Leadership, Not Catch Up, Needed in California Secretary of State Office

By State Senator Debra Bowen
Democratic Candidate for Secretary of State

If you are casting your ballot by mail, you should know that you may be required to pay 63 cents -- or in at least one county, 87 cents -- to return your absentee ballot. The fact that many voters choosing to vote by the increasingly popular method of absentee ballot may not be aware of this change is but one example of improvements needed in the Secretary of State's office to make sure all who try to vote are able to have their votes count.

The Secretary of State knew the state portion of the ballot was unusually long for this election, so counties with a large number of local measures on their ballot would have to require their voters to use extra postage to get their ballot back to the county on time. A detailed plan to let absentee voters know about the increased postage rates should have been developed two months ago when the November ballot was finalized. Instead counties are scrambling to make deals with the post office to deliver ballots that don't have sufficient postage on them and are sending out additional mail, all wasting valuable tax dollars.

As our Chief Elections Officer, the Secretary of State, should be a leader in developing contingency plans for everything that could possibly go wrong in an election. Instead, days after thousands of absentee ballots have been sent out across the state, McPherson is now trying to figure out how to let absentee voters know that they may need extra postage to mail in their ballots.

County registrars of voters began mailing out hundreds of thousands of absentee ballots this week, primarily to people who are registered as "permanent absentee voters." In the June 2006 primary election, more than 2.4 million Californians voted by absentee ballot and that number is expected to significantly increase in November's general election.

At least 15 counties -- Alameda, Amador, Contra Costa, Glenn, Imperial, Kern, Merced, Monterey, Riverside, Sacramento, San Bernardino, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Ventura, and Yuba -- are requiring extra postage on all returned absentee ballots. While most counties have attempted to alert voters to the extra postage requirement by putting it in the absentee ballot instructions or directly on the return envelope itself, at least one county -- Riverside -- failed to inform approximately 70,000 absentee ballot voters that it will cost 63 cents to return the ballot.

This is just the latest example of the Secretary's inability to show any leadership when it comes to making sure eligible Californians can register to vote, can cast a ballot, and can have that ballot counted accurately.

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