The Secretary of State, an office established by the state constitution, is responsible for administering and enforcing election laws and certifying elections. It is also the filing office for lobbying and campaign registration and disclosure documents. The office  receives and reviews the filing of papers related to corporations, partnerships, limited partnerships, and other types of companies. The Secretary of State’s office commissions the state’s notaries public and enforces notary laws. It houses and preserves the state’s historical records and documents, and operates several programs and boards.

The office of Secretary of State was originally conferred by the governor as a three-year appointment, confirmed by the state Senate. Today, the Secretary of State is elected every four years, in the same election that selects the Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Attorney General, and Treasurer. Constitutional term limits now prohibit anyone from serving more than two terms in the office.

California’s original constitution ordered the Secretary of State to “keep a fair record of the official acts of the legislative and executive departments of the Government . . . [and to] perform such other duties as shall be assigned him by law.”

The Secretary of State’s office expanded its authority over elections to cover the conduct of campaigns as well when the Purity of Elections law was enacted in 1893. The law meant to eliminate bribery, fraud, secret funding, and other examples of election corruption by requiring candidates and their committees to file financial statements with the Secretary of State, showing donations and expenditures. In 1921, another law extended this disclosure to groups supporting or opposing statewide propositions, which had become part of California elections in 1911. Lobbyists were pretty much unregulated until their outrageous abuses of power made the electorate mad. In 1949, legislation forced lobbyists to submit their financial statements to the Secretary of State as well.

Voters approved the Political Reform Act (Proposition 9) in 1974, the most detailed disclosure law in the nation. This created the Political Reform Division under the Secretary of State as well as an independent state agency, the Fair Political Practices Commission. The Political Reform Act is revised and updated each year, which tweaks the responsibilities of the Political Reform Division as well.

For the first 11 years of statehood, the Secretary of State kept the books of the State Library in his office, and the Secretary of State is still responsible for maintaining the State Archives.

Constitution of the State of California 1849 (Secretary of State website)

State Constitution (Legislative Information)

History of the Political Reform Division (Secretary of State website)

The Secretary of State is responsible for administering and certifying elections in California, and that includes monitoring and upgrading the voting equipment and database systems. The office also educates voters, ensures accessibility to both information and voting, and establishes procedures that allow voters to file complaints about voting issues. Answers to questions about registration status, forms to register, and an FAQ are all available at the online voter registration page.

Elections

The results of previous elections, information on ballot measures, district maps and more can be found at the Election Division site map.

Also related to elections, the Political Reform Division registers lobbyists, both individuals and firms, as well as all levels of campaign committees. All these groups may be reviewed for compliance with laws regarding campaign financing. The Political Reform Act of 1974 is enforced by the Secretary of State, so tracking of donations and expenditures by lobbyists and parties is made available online.

Business Programs

Another, even larger part of the Secretary of State’s duties is the Business Programs Division. It provides online resources and downloadable forms and information for businesses, as well as searchable lists of registered businesses, and guides to starting a business in California. The Business Entities Section files articles of incorporation and other documents, including forms from foreign companies. This section’s oversight ensures that businesses adhere to state law in the way they incorporate, merge, and dissolve, etc. The public can search lists of businesses, get corporate information, and find forms.  Uniform Commercial Code Section files specific forms that can be important in case of later debt or bankruptcy.

The Notary Public and Special Filings Section is the state entity that commissions Notaries Public to then notarize and witness certain transactions throughout the state. The “Special Filings” part of this section covers trademarks, service marks, required bonds, and certain claims.

Registries

The Secretary of State operates the Safe at Home Program, which provides confidential P.O. boxes for survivors of assault, domestic violence, or stalkers, as well as for their families, employees, and others—including patients of reproductive health care facilities. For these people, the P.O. boxes allow them to keep their home addresses off any sort of public record.

