ground in a few minutes: from former commissioner of the Federal Election Assistance Commission DeForest Soaries's resignation statement, to the recent problems in California's 50th district.
Submitted by Ofer Inbar on Sun, 07/16/2006 - 8:00pm.
The Exit polls said he won, but the "official" tally took his victory away. His supporters found they were scrubbed off voter rolls. Violence and intimidation kept even more of his voters away from the polls. Hundreds of thousands of ballots supposedly showed no choice for president — like ballots with hanging chads. And the officials in charge of this suspect election refused to re-count those votes in public. Everyone knew full well a fair count would certainly change the outcome. So writes BBC investigative reporter Greg Palast, and he isn't referring to Bush vs. Gore in 2002. Today, a million people marched in Mexico city, demanding the same thing we're asking for here in San Diego: count every vote.
Submitted by Ofer Inbar on Sat, 07/15/2006 - 7:16pm.
Yesterday, the Democratic National Committee issued a strong statement calling for "a swift and verifiable manual count of all 150,000 ballots cast in California’s 50th District," writing,
This is no longer about whether or not Busby or Bilbray won the election on June 6th. This is about the importance of verifying the facts related to election and voting machine irregularities in this race and the need to ensure an accurate count of all votes cast in this election so that the electorate may have confidence in the announced results in future elections. I'm at DemocracyFest, which is being held this year at San Diego State Universtiy, just a few miles from the CA-50 district where this election took place earlier this summer. DNC Chair Howard Dean will be addressing us this evening.
Yesterday, Brad Friedman of the Brad Blog announced the news here and the room erupted in applause. On his blog, Brad writes,
The long-awaited announcement of a position on the matter by the DNC comes at the end of more than a month of outrage from both national and state election integrity organizations, many of whom have declared "No Confidence" in the reported results of the race held to replace jailed Republican Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham. John Bonifaz signed the No Confidence declaration and issued a statement in support on the day it was released. We're very pleased to have the DNC's support in the call to count the vote in CA-50!
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