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California Secretary of State Debra Bowen Awarded 2008 JFK Profile in Courage Award

By Frank D. Russo
Based on information from the Kennedy Library

Our Secretary of State Debra Bowen, who led the nation in challenging the reliability of electronic voting systems, has been named as one of three individuals who will receive the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award. Bowen will be presented with this award by JFK’s daughter Caroline Kennedy and his brother, Senator Edward M. Kennedy, at a ceremony at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston on May 12.

Jennifer Brunner, Secretary of State of Ohio will also receive this award and a special Profile in Courage Award for Lifetime Achievement will be presented to former Mississippi Governor William Winter for his leadership in championing racial equality and educational opportunity in Mississippi.

Announcement of the award was accompanied by the following statement about Bowen from the Kennedy Library:

“After a $450 million investment by California counties in electronic voting systems aimed at modernizing elections, newly elected Secretary of State Debra Bowen ordered an independent review of the new voting technologies to ensure they adequately protected the integrity of the vote. When the study revealed troubling flaws in the systems, Bowen strictly limited the use of direct-recording electronic voting machines, and imposed significant security and auditing requirements on systems to be used in California’s February 5 presidential primary election. Bowen’s decision was met with resistance by voting system vendors and many county elections officials.”

“As we prepare to cast our ballots for the next President of the United States, our confidence in the integrity and reliability of the voting process has never been more important,” said Caroline Kennedy, President of the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation. “Secretaries of State Debra Bowen and Jennifer Brunner have each demonstrated exceptional leadership in working to ensure that voting systems provide a full and accurate count of the vote. Our democracy depends on voter trust. Debra Bowen and Jennifer Brunner’s efforts to earn that trust have made them true profiles in courage."

“Governor William Winter gives testimony to President Kennedy’s belief that politics can truly be a noble profession,” Kennedy continued. “His lifetime of public service, both to his country and his beloved state of Mississippi, has been distinguished by its devotion to equality and justice. We are proud to honor him with a Profile in Courage Award for lifetime achievement.”

The John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award is presented annually to public servants who have made courageous decisions of conscience without regard for the personal or professional consequences. The award is named for President Kennedy’s 1957 Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Profiles in Courage, which recounts the stories of eight U.S. senators who risked their careers, incurring the wrath of constituents or powerful interest groups, by taking principled stands for unpopular positions. The John F. Kennedy Library Foundation created the Profile in Courage Award in 1989 to honor President Kennedy’s commitment and contribution to public service. It is presented in May in celebration of President Kennedy’s May 29th birthday. The Profile in Courage Award is represented by a sterling-silver lantern symbolizing a beacon of hope.

Past recipients of the Profile in Courage Award include former President Gerald Ford; U.S. Representative John Murtha; former Navy General Counsel Alberto Mora; the Peacemakers of Northern Ireland who negotiated the historic Good Friday Peace Agreement; Ukraine President Viktor Yushchenko; U.S. Senators John McCain and Russell Feingold; Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin; former Governors Roy Barnes (GA) and David Beasley (SC); and former U.S. Congressman Carl Elliott, Sr. of Alabama. Click here for more information about the Profile in Courage Award and all the past recipients.

Bowen, Brunner and Winter were chosen as the recipients of the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation’s prestigious award for political courage by a distinguished bipartisan committee of national, political, and community leaders:

Al Hunt, Washington managing editor of Bloomberg News, chairs the 14-member Profile in Courage Award Committee. Committee members are Michael Beschloss, author and presidential historian; David Burke, former president of CBS News; U.S. Senator Thad Cochran (R-Mississippi); Marian Wright Edelman, president of the Children’s Defense Fund; Antonia Hernandez, president and chief executive officer of the California Community Foundation; Elaine Jones, former director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund; Caroline Kennedy, president of the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation; U.S. Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-Massachusetts); Paul G. Kirk, Jr., chairman of the board of directors of the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation; Shari Redstone, President, National Amusements, Inc; John Seigenthaler, founder of the First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University; U.S. Senator Olympia Snowe (R-Maine); and Patricia M. Wald, former judge of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. John Shattuck, chief executive officer of the Kennedy Library Foundation, staffs the Committee. Mr. Shattuck is a former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State and a former U.S. ambassador to the Czech Republic.

Posted on March 18, 2008

Comments

I hope that the JFK Profile in Courage Award strengthens Sec. Bowen so she will demand that ALL the hackable, proprietary, untrustworthy, secretly programmed computer-run Diebold, Sequoia, and ES&S ballot scanners and central Vote Tabulators still threatening CA 2008 elections, will be withdrawn by their GOP vendors, and that she will demand that they return their ill-gotten millions to the states and the US Treasury or have them sued for the biggest fraud against the United States in history.

Posted by: Brina-Rae Schuchman at March 19, 2008 08:33 PM

Both Debra Bowen and Ohio SecState Jennifer Brunner are rightfully honored by this Profiles in Courage award.

But both need to go further. Optical scan systems are just as hackable as touchscreens.

Computerized vote counting is anathema to democracy because it counts the vote in secret. Open vote counts are the most successful deterrent to insider rigging.

These new electronic systems take us back to the 19th century by obscuring the vote count from the public.

Upgrade to hand counts on election night, at the precinct, before all who wish to observe.

This takes real courage by "elected" officials - providing the public with an observable vote counting process.

Posted by: Rady Ananda at April 4, 2008 09:39 AM

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