Other programs administered by the Secretary of State are the Advance Health Care Directive (AHCD), registering the medical treatment preferences of people in case they cannot speak for themselves; the Domestic Partners Registry, both for same-sex couples and opposite-sex couples with one member over 62 who form a Domestic Partnership; and the Victims of Corporate Fraud Compensation Fund, which provides restitution to those who’ve been unable to collect on judgments for corporate fraud.

State Archives

The California State Archives, which collects, indexes, and preserves historical materials from the three branches of government, are managed by the Secretary of State.  This responsibility includes holding a complete record of the official acts of California’s legislative and executive departments, and the proper use of the Great Seal of California. Associated with this, the Secretary is also a trustee of the California Museum for History, Women, and the Arts. 

Information Technology

An Administration and Technology Program develops and manages policy and liaisons with other state agencies, California’s legislature, the federal government, and other states’ Secretaries of State. This program coordinates and makes information available to the public. It also provides fiscal, administrative, and technical expertise so that the Secretary of State functions and communicates efficiently.

The Secretary of State’s budget is $101.86 million in 2012-2013, down from near $164 million the previous year—a cut of nearly 40%. Most of the funding cut comes from the Federal Trust Fund, which in 2011-2012 put $82.3 million into the budget, but in 2012-2013 contributes less than $19 million.

Over half of the money ($52.6 million) is spent on filings and registrations, which funds the Business Programs Division and its sections, the Safe at Home Program, Advance Health Care Directive, Domestic Partners Registry, and the Victims of Corporate Fraud Compensation Fund.

Another $38 million, or more than a third of the budget, goes to elections. Beside oversight and registration of campaign and lobbying groups, this includes the maintenance and improvement of equipment and databases. $10.9 million goes to maintaining the State Archives.

In all these areas, salaries and benefits account for $32.4 million. The special expenses associated with elections—the costs of printing and mailing ballots and pamphlets and of monitoring and reporting on the elections themselves—account for $8.8 million.

Top 13 Contractors: The Secretary of State’s largest service contractors in 2012, according to the office, were:

3-Year-Budget (pdf)

The Ups and Downs of Handling Technology

Writing of the Secretary of State, Joe Mathews of NBC said: “One of Bowen’s greatest public services has been her smart skepticism about technology in voting.” He pointed out that Bowen’s 2007 review and decertification of much of the state’s voting equipment “may well have saved the state from serious election problems.” Her decisiveness in 2007 won acclaim and the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award.

Bowen also championed the use of cloud computing, wherein a contractor hosts online information. In 2009, traffic to the Secretary of State’s website was 16 times higher than it had ever been due to the controversy of Proposition 8, the gay marriage ban. “To accommodate that many users with an in-house system, the department would have spent nearly $1 million for technology that would then sit dormant for most of the year,” the Santa Barbara Independent reported. “Instead, Bowen’s cloud computing contractor sent them a final bill for $14, and then cut that bill in half after realizing they had overcharged.”

But that was then. What about now?

In November 2011, a computer crash disabled California’s campaign finance disclosure database (Cal-Access) and the system that validates voter registration for a month. A long delay in developing a promised new voter registration system and other election issues has put a spotlight on the Secretary of State’s technological shortcomings.

“Quietly, a political storm is growing over technology, access and the state of California,” according to Mathews of NBC.

Indeed. A Sacramento Bee editorial blasted Bowen over Cal-Access. “The Cal-Access crash is Bowen’s responsibility.” The paper also listed a recent Pew Survey that found California’s election site lacking many basic tools that other states have. PEW said the site “needs improvement” and gave it an overall score for California’s election website was 59.6 out of 100.

Bowen said she is frustrated by the computer errors. “She ought to be embarrassed,” the paper insisted. “California secretaries of state don’t have many duties. But what duties they do have are vital to a democracy.”

