State
Spotlight:
California Secretary of State Office
Though
the California
Secretary of State Office’s purview covers
business, campaign and lobbying filings, the state
Domestic Partners Registry, and historical
treasures, most Californians know the Secretary of
State Office (SOS) as the agency that runs and
oversees elections. SOS spokeswoman Kate Folmar
says, “Our goal is to make civic engagement the
habit of a lifetime.” To reach new or reticent
voters, Secretary of State Debra Bowen and her
elections team run the immensely popular MyVote
California project.
Like
the Easy Voter Guide on which the SOS has
partnered with the California State Library and
the League of Women Voters, MyVote California
clarifies the election process for a broad swath
of California voters. The program helps
Californians learn about voting, candidates, and
issues in ways that not only explicate official
election data, but also make it fun.
The
SOS’s Folmar says, “We’ve designed our voter
education and outreach program [MyVote
California], to engage everyone from California
students to working folks. In addition to high
school mock elections, we increase awareness
in voters of all ages through the points of
contact of businesses and chambers of commerce.”
Mock
election brings voting “excitement”
to California youth
Secretary
of State Bowen believes it is never too early to
connect young people with “voting excitement,”
says Folmar. To do this, Bowen and Superintendent
of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell invite
middle and high school students, teachers and
principals to participate in the MyVote California
Student Mock Election, a program that weaves
real-time democratic “excitement” into
California’s high school curriculum. As teens
research issues and candidates, they discover that
a republic is not a subject on an exam, but a
system that thrives on informed citizens like
them.
When
California’s students participate in the MyVote
California mock election this fall, they’ll
learn about democracy as no others before them.
“This is a tremendously historic presidential
election year,” Folmar says. “It’s the first
time since 1952 that we have neither an incumbent
President nor Vice President running. The nation
has the first chance to elect an African American,
or a Vietnam veteran. Secretary Bowen wants young
people to tap into this remarkable moment.”
In
January 2008, more than 450 schools, and more than
240,000 students, signed up to vote in
California’s first mock presidential primary.
Because the SOS worked with the Department of
Education, the curriculum guides and creative
campaign-related activities teachers and
principals downloaded from the SOS website were
“standards-based.” Educators held debates,
conducted candidate role-plays and even paired
official voter registration drives with their
schools’ mock elections. In January, California
students favored Barack Obama over Hillary
Clinton, and John McCain over Mitt Romney and Mike
Huckabee.
Kennedy
High School votes, ignites student action
At
Sacramento’s John F. Kennedy High School, Advanced Placement US
Government and Political Science teacher Alida
Imbrecht says the mock election, “Woke up the
student body to their value in the democratic
process.”
Alida
Imbrecht leads John F. Kennedy High School
Advanced Placement US Government and Political
Science class in discussion of MyVote California
Mock Election.
Imbrecht’s
29-member class will all be eligible to vote in
the November presidential election. During an
informal class discussion with CSL Connection,
the students agreed that political “apathy”
prevails on campus. Michael Panush, 18,
articulating another common student view, said,
“Voting doesn’t do anything – all the
candidates have the same corporate sponsors.”
The class also concurred though that MyVote
California lit a fire under the student body.
“Young people see [through MyVote California]
that voting in huge numbers changes things that
affect their lives, and they vote,” said
18-year-old Theresa Dyer.
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John
F. Kennedy High School Advanced Placement US Government and
Political Science teacher Alida Imbrecht (center) with seniors
(L to R) Maurice Conner, Andy Nevis, Emily Clark, and Michael
Panush.
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“The
mock election made me research ballot issues of
which I hadn’t thought before,” commented CSU
Chico-bound Maurice Conner. “I’m passionate
about gay rights,” said Emily Clark, 18. “I
liked checking out the candidates [in the mock
election] because I’m going to vote for a
candidate who supports [gay rights].”
Andy
Nevis helped organize the Kennedy mock election.
