Former Secretary of State to Seek Seat After 6-Year Hiatus

March Fong Eu, who was California’s secretary of state for nearly two decades, is planning to run for her old job again, campaigning on a promise to outlaw the punch card voting system that contributed to the election morass in Florida.

Eu, 78, said she will set up an exploratory committee today and formally announce her candidacy for the Democratic nomination in March.

She said her decision to run after a six-year hiatus from elected office was prompted by the controversy over the presidential election results in Florida, and her fears that the confusion over punch cards had turned off many potential voters.

“It really made me feel I had to get back in the ballgame again,” she said in an interview.

When she won her first election as secretary of state in 1974, Eu said, punch card voting was state-of-the-art technology. By the time she left office in 1994, virtually no new technology had been developed to replace it.

Now there are alternatives, she said, such as touch-screen voting, used in Riverside County during the general election. The secretary of state should move quickly, she said, to outlaw punch card systems similar to those that created the furor in Florida.

“These old systems are time bombs that periodically explode whenever there is a close election,” she said. “It’s time to act in California before we become the next victim.”

Eu, one of California’s most enduring political figures, surprised many with her decision to seek another term in office. She acknowledged that age might become an issue in the campaign but said she intended to prove by example that “older Americans have something to continue to give their community.

“I hope it [age] is not an issue, because there are a lot of people in my category,” she said.

Former Republican Assemblyman Keith Olberg, 40, of Victorville, who also intends to run for the office, said Eu is offering nothing new by proposing that California change voting systems.

“The one thing we know for sure is that America needs a more reliable and more accurate voting system,” he said. “We need greater participation.”

Although he said he would not make age an issue in the campaign, he also said, “I know that I have the energy to do the job exceedingly well.”

Beth Miller, a spokeswoman for California’s current secretary of state, Republican Bill Jones, said her boss is taking steps to replace the punch card system, but the huge costs involved prevent him from acting quickly.

She said he is pushing the Legislature and Gov. Gray Davis to provide state funds to help counties buy new systems.

“We understand that it’s clearly antiquated equipment, but I think you have to be aware of the practical realities of implementing new voter systems,” she said. “For a county like Los Angeles, which is bigger than most states and has 4,000 polling places, it will take some time and cost millions and millions of dollars.”

In California, 33 counties use punch card voting systems. Most of the larger counties use systems similar to those that caused problems in Florida. But two California counties, Riverside and San Francisco, made extensive use of new technology in the last election. Besides the touch screen used by Riverside, San Francisco used an optical scanning system.

Miller said Los Angeles plans a limited experiment with a touch-screen system in the next mayoral race.

Elected to the California Assembly in 1966 to represent Oakland and parts of the East Bay, Eu served four terms in the Legislature before winning the secretary of state’s office.

Eu can run for her old seat despite California’s term limits, because she served only one term under them. Statewide officeholders are limited to two consecutive terms.

She was the first woman elected to that office and the first American of Chinese ancestry to hold a constitutional office in California.

Her son, Matthew Fong, a Republican, served one term as California’s state treasurer.