Bill Jones

California Secretary of State Bill Jones has been a political animal for 30 years, but he knows when to put that part of him on hold. The public, Jones is aware, won’t tolerate partisanship or overt signs of political ambition in their elections overseer during voting season. Doubters need only look toward his Florida counterpart, Katherine Harris, for evidence of the importance of impartiality.

So the aspiring governor in Jones, the part of him that had all but announced his candidacy for the 2002 GOP gubernatorial nomination, went dormant for the season. This year’s electoral chaos in Florida meant Jones, 51, had to take extra time to reassure the public that California’s elections systems are better than Florida’s, that uniform guidelines for hand counting punch-card ballots do exist here and that the state will take advantage of a budget surplus to replace some aging Vote-O-Matic machines with touch-screen voting systems.

Jones entered politics after getting a taste of its fruits during a youthful foray into student government. A California born-and-raised cattle rancher of a family-owned farm in Fresno, Jones chaired the Fresno County Republican Central Committee. He was elected in 1982 to the state Assembly, where he served until 1994. In 1990, he was the GOP minority leader in the Assembly, taking part in reapportionment negotiations. In the Legislature, he made his biggest mark by co-authoring the sweeping three-strikes bill, which later won 72% voter approval as an initiative.

Earlier this year, Jones, a married father of two daughters, inherited the hopes and dreams of his party when he became the lone Republican holding statewide office in the wake of disgraced state Insurance Commissioner Chuck Quackenbush’s forced resignation. Even though he won reelection to his current post in 1994 by a hair’s-breadth margin, then alienated many diehard, mainstream Republicans by endorsing Arizona Sen. John McCain in the GOP presidential primary, he’s assumed to be the GOP’s best opportunity to derail Gov. Gray Davis in his attempt at a second term.

But never mind politics. In his Sacramento office, Jones talked about California’s elections process.

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Question: Can what happened in Florida happen here?

Answer: No. In California, we have a 28-day period for election officials to go through the ballots in a non-politicized environment to make sure the count is right. When there is a recount, we have statewide guidelines established for ballots. So there won’t be inconsistency from county to county as to how votes are tabulated and how you go about counting chads, hanging or otherwise, versus dimples.

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Q: What other differences are there between California and Florida’s voting procedures?

A: We do not have partisan canvassing boards, per se. We have nonpartisan registrars of voters either elected or appointed by county supervisors. In my experience, the county registrars have done a good job of being nonpartisan. Having said all that, is our system perfect? No.

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Q: You have proposed steps to strengthen California’s election process. Part of your plan is to codify the guidelines for counting ballots.

A: We should at least be putting them into regulatory form. Some of the guidelines may lend themselves to codification. But that’s just one of 10 points in a reform plan we put out. We’ve also aggressively worked--networking all the counties together--on maintaining the statewide voter file: getting the deadwood, or names of people who have died or moved away, off the rolls. We’ve been posting all the campaign-finance information on the Internet so people can see who gives what to whom. These are part and parcel of some of the reforms that we’ve initiated.

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Q: One of your goals is to increase voter participation. What steps have you taken to achieve this?

A: We’ve had an aggressive outreach effort through the private sector and through our voter advisory task force. [The result is] the highest number of people registered in California that we’ve ever had. In this last election, we had over a 70% turnout of registered voters. Last March, we had the highest turnout in a presidential primary in 20 years. In June 1998, we had the highest turnout in a gubernatorial primary in 20 years. We’re making progress because of those reforms.

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Q: What are the reforms’ components?

A: Part of the plan is to require voters to show identification at the polls. . . . We have an honor system in California. The trouble we have, of course, is that not everyone is honorable. You have to have checks and balances. When I was in the Legislature, I carried a bill on this, and I’ve repeatedly asked the Legislature to consider it. . . . In the bill introduced this year, if anyone at the polls sought to discriminate against someone based on ID, we propose punitive actions against the poll worker. Second, if someone did not have an ID, they still would get to vote on a provisional ballot until we verified who they say they are. I have overseen elections in Nicaragua, Mexico and other countries. There’s no place, I would say, where this is seen as too aggressive.

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Q: What else are you advocating?

A: I’ve requested $230 million to aid counties in acquiring new [voting] technologies, such as touch-screen voting systems, which were used in Riverside County and eight others this year. We’re working with the speaker of the Assembly on this effort. . . . We are also planning to hold an expo to bring new technologies for voting systems to California so that registrars of voters can look at them.

You’ve got two processes in elections. You’ve got the elections themselves . . . and you have the campaigns and the candidates. Your goal has to be to keep those two processes as far away from each other as possible. This past year, I opposed a bill that would have allowed campaigns to not only solicit absentee ballots for voters but to be able to return the ballots for voters. The last thing you want is the campaigns handling absentee ballots.

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Q: You also want to see elections officials take the extra step of notifying absentee voters individually if their votes are rejected.

A: We’ve suggested that if an absentee ballot is not counted, then counties should let the voters know. That requires some work on the part of the counties. This is a balancing act, especially when you compress the time frame, as has been done with the registration deadline. . . . You have to make sure you balance that with their ability to have resources and time to get the job done.

