Debra will be joined by special guest Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa at an event in Marina Del Rey on September 19. Please click here for details and ticket information!
Debra Bowen received the prestigious John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award for imposing first-in-the-nation restrictions on flawed voting systems. The award is given to "public servants who have made courageous decisions of conscience without regard for the personal or professional consequences."
Debra Bowen was elected as California's 30th Secretary of State in 2006. Click here to learn more about her accomplishments in office.
Beginning this year, firefighters, medics, and others responding to state emergencies will be able to vote wherever they are serving, thanks to the Governor's signature on Assembly Bill 1440 (Swanson), which Debra sponsored in the Legislature last year.
As Secretary of State, Debra has opened up government in order to empower voters, ensure election integrity, advance higher ethics, crack down on fraud, and protect personal privacy. Learn more >>
SB 1233, authored by state Sen. Jenny Oropeza, D-Long Beach, would allow victims of domestic violence to withhold their addresses from various official documents and records for which they would otherwise be required to submit such information, such as voting or enrolling a child in school. The bill makes permanent a program, sponsored by Secretary of State Debra Bowen, that had been due to expire Jan. 1, 2013.
"I became motivated to get it right before we had another horrible disaster for our whole democracy," said Bowen. "We couldn't afford another election where there was vast mistrust of the results."
Secretary Bowen visited the Mountain Area to inform voters what she is doing to protect against voter fraud, empower voters, work with teens through mock trials, work on open government, the Safe at Home program -- a confidential address program for survivors of abuse -- and to take questions from the partisan crowd.
Bowen met with County Clerk and Auditor-Controller Debi Russell and her elections staff, as well as CAO Craig Pedro and District One Supervisor Liz Bass. Some discussion focused on the recently passed Proposition 14, which Bowen calls a "game changer" in the election process. California will be moving to an open primary system in 2012, and all 58 California counties will need to prepare for changes over the coming year.
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