Voice of the Voters: The Bonifaz Blog
Submitted by Ofer Inbar on Wed, 07/12/2006 - 12:34pm.
This morning the Massachusetts legislature opened the 2006 Constitutional Convention. Yet another constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage is on the agenda to be voted on. Last year, such an amendment was defeated by a vote of 39 to 157. But this time, they only need 50 votes, and some of the legislators who voted against last year's amendment because it would have created civil unions, may favor this new amendment, which does not. Why do they only need 50 votes, not a majority, to move this amendment forward? Because it came in the form of an initiative petition signed by enough Massachusetts voters ... or did it?
Yesterday, John Bonifaz called on the legislature to investigate fraud allegations:
Within days after the signature-gathering began for this ballot measure, allegations surfaced throughout the state that signature collectors were using bait-and-switch tactics to deceive people into signing the petitions. MassEquality [...]fielded numerous complaints of signature collectors who asked people to sign a petition to allow the sale of beer and wine in grocery stores, and instead collected the actual signatures on the anti-gay marriage form. Others reported signing a petition to ban greyhound racing and then discovered their names appearing in support of the anti-gay marriage amendment.
Secretary of the Commonwealth William F. Galvin failed to conduct any comprehensive investigation of these fraud charges. To the contrary, he certified all of the signatures presented for the anti-gay ballot measure despite acknowledging that thousands of those signatures matched the signatures presented for the measure related to the sale of beer and wine.
Submitted by Ofer Inbar on Sat, 07/01/2006 - 8:09pm.
Verified Voting, founded by Professor David Dill in 2003, was the technical backbone of the massive election protection effort in 2004. I volunteered for them collecting signatures, organizing press conferences, lobbying, and in Florida on election day, taking phone calls from voters and poll watchers about voting machine problems.
Verified Voting did a lot of work to prepare for the election. Among other things, they compiled an extensive database of voting technology in 2004: Want to see which counties in Florida use touchscreens? Want to read the user manual for the voting machine used in your county? It's all in there. They set up the Election Incident Reporting System, where you can see reports of voting problems reported to 866-OUR-VOTE (to find my reports, look for voting machine problems in Broward County, FL, in election year 2004)
Verified Voting is now seeking volunteers for 2006! read on...
Submitted by Ofer Inbar on Thu, 06/29/2006 - 1:36am.
Although we wish it weren't so, and if we elect John Bonifaz he'll fight to change it, campaigns are still privately financed. Activists, the press, and even the blogs, look at a candidate's filings at the end of each quarter to determine how "credible" a campaign is - more than at a candidate's qualifications, or number of committed supporters.
In other words, the wealth primary is on. We know John Bonifaz is the best qualified person to lead in Massachusetts, to make voting more accessible and government more accessible and accountable, but if we want him to get the press coverage he deserves, he needs to raise money.
The filing deadline is tomorrow, Friday, June 30th. Help John Bonifaz by contributing today! ... and ask your friends to contribute as well. Thank you!
Submitted by Ofer Inbar on Tue, 06/27/2006 - 5:00pm.
"The more they tell us not to worry, the more we should worry."
So begins a recent editorial in the Salt Lake Tribune. Utah's primary election is today, and Utah has spent $27 million to bring Diebold touchscreen voting to the state. Emery County Clerk Bruce Funk resigned in protest, after learning of serious security flaws in these voting machines, and finding that other officials were not taking the matter seriously. Those still running our elections, all the way up to Lt. Gov. Gary Herbert, insist that none of us need worry our pretty little heads about it and the June 27 primaries should go off without a hitch. Frankly, it would be a lot more comforting if our officials were eager to be seen as solving the problem instead of denying that there is one. Because, according to some very heavily credentialed experts, there is one.
Submitted by Ofer Inbar on Mon, 06/26/2006 - 9:37pm.
In a splintered ruling, the Supreme Court today struck down a Vermont law limiting campaign contributions and expenditures. Bonifaz responded, The Court is as wrong today as it was 30 years ago when it first ruled on this matter in Buckley v. Valeo, striking down congressional campaign spending limits passed in the wake of the Watergate scandal.
Bonifaz pledged to fight for public financing: As Massachusetts Secretary of State, I will press for state legislation that creates a system of full public funding of our elections coupled with voluntary campaign spending limits. I will also build and lead a coalition of secretaries of state calling for a constitutional amendment to make clear that mandatory campaign spending limits are entirely consistent with the First Amendment.
Submitted by Ofer Inbar on Sun, 06/25/2006 - 7:22pm.
(The statement below was written by John Bonifaz; I contributed links and minor edits -- Ofer)
Last Wednesday, the Republican caucus of the US House of Representatives stopped the House Republican leadership from bringing to a vote a reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a reauthorization that would have surely passed with broad Democratic support. As Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post wrote: "In one breathtaking moment of clarity, we see that a significant portion of the House Republican caucus is determined to deep-six, or at least fatally weaken, a landmark law designed to make it possible for the nation's largest minority groups to exercise their franchise at the polls -- and designed to make it difficult for anyone with nefarious intent to keep these minority citizens from voting."