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Q: What needs to be done with the “motor-voter” law to make sure that this program is working?

A: One of the major concerns expressed this election was the inability of the Department of Motor Vehicles to do an effective job of getting the information to us on who and how people are registered. We have repeatedly dealt with this since the law was passed. . . . The situation got better in 1996 [but] it seems to have gotten worse again. I sent a letter to [Gov. Gray Davis], asking for his help with the DMV. . . . We’re making some suggestions for revisions of the form--use of digitized signatures to automate the registration process and inclusion of Social Security numbers.

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Q: How do you go about getting the deadwood off voter-registration rolls?

A: Through file security and maintenance, we have procedures initiated through our office to help the counties clean their voter files. That’s been a bipartisan effort, to some extent, with the Legislature. What we’re asking for is to formalize these procedures with the registrars so we can turn an aggressive effort on the voter file and clean it up. For example, if individuals who get jury notices are returning them saying, “I cannot serve on a jury because I’m not a citizen,” well, one of the places you get the lists for jury notices is the voter file. Those people should not be on the voter file, either.

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Q: The new touch-screen voting system used in Riverside County seems to be a hit. Taking the technology a step farther, how do you feel about bringing voting online?

A: Everyone wants to talk about Internet voting. There is no way we’re ever going to move to Internet voting if you don’t have the ability to verify who a person is on the other end of the PC or the Internet. Online voter verification is something whose time is going to come. . . . [But] the Legislature has been reluctant to pursue this, for whatever reason.

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Q: Do you favor Internet voting, and do you have security concerns?

A: Internet voting will happen in our lifetime, but it has to be very carefully laid out. We put together a task force to study it, and most people agree that our approach needs to be very methodical. It’s not something that can happen overnight. You need to make sure you have practice runs, test the systems, [give] demonstrations and then get public input. You’ve got to generate public support; you’ve got to be able to know who is on the other end of the system casting a vote.

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Q: How accurate are machine counts in California?

A: The machines themselves are very accurate, some would say 100%, according to testing for certification. It’s not until you introduce the human element that the accuracy might slip, such as in punch-card balloting, when the person doesn’t punch properly. When we certify the machines, they have to meet a very stringent test. The certification process analyzes a tremendous amount of data.

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Q: What are the different voting systems in use in California, and which are the most reliable?

A: It depends on how you define reliable. Again, these systems have to be highly accurate to be certified. With touch screens, all the ballots reside on one system, so it is more reliable that way. People with disabilities, such as the visually impaired or those who use different languages, don’t need assistance in using this system. More than that, touch screens have the advantage of the speed in getting the votes counted quickly. The other systems we use are punch card, with the problems of hanging chads and so forth, and optical scanners, where you use a pencil to mark a bubble, which is more reliable than punch cards.

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Q: Does touch-screen technology leave a paper trail, and does it allow for a recount?

A: Yes. The touch-screen systems leave an audit trail. All the systems certified for use in California must allow for recounts. One problem with touch screens, though, is that some people still want to hold a ballot in their hands when they vote.

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Q: How does California handle undervotes and overvotes?

A: Undervotes are counted by machines, then set aside so they may be counted in a hand recount or in a 1% sampling. They may be looked at then. The vast majority of undervotes are not actually non-votes. As for overvotes, machines will not count these if you cast votes for more than one person in a race. This points to another advantage of the touch-screen system. The touch screen won’t let the voter undervote or overvote. It prompts you when you’ve skipped over a race or a question on the ballot, and it simply won’t let you vote twice on a race. Those are the benefits of using interactive voting systems.

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Q: What lessons did we learn from this past presidential election?

A: We need exit-polling reform. In 1996, I got the Western U.S. secretaries of state to sign a letter [calling for such reform]. In 1998, we got every secretary of state in the country to send a letter asking the networks not to prematurely call the results of an election based on exit polling. On the Friday before Nov. 7, I called ABC, NBC, CNN and FOX and asked them not to do this. I realize that they’re in the business of competing. . . It’s a problem that is not going to go away, and I’m pleased to see that Congress is looking at this.

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Q: You would also like to see the secretary of state’s office be nonpartisan. What difference would that make?

A: We’ve twice introduced a bill to that effect and have been unsuccessful. The problem with attaching a partisan label to the job is that the label itself allows criticism, as happened to Florida’s secretary of state, Katherine Harris. The secretaries I have known, both Democrats and Republicans, for the most part tried to conduct their offices on a nonpartisan basis. We can avoid this debate, or even going there in the first place, if you don’t have a label after your name--a D or an R.

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Q: So it may be symbolic, but at least it’s a step in the right direction?

A: I think the public expects it. I have not been criticized in the five years I have been here for being partisan, and I was Republican leader in the Assembly--a very partisan role. But when you step into this particular position, it is different. It is not the same as being treasurer, controller, governor, lieutenant governor or anything else. . . . I need to be held to a different standard. I have tried to meet that standard. That’s what the public expects. To have a secretary of state that’s Republican, I think in most people’s minds, is kind of a disconnect. Because they think the secretary of state overseeing elections is kind of a referee, and partisanship and refereeing don’t necessarily go together. *