Nevis, who will be a UC Berkeley freshman in the
fall, said, “The facts everyone unearthed made
them care about the Iraq war, immigration, global
warming, and more. Students talked about the Bush
Administration not responding to citizen concerns
and ‘change’ became a very hot topic on our
campus. Now people are going to go to the polls
and even do grass-roots volunteering.”
MyVote:
Democracy at Work
Only
about 40% of eligible Californians participated in
the last statewide general election in November
2006. Secretary of State Bowen wants to improve
that number by enlisting businesses to increase
voter awareness. MyVote: Democracy at Work, the
project through which businesses partner with the
SOS, encourages employees and customers to
participate in democracy. Businesses participating
in MyVote: Democracy at Work create paycheck
inserts, text messages and emails that persuade
people to register to vote.
Thanks
to the MyVote Democracy at Work project, Debbie
O’Donoghue, Deputy Secretary of State for Voter
Education and Outreach, reports that the SOS has
reached 150 business organizations including the
California Controller’s Office, Palo Alto
utilities, Alameda utilities, Southern
California’s South Bay Association of Chambers
of Commerce and other Chambers of Commerce across
the state.
For
more information about MyVote California, please
contact Debbie O’Donoghue at (916) 653-6173.
Easy
Voter Guide
Some
people avoid voting because they fear making the
“wrong” election choice. They want to educate
themselves on the issues and the candidates but
ballot materials, in their austere and
bureaucratic language, demand strong literacy
skills. The nonpartisan Easy Voter Guide
solves these challenges by making complex election
issues, and the voting process, accessible for
countless California voters.
The
California
Secretary of State's Office (SOS) concurs with
its Easy Voter Guide partners, the League
of Women Voters of California Education Fund and
the California State Library, that new and busy
voters require an alternative to the official Voter
Information Guide. The Legislative Analyst
reviews the Easy Voter Guide for accuracy
and the Secretary of State helps get the word out
by including the Guide in its My Vote
California online materials. To promote the
Guide’s availability, the SOS also ships Easy
Voter Guide samples to hundreds of
organizations. The SOS continues to fund
translations of the Easy Voter Guide into
Chinese, Japanese, Spanish and Tagalog (download
only).
The
leading organizations that provide the resources
and funding for the Easy Voter Guide are
the League of Women
Voters of California Education Fund with
support from The
James Irvine Foundation and other private
funders, the California
Secretary of State's Office, and the California
State Library.
The
Easy Voter Guide is part of a project that
also includes an easy to navigate website.
Visitors clicking on www.easyvoter.org
site find:
- The
Easy Voter Guide available online in
html, as a printable PDF in seven languages.
- Extensive
links to additional resources for each
proposition plus background on key issues in
the election.
- In-language
web pages and materials to download in
English, Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese and
Korean, Japanese and Tagalog including
step-by-step photos for new voters.
- A
new “Learn about the Issues” tab that
groups “the issues your care about” by
topic.
- A
highly visual “All About Voting” section
that addresses the most common questions and
misconceptions about the voting process.
- A
comprehensive resource section for groups
engaged in voter education and outreach –
with handouts, workbooks, workshops and links
to related resources.
- A
ballot and polling place look-up provided by www.smartvoter.org.
Supporting
the Easy Voter Guide Project is, as for the
the SOS Office, just one way the California State
Library serves Californians. State Librarian of
California Susan Hildreth says, “Many
Californians are turned off by the long ballots.
Our goal is to help people cut through the clutter
to find and understand the issues they care about
in this election.”
Thanks
to the SOS, the California State Library, the
League of Women Voters of California Education
Fund, and the remarkable Californians behind the Easy
Voter Guide Project, “cutting through the
clutter” of 2008’s California election
information, will be easier, for everyone.
For
more information about the Easy Voter Guide
Project please contact Project Manager Lisa
Frederiksen Bohannon with the League of Women
Voters of California Education Fund at (916)
442-7215 or via email easyvoter@lwvc.org
or visit www.easyvoter.org.
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