Southern Republicans objected to the Act's requirement that certain jurisdictions in the country - namely in the South - with a long history of racial discrimination in voting be subjected to pre-clearance by the US Justice Department of any changes made in those jurisdictions to their election laws. But, as Robinson points out, those objections alone would probably not have prevented the reauthorization vote from coming to the House floor. Rather, other members of the House Republican caucus raised a separate objection: "the act's requirement that bilingual ballots be made available in localities where significant numbers of voters speak a language other than English."
It is an outrage that this landmark voting rights law is facing this kind of opposition. If Florida 2000 and Ohio 2004 taught us anything, it is that there are still people today who will dare to trample on the right to vote and to deny the franchise. I agree with Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. that, in addition to renewal of the Voting Rights Act, we also need to place affirmative language in the US Constitution guaranteeing the right to vote.
Submitted by Ofer Inbar on Wed, 06/21/2006 - 9:48am.
In November, the Massachusetts Senate unanimously passed S.2277, "An Act Strengthening Voting Rights and Voter Confidence in the Commonwealth's Elections." This month, the House passed it, on a vote of 156-0.
The state secretary shall provide a voters’ bill of rights in a form suitable for posting for every polling place for every election. The state secretary shall also include the voters’ bill of rights in appropriate publications of the state secretary and on the electronic website of the state secretary, and shall transmit copies of the voters’ bill of rights to state and municipal offices where citizens register to vote [...] A voters' bill of rights, huh? Someone running for secretary already wrote one...
Submitted by John Bonifaz on Mon, 06/19/2006 - 10:26pm.
I join the growing numbers of citizens across this country who are declaring "no confidence" in the machine tally results of the special election held on June 6, 2006, for the 50th Congressional District in California. I further join their call for a full hand-count of both the paper ballots and the Voter-Verified Paper Audit Trail in that election.
We face today a crisis in public confidence in the integrity of our elections. This crisis threatens the foundation of our democracy. Now more than ever, we must return to a basic truth: In order for voters to trust the outcome of our elections, they must be able to trust that their votes are properly counted.
Submitted by Ofer Inbar on Fri, 06/09/2006 - 6:20pm.
Today, in each of the three Democratic primaries for statewide office, the candidate with the biggest bank account announced outrageously high spending limits that threaten to turn these campaigns further away from ordinary people.
Bill Galvin announced a spending limit of $2.9 million in his campaign for secretary of state; for Lieutenant Governor, Deb Goldberg will limit herself to $4 million; for Governor, Chris Gabrieli will limit himself to $15.36 million. All three of them might as well have said "the sky's the limit". "This is not the kind of politics that is consistent with the core values of the Democratic Party," Bonifaz responded in a press release. "This is why so many people do not participate in the political process. This level of money in politics drowns out the voices of people at the most grassroots level. And this is why I am running for Secretary of State and why I defended the Clean Elections Law. We can do better in Massachusetts. We can and should be a model for the nation, rather than another example of auction-block politics open to the highest bidder."
Effectively unlimited spending by the candidates with the most money will go into expensive TV advertising, bringing the focus of the campaigns away from people and dialogue, and onto sound bites that leave us all disconnected. Campaigning from the air does little to bring us together to talk about the issues.
This is further proof that we need to have a fully-funded public finance system with spending limits. A model system, like those that exist in Maine and Arizona, would be fully-funded and level the playing field in all statewide and state legislative races. Voters are tired of the skyrocketing amounts of money in our elections.
John Bonifaz has been fighting for clean elections for as long as Galvin has been Secretary here in Massachusetts. It's time to put the leader in office.
Submitted by Ethan Kiczek on Mon, 06/05/2006 - 5:11am.
This letter to the editor was submitted to The Boston Globe by Massachusetts Democratic Convention Delegate Donna Palermino:
To the Editors:
I read with interest your reporting on Deval Patrick's inspiring performance at the state Democratic Convention ("Democrats give Patrick resounding nomination," 6/4/06). As a delegate supporting Patrick, I had the honor of experiencing first hand how politics-as-usual succumbed, when "political novice" Patrick "stirred the grassroots" with his message of change, a sense of mission, and hope. But your coverage missed the other important story of the day: rank and file Democrat John Bonifaz vaulted over the minimum 15% required to place him on the primary ballot for Secretary of the Commonwealth by garnering 29.3% of the delegates' votes. Your solitary remark on the race – that three-term incumbent Bill Galvin had "handily won" with 71% – was technically true. However, with Galvin's long-time insider status as state representative and Secretary of the Commonwealth, it would have been impressive for Bonifaz merely to reach the controversial 15% threshold. By nearly doubling that figure, a second political novice overcame the odds, insider connections and superior campaign funding by stirring the grassroots. His name is John Bonifaz.
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