Letter to California Teachers Association (CTA) President Barbara E. Kerr: What is the CTA Smoking? For Transparency and Sound Government Endorse State Senator Debra Bowen.
by Andrew H. Dral

I was outraged that your organization would endorse Bruce McPherson for Secretary of State. I spent four nights calling at a CTA site to stop the Republican governor’s attack on working people last fall. One of the referendums directly attacked teachers’ tenure. My organization, Sacramento for Democracy, supplied many people to participate in the voter education effort. One night, at a SEIU site, I sat next to State Senator Debra Bowen, a Democratic candidate for Secretary of State, while she made phone calls to thwart the governor’s attack agenda. Many Republicans would be more than happy to privatize public education, to the detriment of the citizenry and our state, so how can you endorse a Republican candidate?

Bruce McPherson has proven himself to be a proponent of non-transparent politics and decision making. He has never fully explained his electronic voting process of certification or detailed the results. Most recently, he has orchestrated an effort to purge the voter rolls, similar to Florida and Ohio. State Senator Debra Bowen is the best candidate for our state.

Bruce McPherson certified voting systems made by Diebold for the 2006 elections, February 17, 2006, without waiting for federal test results. The Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002 was implemented without the proper safeguards. In the 2004 federal presidential election there were roughly 175,000 electronic machines used by 40 million voters. Votes were dropped, votes were over counted, votes were switched to Bush from Kerry, high vote counts occurred for third party candidates, and many machines didn’t boot. When machines don’t boot we get long lines. In March 2006 the Maryland State Legislature banned the Diebold machines from future elections, due to a long history of untrustworthy election results and operating failures.

In the 2004 presidential election voter irregularities occurred in Alaska, North Carolina, Indiana, Ohio, Florida, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Louisiana. HAVA failed us. Conveniently, left out of HAVA were internationally U.N. mandated paper audit trail with each vote and an open software solution recommended by voting machine experts, not proprietary code.

HAVA is flawed. We need a Secretary of State to stop the lunacy; credibility in our democratic process is at stake. Should we add California to the long list of states with voter irregularities? Diebold paid the State of California $2.6MM to settle a lawsuit for fraudulently supplying shoddy equipment in the 2004 election. This company has a track record of fraud and deceit.

Bruce McPherson’s certification process lacked transparency. On February 16, 2006 four major electronic voting machine vendors failed to appear before California State Senator Debra Bowen’s California Senate Elections Committee. Technical staff representing the Secretary of State’s office also failed to appear. The machines are unreliable and easily hacked. Diebold’s lead tester, Jeffrey Dean, who spent time in prison, worked on developing the Diebold GEMS system. CEO of Diebold recently resigned and the company is under Security and Exchange Commission investigation. Representatives in the certification process should have responded under subpoena.

Federal tests were never completed on the machines and state tests found bugs. This is a travesty; if the machines don’t work then we should not compromise the integrity of our election process. Bruce McPherson has not shown us transparency. Debra Bowen will give us the transparency and integrity we need in this important office.


Andrew H. Dral "The Rabble"