Primary Election Date: 06/08/2010
General Election Date: 11/02/2010

Who Am I?

As California’s 30th Secretary of State, Debra Bowen works every day to build up election integrity and break down government barriers.

On her watch as the chief elections officer for the largest state in the nation, Debra’s goals are to ensure that voting systems are secure, accurate, and accessible, and that voters have confidence in the final election results because every ballot is counted exactly as it was cast.

After taking office in 2007, Debra ordered a groundbreaking top-to-bottom review of California’s voting systems. When this review by dozens of independent experts revealed significant flaws in every voting system examined, Debra shored up election security and post-election audits in an unprecedented way. She specified detailed conditions for use of each type of voting system and imposed strict limitations on the use of direct recording electronic (DRE) machines.

For this trailblazing leadership in strengthening democracy, Debra was recognized nationally with the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award, one of the highest global honors for public servants who choose principles over partisanship.

As Secretary of State, Debra has also:

• Streamlined operations and cut her agency’s budget by more than 20%
• Enhanced public access by expanding website services and establishing social media feeds of Secretary of State news and directives
• Fought for increased accountability of private-sector election contractors
• Won $3.25 million for Californians in a lawsuit against a voting system vendor
• Strengthened election fraud prevention efforts
• Launched a complete rebuild of the statewide voter registration database
• Expanded voter education with creative new and traditional methods

Prior to being elected Secretary of State, Debra served six years in the State Assembly (1992-1998) and eight years in the State Senate (1998-2006). She authored numerous laws aimed at building public confidence in elections, including measures to require that post-election audits use the paper records produced by DRE voting machines, be conducted in public, and include vote-by-mail ballots along with the ballots cast at polling places.

A longtime privacy rights and government transparency advocate, Debra authored the first-in-the-world law that put legislative information online in 1993, giving Californians immediate access to information about state lawmakers’ bills, voting records, and more.

In 1995, Debra was the first California legislator to voluntarily put her campaign finance reports online.

Debra was born in Rockford, Illinois, and graduated from Michigan State University. After earning her law degree at the University of Virginia, she practiced corporate, tax and ERISA law at Winston & Strawn in Chicago and in Washington, D.C.; at the Los Angeles office of Wall Street firm Hughes, Hubbard & Reed; and as a sole practitioner in Los Angeles. After volunteering her legal services as a member of the Heal the Bay Legal Committee, Debra expanded her practice to environmental and land-use cases.

Debra is married to Mark Nechodom, a research scientist and Director of Climate Science Policy with the U.S. Forest Service.

Why Am I Running?

Debra is running for re-election as Secretary of State in order to continue to make government more transparent, empower voters, and ensure election integrity.

Hold Me Accountable!

1) ADVANCING HIGHER ETHICS. California’s Secretary of State is responsible for conducting elections, helping businesses function, authorizing notaries public, protecting the identities of certain crime victims, registering domestic partnerships, and much more. That is why Debra believes it is critical to set the bar higher and avoid perceived conflicts of interest.

* Debra has a strict self-imposed ban on endorsing any candidates or ballot measures. She has pushed for a similar policy for all elections officials in California, but such a measure has been repeatedly defeated in the Legislature.

* A big believer in transparency, Debra was the first California lawmaker to voluntarily put her campaign finance reports on the Internet in 1995, five years before all candidates for state office were required to do so. Now Debra oversees the database of all state officials’ campaign finance disclosure documents and all lobbying activity.

* Since Debra held her first elected office in 1992, she has refused to accept gifts from people who may be trying to influence her decision-making.

2) CRACKING DOWN ON FRAUD. Debra works with law enforcement across the state to ensure those who break the law in elections or business dealings are caught and brought to justice.

* To protect the integrity of the electoral process, Debra runs an Election Fraud Investigation Unit (EFIU) to look into allegations of illegal activity such as registration fraud, voter intimidation and misleading petition circulation. Debra’s EFIU consistently works with state and local prosecutors to go after people who violate elections laws.

* The largest part of the Secretary of State’s office, the Business Programs Division, is the first stop for anyone wanting to do business in California. Debra’s office provides many online and in-person resources and services to California businesses, including proactive business alerts about potential scams. Debra is also fighting to reduce document fraud by pushing a proposed law that would crack down on people trying to create “sovereign citizenships” with notarized documents.

* As custodian of the State Archives, Debra is pushing back on people and businesses who try to profit by selling public treasures. Through a new law she successfully promoted, state and local governments can now more easily recover records that rightfully belong to all Californians but have slipped into private hands or even the marketplace.

3) PROTECTING PERSONAL PRIVACY. While Debra believes government should be as transparent as possible, she also believes people deserve to live free of fear or harassment.

* As a state legislator for 14 years, Debra authored landmark consumer protection laws to protect people from becoming identity theft victims and worked with community-based groups to close the digital divide. Those laws make it more difficult for criminals to commit identity theft by banning businesses, schools, universities and government agencies from using social security numbers as public identifiers, requiring credit card numbers to be removed from receipts kept by merchants, giving people the right to freeze access to their credit reports and giving people the tools to fight back against unsolicited email and fax advertising.

* Debra directs Safe at Home, California’s confidential address program that offers mail forwarding, voter registration, school records suppression and other services to many victims of abuse, stalking and sexual assault, as well as reproductive health care staff, volunteers and patients. In protecting the identities of more than 2,300 Safe at Home participants, Debra works with district attorneys, health clinics, women’s shelters and other enrolling agencies. Most recently, she pushed for new laws that prohibit publication of Safe at Home participants’ legal name changes in any public forum, including newspapers and the Internet.

My DFA values:

Empowering and engaging the grassroots requires opening up government: without participation in the democratic process, the grassroots can't move America forward.

A pioneer in open government, Debra has long championed the use of technology to increase transparency and accessibility. As Secretary of State, Debra is putting the latest technology to use in everything from elections to business programs to campaign finance disclosure.

Debra enhanced round-the-clock public access to elections information by expanding phone and website services, offering webcasts and transcripts of public hearings, and adding many more details of the process, such as memorandums to county elections officials and information on how counties develop elections information to their voters.

Debra broadened the agency’s availability through social media such as Facebook and YouTube, and she established automatic email feeds of Secretary of State news and directives. Now anyone can subscribe to RSS and Twitter feeds of information about agency news, voting systems, ballot measures and elections administration.

Debra improved the way people receive important information about elections and voting rights in paper, online and audio formats. She even developed a downloadable audio version of the statewide voter guide, which can be played on home computers and MP3 devices.

My Campaign is People-Powered!

One example of her people-powered campaign is her use of social media. Debra is constantly on Facebook, giving her online supporters a first-hand glimpse at her work and life.

A second example is how Debra's campaign focuses on empowering voters. By acting as the voters’ advocate and tending to every step in the electoral process, Debra has empowered more Californians to become active participants in our democracy.