UC Davis College Democrats Endorse Cabaldon for 8th AD and Escamilla-Greenwald for Davis City Council

SPECIAL TO THE VANGUARD

The Davis College Democrats (DCD) followed up last week's City Council Candidates' Forum and Candidate Questionnaires by providing a huge splash for one candidate. After intense and heated debate on the subject, the organization came to a near-unanimous decision to support the campaign of UC Davis alumnus Cecilia Escamilla-Greenwald.

The support for Cecilia Escamilla-Greenwald came from her commitment to preserving the vibrant downtown, maintaining open space, and her stance as a strong advocate for student and renter interests. Jack Zwald, Freshman Outreach coordinator, said, "I support Cecilia because she is the best candidate for students' rights."

"I'm glad that our club was able to come together and reach a consensus on endorsing one qualified candidate," said Don Gibson, Vice President of Membership for the organization.

Though the discussions pertaining to the forum, questionnaire, and endorsements have been particularly fiery and at times contentious, the organization is excited about investing their time and energy into electing their preferred candidate.

"It was a very difficult decision for most club members," said Brandon J. Craig, Vice President of Internal Affairs.

That wasn't the only endorsement DCD made, though. The organization also voted to support Christopher Cabaldon, Mayor of West Sacramento, in his bid to represent the 8th Assembly District. They plan to campaign on his behalf in order to secure the seat, which is being vacated by Assemblywoman Lois Wolk as she aims to become the State Senator for the 5th District. She, too, has been endorsed by the club.

Brandon Key, a Vice President of Finance for the club, as well as a student intern on the Cabaldon campaign, said, "As a member of DCD and a staffer on the Cabaldon campaign, both Christopher and I are very happy to have won the support of every young democratic organization in the 8th Assembly District, along with a few across the river as well. Christopher is incredibly well prepared for the position and will be a strong leader for affordable education in the Assembly."

Davis College Democrats President Max Mikalonis is looking forward to campaigning for these great candidates. "We are excited about taking an active role in our community, and by campaigning on behalf of these student friendly candidates we hope to further raise the profile of student and young voter issues. College and Young Democratic voters will be the margin of victory come November, but we are mobilizing our peers for June in order to create positive change in the City of Davis and around the State."

California Secretary of State Debra Bowen Comes to UC Davis to Discuss Voting

Last night, California Secretary of State Debra Bowen made a last minute appearance at UC Davis in an event sponsored by the Davis College Democrats. Between 50 and 70 students showed up for the event--although the size of the lecture hall made it look like a very sparse crowd.

The Secretary of State spoke about a number of issues involving voting, registration, ballots, and security of voting equipment and systems.

One of the first things she discussed was the creation of a secure electronic voting system. One of the problems with such a system is the security. She said during the course of the debate, "the people most alarmed were those who knew the most about such system." That created a very uneasy feeling for those involved.

They hired the University of California to test their system and had people assigned to try to hack into the security. One of the big problems is that the physical security was problematic. For instance they had a security seal on the machines that let people know if the machine had been opened, but one could simply take a screwdriver and open the screws on the other side of the machine, open it, and close it without disturbing the security system.

Moreover, the equipment was not physically secured, it would often be left out in various location prior to an election. All of these problems led them to stop using the touchscreen voting machines last summer except for the disabled. Unfortunately there are problems with these machines for the disabled as well, including the ability to reach the top portions of the machine from a wheel chair. This led the Secretary of State to declare that we have "done a horrifying job of making polling places accessible to people with disabilities."

California has now gone to the optical scan system which has problems of its own. One of the problems is a calibration problem, similar to problems that they have had scoring standardized tests. However, to add reliability to the system California has implemented an audit requirement to be kicked in at certain thresholds. This means that if the results are within a given percentage, they must do a random sample by a hand count.

Security and voter fraud is not a new issue. What may have changed is that there may be ways to systematically change the results, however, she discussed old methods of putting pencil lead in the calibration to prevent a certain percentage of votes to be counted.

She said that we must remain vigilant, this vigilence "requires us to constantly look at what went wrong and what went right and to learn from our mistakes." And they are not just our mistakes either.

Her goal is to ensure that everyone who is eligible to vote registers to vote, everyone who registers to vote casts their ballot, and everyone who casts their ballot has it counted.

Her favorite voting story came from Chicago. People were casting their ballots and told to mark them with certain pens. But the pens apparently did not work. When the poll workers were asked this they told the voters it was invisible ink. Roughly twenty people proceeded to vote believing they were using invisible ink markers to vote with. Finally the twenty-first person was incredulous and said there is no such thing as invisible ink. He called the authorities and they put a stop to that and then had to spend the rest of the day trying to track down the 20 people who voted with invisible ink.