Mathews felt that heaping blame on Bowen may be unfair. “The fallen databases were antiquated systems” that have not been replaced due to the state’s fiscal crises and cuts. “That lack of funds isn’t Bowen’s fault.” On the other hand, he felt the Secretary has a chance to push for a “big, immediate investment in technology for the state, particularly in areas of public disclosure and voter participation.” Mathews did not suggest how that investment could be paid for in today’s economy.

The crashed computer system was 12 years old and one estimate put the cost of upgrading it at $20 million.

Debra Bowen’s Battles (by Matt Kettmann, Santa Barbara Independent)

Debra Bowen and the Lessons of Technology (by Joe Mathews, NBC)

Has Bowen Lost Interest in Her Elections Job? (Sacramento Bee editorial)

Technology Failures Prompt Criticism of Secretary of State (by Will Evans, California Watch)

Scoring State Election Websites (The PEW Center on the States)

State of California Websites Still in the Dark Ages (by Bob Morris, Politics in the Zeros)

Wal-Mart Games Expensive Special Elections

Special elections in California are conducted when an elective office is vacated through a resignation, death or higher appointment. From 2005 through February 2010, there were 14 vacancies that required 22 elections in the state, both primary elections and runoffs. Special statewide elections are paid for by California’s counties and cost around $70 million apiece.

Secretary of State Debra Bowen is a special election skeptic. “The cost is always high and the turnout is usually not so high,” she said in an interview in 2010. “The state really needs to look at alternatives.”

“These elections are characterized by extremely low voter turnout and disproportionately high costs,” according to Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/Clerk Dean C. Logan. He calculated that in Los Angeles County alone, 10 vacancy elections in a decade had cost taxpayers $40-$50 per vote cast, and suggested options: either consolidate special elections with existing elections, create “instant-runoff voting” by allowing voters to “rank their choices and consolidate the primary and runoff elections into a single election,” or allow appointees to fill vacancies.

Using California’s initiative system—which allows groups to get issues on the ballot if they collect enough signatures—Wal-Mart may force California counties into more special elections. The huge company “has hired paid signature gatherers to circulate petitions to build new superstores or repeal local restrictions on big-box stores. Once 15% of eligible voters sign the petitions, state election law puts cash-strapped cities in a bind: City councils must either approve the Wal-Mart-drafted measure without changes or put it to a special election,” according to California Watch. “Wal-Mart’s use of the initiative process has angered elected officials who say the company’s political strategy effectively holds them hostage.”

To avoid the expense of an election, counties have asked Wal-Mart to pay for the elections. “But Wal-Mart always declines.” In 2007, Wal-Mart used the initiative process to make Long Beach repeal an ordinance that blocked superstores with groceries. A Salinas ban met the same fate in 2009.

Four cities approved Wal-Mart’s initiative petitions in 2011 to avoid the expense of a special election. Only one—the small community of Menifee—held the special election, which cost their local taxpayers $79,000.  Wal-Mart spent nearly $400,000 there and won with 76% of the 11,000 votes cast.

Debra Bowen’s Battles (by Mark Kettmann, Santa Barbara Independent)

Rethinking Elections (by Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/Clerk Dean C. Logan, Los Angeles Times op-ed)

Wal-Mart Ramps Up Ballot Threats to Speed New Stores (by Will Evans, California Watch)

Business Filings Backlog

Budget cuts in 2009 and 2010 were blamed for large backlogs of business filings that caused long delays for people seeking new business licenses and other important documents. Several regional offices closed, staff hours were reduced and some functions were consolidated or curtailed.

By June of 2010, businesses were anecdotally reporting processing times for documents like Articles of Incorporation taking 28-30 days for processing instead of the usual 5-8 days. The Los Angeles Times reported in October that business filings, in general, had tripled in lag time, taking 58 days to complete.

In July 2011, Secretary of State Debra Bowen announced that the 2010-2011 state budget  allowed her to shift $500,000 to pay for overtime and temporary help to clear the document backlog and that processing times had dropped from 80 business days to 50. She also noted that the quicker processing time cleared an extra $3.5 million in fees.

In October, Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez said $1.2 million was being shifted to Bowen’s office to “confront the massive delay in the processing of business filings.” The backlog was estimated to be 200,000 documents.

Long Processing Times at CA Secretary of State (by Matthew Burgess, FormationSolutions)

Incumbent California Secretary of State Seeks Another Term to Fulfill Agenda (by Patrick McGreevy, Los Angeles Times)

Business Information Modernization (BIM) Project Update (Secretary of State website) (pdf)

Assembly to Transfer $1.2 Million to Secretary of State's Office (by Torey Van Oot, Sacramento Bee)

Processing Times (Secretary of State website)

Statewide Voter Database

The federal Help America Vote Act (HAVA), passed in 2002, mandated (among other things) that all states get a single, automated voter registration database. California received over $350 million from HAVA to implement its provisions. In California, counties manage their own lists of voters; there is no statewide database. The Secretary of State proposed using part of the funds for VoteCAL— a single, automated database  to manage the list of all voters in the state. This was to be deployed by 2009, but the original vendor was fired due to lack of performance. A second vendor is working with the Secretary of State, and contract signing is projected for 2012. The rollout of VoteCAL is now expected in 2015.

VoteCAL Project Status Report (Secretary of State website) (pdf)

Special Elections

In 2011, Senator Sam Blakeslee and others introduced SB 106, which would force the state to reimburse counties for the cost of special elections. This bill is being held in committee and under submission. Another bill addressing special election costs, SB 109, was introduced by Senator Ted Gaines. SB 109 would allow counties with populations under 400,000 and cities with populations under 100,000 to vote exclusively by mail in special elections, eliminating polling stations and their equipment and personnel. This bill failed to pass in committee, but reconsideration was granted.

Legislative Bill Index: 2011-2012 (Around the Capitol)

Voting on Campus

AB 346 would require the Secretary of State to conduct a study to determine whether putting polling places in college and university campuses would increase the turnout of student voters. It’s also in committee since July 2011.

AB 346 (Legislative Information)

Electronic Voting Machines

“Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything.” – A quote attributed to Soviet leader Joseph Stalin

Secretary of State Kevin Shelley decertified certain voting machines in 2004 after alleging fraud in their use in two counties. Secretary Debra Bowen followed up Shelley’s actions with a “Top to Bottom” evaluation in 2007 of all the voting machines used in California, including optical scanners, punch cards and touch screens. All were found to be flawed or vulnerable to hacking or manipulation—and were decertified.

How confident should Californians be about voting equipment in 2012, five years later?

Voting Machines Are Safe and Secure

A 2011 report on the status and future of voting in California from the nonpartisan e-voting watchdog Verified Voting.org was conspicuous in what was not included: criticism or condemnation of electronic voting in state elections. The report was unanimously approved by its 22 participants, which included the California Secretary of State, California Common Cause, the League of Women Voters and American Civil Liberties Union California.

The report was not a blanket approval of California election procedures; in fact, it noted that California was near the bottom in the percentage of eligible citizens registering to vote and barriers to participation that yield a voting population not representative of the state as a whole. But its goals and recommendations concerning voting technology mostly consisted of encouragement to fine tune existing procedures. It did recommend that the state consider having an independent group develop system testing guidelines and that it should consider continuing federal testing and certification in addition to or in lieu of state programs.

Secretary Bowen has been in the forefront of efforts to force voting machine companies to guard against errors and outside manipulation of ballots. Her actions in 2007 to decertify voting machines in 39 counties (despite a $450 million investment), accompanied by new rules for better securing the machines, earned her the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award. 

The Secretary of State’s office continues to oversee proposed improvements in electronic voting such as the 2010 “Voting Systems Audit Log Study” by the University of California, Berkeley, and a pilot program to audit the efficacy of state voting systems.

A Roadmap for the Future of California Elections (VerifiedVoting.org) (pdf)

Profile in Courage Award (John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum)

Post Election Risk-Limiting Audit Pilot Program 2011-2012 Overview (Secretary of State’s website) (pdf)

Voting Machines in California Are Not Ready for Election Prime Time

Scientists at Argonne National Laboratory demonstrated in late 2011 that information stored in a popular voting machine—the Diebold AccuVote, a unit used by up to 25% of voters nationally—could be altered. Their hacking tools? Parts worth about $10.50 and an 8^th grade science education.  “The experts say the newly developed hack could change voting results while leaving absolutely no trace of the manipulation behind,” according to a Salon.com article by Brad Friedman.

“We think we can do similar things on pretty much every electronic voting machine,” the leader of the research team said. In fact, “with an additional $16 remote control, the team was able to perform a[n] . . . attack from up to a half mile away.” Robert Vamosi of SecurityWeek.com reported this experiment and listed other factors: how easy it was to open voting machines, how keys to the machine are often generic or can be ordered online, how machines are delivered to voting stations and left in storerooms, homes, or schools, vulnerable to tampering,

Vamosi concluded, “This is a sorry state. In the decade since the 2000 presidential elections, voting technology has not aggressively pursued security. Much of the controversy has focused on the requirement of paper receipts . . . . The researchers at Argonne National Laboratory remind us that more basic concerns—interrupting the circuitry—remains a concern, with or without paper receipts.”

“Not to say we told ya so, but, ya know, we’ve been telling you so for years (and years.)” begins Brad Friedman (author of the Salon piece) on his Brad Blog. His post describes a new report from the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC)—a report that shows that “paper ballot optical-scan systems . . . result in machines freezing during elections, failing to log system events correctly, and perhaps most troubling, ballots being misread and votes being lost entirely.”

“The woeful EAC has never before taken the time to investigate and report on serious failures of e-voting systems,” Friedman says. He brings up another system, the. Diebold paper ballot-optical-scan systems. The EAC “never issued a warning about that system, to our knowledge, even after it led to hundreds of votes going uncounted in at least one election in Northern California (and lord only knows how many elsewhere . . .).”

The EAC was created in the wake of the contested presidential election of 2000, “charged with, among other things, certifying e-voting systems at the federal level, and serving as a national clearinghouse for e-vote system failures.” Freidman considers it “a totally compromised and utterly failed federal agency.” Why? “Beyond failing to decertify, in most cases the EAC doesn’t even bother to inform, much less warn, jurisdictions who use the systems found to be flawed.”

In fact, the EAC’s first chair, according to Friedman, quit in 2005, saying the electoral system is “ripe for stealing elections and for fraud.”

Still, the agency is needed, “as someone must serve to test and certify electronic voting systems at the federal level.” The EAC performs this service. “It just does so incredibly poorly.”

Diebold Voting Machines Can Be Hacked by Remote Control (by Brad Friedman, Salon)

Man-in-the-Middle Attacks on Voting Machines: Vote Early, Often, and Why Not Vote Remotely? (by Robert Vamosi, SecurityWeek)

U.S. EAC Finds ES&S Paper Ballot Scanners Used Across the Country Fail to Count Votes Correctly (Brad Blog)

Debra Bowen, 2008-2014

Bruce McPherson, 2005-2007

Cathy Mitchell, 2005 (Acting)

Kevin Shelley, 2003-2005. Shelley, a popular legislator, had to oversee the unique gubernatorial recall election of fellow Democrat Gray Davis in 2003, and investigated the makers of certain voting machines from Diebold that resulted in a criminal fraud investigation. Allegations about overly aggressive behavior toward staff and irregularities in political campaign funds forced his resignation, though he was cleared of any criminal wrongdoing.

Bill Jones, 1994-2003. Now the chairman of Pacific Ethanol, Jones served as state chairman for Republican John McCain’s presidential campaign in 2008. Before serving as Secretary of State, Jones had been a state assemblyman for 12 years.

Tony Miller, 1994-1995 (acting)

March Fong Eu, 1975-1994. Eu was the first Asian American woman elected to a constitutional office in any state and was widely popular across party lines (she was a Democrat). After leaving office, she served as U.S. ambassador to the Federated States of Micronesia for two years. She was defeated in a run for Secretary of State in 2002.

Jerry Brown, 1971-1975.  Brown was the son of Pat Brown, California’s governor from 1959 to 1967. Jerry Brown was elected the 34^th governor of California in 1975 and served two four-year terms. Brown, a Democrat, ran for president three times, served two terms as mayor of Oakland, and was the state’s attorney general before being elected governor for a non-consecutive third term in 2010. As secretary of state, Brown successfully prosecuted several large companies (Mobil, Gulf Oil, Standard Oil of California, and IT&T) for election law violations and enforced campaign disclosure laws. Other accomplishments include drafting the California Fair Political Practices Act, and exposing falsely notarized documents used to get President Richard Nixon unearned tax deductions.

H. P. Sullivan, 1970-1971 (acting)

Frank M. Jordan, 1943-1970

Paul Peek, 1940-1943

Frank C. Jordan, 1911-1940

Charles F. Curry, 1899-1911

Lewis H. Brown, 1895-1899

Albert Hart, 1894-1895

Edwin G. Waite, 1891-1894

William C. Hendricks, 1887-1891

Thomas Larkin Thompson, 1883-1887

Daniel M. Burns, 1880-1883

Thomas Beck, 1875-1880

Drury Melone, 1871-1875

Henry L. Nichols, 1867-1871

Benjamin B. Redding, 1863-1867. Redding, for whom a California city is named, was an original “forty-niner,” coming west from New England to search for gold. He did not strike it rich, but worked as a newspaperman and a claims arbitrator before being elected to the new state Legislature, then becoming mayor of Sacramento. Redding was the first secretary of state to be elected. After serving one term, he went on to become a land agent for the Central Pacific Railroad, a regent of the University of California, a member of the California Academy of Sciences and California Fish Commissioner.

A.A. H. Tuttle, 1863

William H. Weeks, 1862-1863

Johnson Price, 1860-1862

Ferris Foreman, 1858-1860. Foreman was a successful lawyer and politician in Illinois before volunteering and leading a company west during the Mexican American War. He came to California for the gold in 1849, worked in business and for the government, became a judge, and then was appointed secretary of state. He raised a company of volunteers to fight in the Civil War, but he was denied combat duty and remained in California.

David F. Douglass, 1856-1858

Charles H. Hempstead, 1855-1857. Another 22-year-old, Hempstead was the personal secretary to California’s second governor, John Bigler, who appointed him secretary of state. After two years, he left office when President James Buchanan appointed him superintendent of the U.S. Mint in San Francisco.

James W. Denver, 1853-1855. A lawyer and actor who fought in the Mexican American War, Denver came to California in 1850. Although dueling was illegal, Denver killed a newspaper editor in a duel which he tried to walk away from, and he was never charged with a crime. He was appointed secretary of state, and resigned two years later to serve as a U.S. Representative. President James Buchanan appointed Denver Commissioner of Indian Affairs, then Territorial Governor of Kansas during the “Bloody Kansas” period, when the territory became a battleground for the pro and anti slavery factions. The city of Denver, in a section of the territory that later became Colorado, is named for him. He served as a brigadier general for the Union during the Civil War and considered a run for president twice in the subsequent decades.

William Van Voorhies, 1849-1853. California’s first secretary of state was 22 years old an elected state senator, a lawyer and one of the few men who did not come to California looking for gold. Instead, he’d been appointed assistant postmaster for the new state. He resigned his position as secretary of state to become the surveyor of the Port of San Francisco. He spent the rest of his life in California as both a lawyer and newspaper publisher.

Profiles of State Librarians of California (California State Library Foundation)