Secretary of State Bowen talked about the advantages and disadvantages to consolidating elections. The problem with local elections is that you get very low turnout at times. On the other hand, you end up having national forces drive turnout for local elections in consolidated elections. There is also the problem in counties like Los Angeles, where you simply have so much on the ballot it is difficult to fit it all.

During question and answer period she indicated that she supports Tuesday voting. The problem with weekend voting is that you have various religions with the Sabbath on a given day. If you make it two day voting, you have problems with securing the equipment and the ballot overnight. She also pointed out that marketers introduce new products on Tuesdays and that people are most engaged and most on the job from Tuesday through Thursday. Hence Tuesday is the best day.

Davis Councilmember Lamar Heystek asked about a choice voting and instant runoff system. Debra Bowen said that in 2006 she carried a bill in the legislature that would have allowed non-charter cities to implement choice voting. At that time she could not even get it out of committee. The next time it got out of committee, passed the legislature, but was vetoed by the governor. That is an example of how much awareness and support for choice voting has changed in a very short period of time. She thinks a uniform system would be better to avoid localities having to reinvent the wheel. She talked about the advantages of this rather than current primary rules at the local level that would force a runoff in a race like Yolo County Supervisor if the winner only managed 49.7% of the vote--that is incredibly costly and she cited an example where it happened despite a huge lead by the individual ahead in the race. She also cited the need for the software to be certified by the state and felt it would be easier with uniform instant runoff systems.

Debra Bowen's presentation was very informative, a lot of these issues are simply things that we do not think about involving voting. We tend to see problems with the systems when things go wrong, but do not see the large amount of work that goes into getting things correct. Our system despite its flaws has worked well for a considerable amount of time.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

UC Davis College Democrats Win Award and Sponsoring Debra Bowen Event Tonight

Debra Bowen Event TONIGHT

Dear Vanguard Readers,

The Davis College Democrats would like to present to you California Secretary of State Debra Bowen, Speaking Tonight @ 7pm in Wellman 2.

Secretary Bowen has been a strong advocate for open government and clean elections where every vote is counted. Prior to the February 5th Presidential Primary, she de-certified several counties' voting machines during a top-to-bottom review of the states voting system, in an effort to ensure the existence of a paper trail and require every vote to be counted.

Additionally, Debra Bowen has fought to make the government codes accessible to the public and posted them online, in an effort to increase transparency in the system.

Off campus visitors can park for $6 in the North Entry Parking Structure or Visitor Parking Lot 15, which can be located at the following link.

Thank you for your time, and See you Tonight!

Democratically Yours,

Max Mikalonis
President
Davis College Democrats

UC Davis College Democrats Win Award from State Party

Last Wednesday, I came to the College Democrats club meeting for the first time. I walked into the room and there were at least forty college Democrats there at 8 pm on a Wednesday evening gearing up for the coming June Elections. It was a great site to see so many young activists ready to participate in the Democratic Process.

Students are largely written off as non-participants, but it seems likely that this year will be different. This chapter of the College Democrats is exemplary. The weekend before they were named the California College Democrats Outstanding Chapter of the Year Award
at the California Democratic Party Convention. In a press release sent to the Vanguard, they enumerated on their work over the past year.

Their hard works over the course of the academic year have included campaigning for recent propositions, increasing chapter membership by four-hundred percent, holding their first annual fundraiser at which they raised approximately $4,000, and hosting the highly-attended Hillary Clinton for President Rally featuring former President Bill Clinton. In a 24 hour period, the club was able to mobilize volunteers to promote and staff the event whose attendance topped 10,000 students and community members.

The President Clinton event was especially remarkable because the Hillary Clinton campaign had hoped they could get a couple of hundred people to come out for the former President at the last meeting. Instead, they got over 10,000. So many in fact, that people had to be turned away from the event.

Vice President of Membership Don Gibson remarked,

“It’s a symbol of the work that the club as a whole put in. Club meetings are five times as large as last year and our delegations to events in Lake Tahoe, Anaheim, Berkeley, and San Jose have been among the largest in the state.”

President Max Mikalonis praised his members,

“There’s no way we could have accomplished this alone. It was the hard work and dedication of our club officers and members that earned us this award. These leaders are primed to do great things for the future of the club, and will carry this experience onto their professional lives.”

According to the press release:

"The Davis College Democrats will also play a role in the upcoming city council elections through endorsements and grassroots campaigning-- having a significant impact on the City of Davis."

Indeed at the meeting I attended, they were hard at work on a city council candidates questionnaire that focused largely on issues of concern to students but also on broader issues.

It was a refreshing thing to see from this old veteran, who remembers five or six people turning at his undergraduate school for College Democrats.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting