good afternoon and welcome to the california secretary of state debate. i'm president ander publisher of the san jose mercury news. and i would like to thank our host for hosting us in this beautiful facility. i would like to thank silicon leadership group, abc7 channel tv and our moderator is carl gardino, president and ceo of the silicon valley group. >> thank you. good afternoon everyone.

good afternoon to our candidates silicon leadership group is pleased to hold this forum at intuitive surgical in sunnyvale with their ceo and chairman of the board. it is now my pleasure to introduce our panel as journalists who will be posing questions to our candidates today along with one of our ceo's who will be doing likewise. first we are joined by mark matthews, reporter for kgo tv channel 7. next george simpson, news and program director for lliz 1590 am and next, is executive editor of metro silly von valley. >> i'd like to now welcome our candidates for secretary of state, for california,

damon dunne andowen.ebra bowen. a few ground rules that both candidates have agreed on prior to the debate. also to the audience as a reminder, please refrain from any applause until the end of the program. although this is silicon valley we ask you turn off your cell phones and your pdas now. the format for today's forum is as follows. we will begin two minutes of opening remarks and two minutes of closing comments determined in advance by a coin toss followed by a series of questions from our panel of journalists and ceo who each candidate will alternate having two minutes to respond. the debate will focus on the policy challenges and solutions facing california and silicon valley. part one, again, is opening remarks. it is now my pleasure to welcome the candidates again and by coin toss, debra will begin the

program with opening remarks. thank you, you now have at floor. >> i thank you very much carl. thank you all to all of you for inviting me. i began this debate b treating it -- there will be undoubtedly facebook posts before the day is over. much of what my goals in running for secretary of state are very coincident with what you do in silicon valley. i did run for this office for two reasons and want to know what i will do, i would like you to reevaluate with my two goals when i ran. first was to evaluate and fix our voting system so it was up to the task demanded of it by a great democracy. it requires honest and fair elections for the orderly transfer of power. second, i ran to bring an office

that deals primarily with records into the 21st century, using information technology to provide better service at a lower cost while simultaneously improving transparency and access to records. when i took office as secretary of state of five years ago there have been five secretaries in five years so i had some real priority setting to do and had to get projects back on track that haven't made any progress in quite a while. first priority was review of voting systems, something of the first of its type in the nation. we now have more secure, more accurate systems than we did and our model has been used by other states around the country. i then turned myself to the office's needs and other programs and i'm sure we'll have time to talk about that.

i want to emphasize, one thing that is to run my office in a non-partisan physician. that is why i don't endorse candidates or ballot measures. thank you. >> thank you. nol will have his opening comments. >> thank you so much for silicon valley leadershipey l i was a poor kid. moved to california. i went to a good school, stanford, was able to go on and own my own small business. for me i have wanted to get engaged in public service. i want to make sure that other young people can have the same opportunities that i have had to achieve the california dream. why i am running for secretary of state i want to make sure that we increase voter participation. i went to some agencies and met

with the largest african-american newspaper and the managing editor says we don't have a lot of people out in the community that vote. i plan on showing up to these communities where there are a lot of people that don't vote. secondly, i'm an advocate to have a photo i.d. to vote. we can ensure that every iraqi gets thei their finger and detee there is one person and one vote but in california we don't require a photo i.d. thirdly i want to use the business filings as an opportunity to fight for jobs for people here in california. secretary of state is the only elected official that gets a notice every time they did this. what i want do is current secretary of state is not doing, i want to find out which tax policies to put out there. then i'm going to go back in the same industries and find out other companies then we'll go to

the state legislature and say, we've lost thousands of jobs. potentially we could lose more unless we change these policies. that is what i propose to do as secretary of state. >> thank you for your opening remarks. we're now going to our distinguished panel of journalists, our first question comes from mark matthews, kgo tv channel 7. our state initiative process fallen prey to folks with deep pockets who can hire signature gatherers to gettt they want enacted into law. do you think it needs reforming and if so, what way? >> we will go back and forth. >> i'll let you know that we'll first hear from damorn and debra

and we are rotate our questions. >> let me start off by saying it's important to have this process. what we see that people are frustrated with the state legislature in which 95% of the state senate and state assembly district, if you are republican you have to governor right. if you are democratic, you have partisan legislature. have an l. we have complete gridlock. tant thiet important things don. certainly there needs to be reform, from the perspective of making sure that it has an impact the general funds, there is necessary puirement. requirement. you you don't necessarily have a way to fund it. i want to make sure they are written properly and taken out of the hands of the attorney general and mainly bill today framitive wa a positive way for his party, both republicans and democrats in a non-partisan

group. we certainly need reform but critically important that we have the initiative process, particularly when we have of a state legislature that won't deal with spiraling problems and other issues that we are facing. it's a question that i long been interested in. i believe i carried my first initiative form in 1995 or 1996 which i was a member of the california state assembly. it would have d thomething that i still believe is very important which is inform inform voters of two things. at the time when they are going to sign the petition, one is whether or not the signature gather ser paid volunteer. that should be in type, nice and big so people like me that need reading glasses for just about everything -- don't need them for that. that let's people know what kind of questions they want to ask of

the signature gatherer before they decide to sign. the other piece of critical information is who are the top five funders who are paying to have that measure placed on the ballot. it cost at least million dollars to gather signatures. we do know who is paying for the campaigns but people don't know on a timely basis. so i think that is critical. i think what is interesting to explore a ofd kind of initiative process. one that returns to us the grassroots that howard johnson imagined in 1911 when we created the initiative process because the railroads had a lock on both the legislature and governor's office. what would happen if we said that anyone who agreed not to spend funds for anything other than printing and legal fees could have a much longer period of time to qualify. so the payoff would allow a

citizen sponsored initiative. that is something we haven't seen in quite a long time. thank you both. we are going to the second journalist, george sampson. from debra.se to the question >> we've gone from a time from election month. election month. 67% of the voters here in santa clara county, half a million people vote by mail. we see similar trends throughout other cou other counties. this means that election day is really a 30-day process. how is this changing the work oa the secretary of state's office along with local registrars of voters. what are elections going to look like in another five or ten years. will we be voting by mail? will we be going to the>> a? >> a wonderful question for

discussion and iions that i enjoy talking to high school students with because i don't endorse in campaigns, i'm very often in high school oregon community colleges or other campuses. we do have an enormous trend voting by mail, 57% of voters cast their ballots by mail. not all of them actually mail their ballots. a very large number drop off their ballots at any polling place in their county on election day. they have that ballot and california was one of the first to allow and voters to request to be a permanent vote by mail voter. they can automatically get that ballot in the mail without having to request it each time. it does mean a different process for registrars. the process of logging the ballots that come back in as an ongoing process. under a bill that i wrote when i was in the senate, voters can

check to see if their ballot has been received by their county registrar's office. if you are not sure your ballot got there you can check. when i was on a trip to iraq and afghanistan, i discovered that was extremely important to troops to know if their ballot had arrived. i think we're going to see a mix. i think that mix is a good thing in a state as large and diverse as california. many voters will either vote by mail or drop their ballot off. a few will still go to the polls, but what you have for registrars largely is the optical scan system that is what most counties went to after the top to bottom review found problems with the touch screen is the primary system. we are seeing that as being the one system that most counties

have. i think it's going to continue a variety. as many chances as we can give to cast ballots conveniently we should take. >> we certainly need options, to vote by mail and certainly have the option to register online. i think these things will increase voter participation if voters have options. what has not happened is the current intersect has not complied with -- current secretary of state has not complied and it took her two years to actually hire a vendor who actually implemented a voter registration database in illinois. i took to the principal of that company and they say the people in the office did not have comp competency or how to implement such a program. so the time lines were drawn out. as a result of that there was

blame shifting game. we do know the current secretary of state settled $1.8 million and we have lost those contracts. we did pay them a certain amount of dollars knowing they were not bonded and we should never have done that. ive usey couldn't give us a time line for when we will have a voter registration database. so we penitentiary the $1.8 million. the original estimate was $51 million. we don't have a time line if or when it's going to get done. that is where we need to be in five years. i don't think we the leadership right now. >> entire generation, young generation of californians has embraced mobile and online

technologies, yet the voter registration system is still a cumbersome paper based system. here in santa clara county we've started using mobile registration. how committed are you seeing voter online registration and what steps will takeou take to implement it. >> i'm very committed to it. a friend of mine that graduated out of computer science department we purchased the entire database for the business filings and looked through the voter registration because two of the issues, getting the filings online because it's taken 110 days. the issue we're facing from what we've been able to see the voter registration requires either a ground up or top down strategy meaning that all the counties that get plugged in the dmv have

to be plugged the department of corrections. also they of to be engaged to each other so we can determine if people are going from county to county. and making sure that all the counties and registrars want to be online with the secretary of state's office is an issue. i met with multiple registrars, they had concern with a top down strategy where the secretary of state and everyone would register through that office because they don't feel the quality of the service we're receiving would warrant putting their voter registration of individual counties contingent of how they can deliver the information. so they have decided that going from a ground up strategy is important. when i get into office, what i look forward in doing, make sure you have the right vendor. this vendor executed, it was clearly personality issues and a

it waste management. it was not good timing. when i'm in office, we'll get this project done. >> the software that would allow voters to register online present as a great opportunity in the state of california. the current elections code cly clearlyfor a wet signature, a handwritten signature on a piece of paper. there are number of questions that need to be answered before we proceed, of course the law has to be changed because right now, you can't have that as a valid signature. questions that i would ask, these will be discussed i'm sure in the legislature -- is the signature t signature that a voter signs on an ipad with a finger identical to the signature that was written with pen and ink or close enough. we do a signature verification

every time they sign a petition or votes by mail. if we have a situation where the voter registers one i way and then subsequently, let's say they register online and thegnsa signs a petition in pen and ink. if it doesn't match we have disenfranchised that voter. so we have questions about how we move there, what the databases would look like. the issues about security i think right now are not in a place -- we don't get the data about the pressure and speed al and all of that. we have to ask whether or not that is desirable. but i am committed to moving forward on that as well as allowing votegistero register online. my office has put a voter registration form so you no longer have to fill out the form on paper. right now we are working with

counties to get the data in the form electronically so all they will have to do when the paper form comes in is to scan the signature and match that to the data they've gotten from my office. there is a lot of the progress that we can make while we are working on the vote system. >> the ceo of integrated s solutions? >>ble eligible voters in califoa versus registered voters. there is a huge delta between the two. what are your plans in dealing with the disenfranchised in our state, whether the young people, latinos, african-americans or any of the other multicultural groups that are in the state? >> that is a great question because that is one of my highest priorities, first i want to make it clear, the voter registration database that we

are using right now, it was approved when a former secretary of state. we have done in compliance with hava at all times. i think we are going about it in the wrong way. what we're doing is sending people out and hoping that one of the five or six million people who are eligible but not registered might happen to come along while someone is out there they might have time to register. i learned quickly as one person in a state of 37 million where we have roughly 23 million eligible voters there is no way one person can possibly touch all of those people. which is why my office works in partnerships. we have the democracy at work partnership. why we use things of the outside of utility bills. i invite you to call my office and get involved in democracy at

work. we have a program where employers can use newsletters to remind people to register. but a more exciting innovation is one that is ongoing among several states and funded by the pew foundation. it would give us a means to identify a significant number of those people who are eligible but not registered. then the secretary of state's office can contact those people directly. so that i think will allow me to mak rogress. i advocate for a law that would youngtically person who goes to the dmv to get that first lons the roles and pre-registered at the time they are 15 or 60. over the course of doing that for maybe ten years, we can get about 80% of our california voters on the roles and then the information we get from that multistate project can help us

fill in a lot of gaps. that is the only way to do it at the scale we're talking about. we're one on one. >> i disagree with the secretary i have been to south central and santa ana and east los angeles, i met with the newspapers in those areas. you can talk with people and actually have a significant impact if you are working in the community with the local churches and local community groups, particularly in areas where you have low voter participation. secretary has not done. that we looked at her schedule and elected five times and three and a half years, she has gone out to areas where people have low voter registration, burbank and people in the community, pastors and community leaders have acknowledged -- there are two things we need to do. it's not just a registration issue. registering voters is not the issue. we have 17 million registered voters here in california but we

are expecting ten million people to vote in the gubernatorial election. so it's not just a registration issue, its voter apathy issue and it's based upon that public officials we have never come back to the communities and actually connect the dots. this is the food on table, this is how the jobs are impacted by the public policy decisions we're making. not going anywhere is not an excuse. we have to make a concerted effort and say, here a leadership move. we're going to have a day where you all go back in the community to talk about the importance of voters particularly in areas where there a low voter participation. we'll make eight monthly process into those areas, to meet with pastors and local newspapers and make sure that people have some level of activity and visible presence. that is what aggressive assertive and innovative and

creative leadership can do. thank you. >> now we're going back to mark matthews who will pose a question first to damon and then did he bra. >> in light of what happened with catalyst what would you do to attract more companies to bid on this process, companies with track records of success? >> that is a good question. in on previous debate with the secretar, there only one qualified vendor that actually bid into the process. i called the principal who was the primary con contact for california, he was able to rattle off six or seven firmst that implemented statewide programs. so an assertive secretary of state would go out and find those fir want we want you to come bid on our project.

we need to explain how the current database in regards how our hardware and servers can go just from technology change so we can actually reorganize the data in such a way that we can have easierata input. from that we can move to online voter registration. those are the kinds of things we need to do. but if we need an overhaul like implement in such states as missouri and alaska or georgia. we have to make a determination, is it the software issue, move over from a software issue. according to travis bloomfield he feels the hardware we have, we could go just from a software move and move the data that we can get this accomplished. that is what we need to do

let me actually put some facts into the mix here. there were a significant number of bidders -- first of all, i go to the bidder war the procurement legal system that i have, not the one i wish to have. so everything i've done has been in accordance with the procurement code. we had seven or eight vendors that met with us. at the end of that portion of the bidding we actually did have three completed bids that were submitted. two of the vendors missed one of the material criteria, therefore ways not allowed to open those bids. secretary of state's office does not conduct the procurement the department of general services does it on behalf of all of the

state offs. there was only one bid available. i thought it was weak, project manager had gone out of business between the time that they bid and the time they we were looking to enter into a contract, but i knew we would be sued if we didn't award the andd have to start over again. california, with our advertises we are so much bigger than any other at a time. if you look at the history from welfare reform, i got provision in the state budget to do a review of proposal to use a particular system for welfare reform. our auditor general came to the conclusion we would spend a billion dollars and not have a workable system. it's always an california. the secretary of state's office like many parts of the government has a very old legacy software and hardware. we also have data in many of our counties that has not been

converted. that first move, to clean up digital form, but we'll get this done. >> this is critical. >> i'm sorry. >> first i think your time is still running or did it. >> my time is up. >> she said that she knew that there were project management failures. she said she knew that this was indicates and she hires them anyway? that is not what we want. that is an important fact. >> arey rulesoing by rules. >> are we going to have rules to manage the california budget. >> regardless of the rules -- we followed the rules of bidding. i took it very responsibly. >> i've let this go on. >> they sued us anyway we

settled for $1.8 million. >> we're going to go back, please, to the questions and to the responses. we had heard from both of you on that question. we're going to go george sampson who will pose our next question. you can always use some of your time in your two minutes to go back to address other issues as long as you also address the question posed to you. this question will start with debra and go to damon. >> re-election and certainly heard both of you talk bit today. we hear a lot of talk about the importance of getting as many eligible voters as possible to register and presumably vote. what we do not hear is corresponding campaign asking voters to study the issues. as secretary of state what will

you do to promote voter literacy so they do make an informed choice, not just to register and vote but to think about it? >> i agree it's critically important. one of the things in my office that has been the most important to me is starting with young people. mr. dunn voted for the first time last year. we've heard that was a mistake and heard it from other candidates. i registered a voter who was 64 years old that voted for the first time in 2008. we have drive-thru voter registration and came at 11:30 at night. he said i'm in my house shoes and i really want to vote. if we can get young people to register and vote in the first time they are eligible, they are much more likely to stay committed voters and to participate. democracy is not instinctive, it

has to be taught and we are not doing a good job. my focus has been on a program called -- but never with the emphasis that i n in my office. we had over 250,000 students participate in the high school mock election. this year we opened it up to middle school and now we have 602 high school and middle schools participating with over 350,000 students. it's critical because it's an opportunity to educate. by used by teachers as gets can right into the framework that they are going to be tested on. we do that around some of the live ballot initiatives. we're trying to get them used to having a critical look at the issues. so all the voters, the voter information guide that my office puts out is the way to get a

non-partisan analysis and fiscal analysis of the issues as well as the arguments pro and con on both sides. that voter information guide which goes to 11 million households is a critical part of our means of educating voters. >> debra, thank you. >> we have to be able to work across the aisle, state senatort people that represent certain districts and we have to be able to say, you have to go back to e people on voting. that is what i talked about earlier. how the public policy decisions are impacting their day to day ork acros to work across the aisle. fred jordan vice president of the african-american democratic caucus, president of the african-american chamber of commerce in san francisco, he has endorsed me because they understand i have the leadership skills that can actually work across the i'll. debra mentioned the voter guides that go out.

what she didn't mention is that over 300 people in san mateo county did not receive their voter guide. that is leadership failure from the top down. she will there was someone that worked and that one of the principals of the company had passed away and protocol -- but today you have to require there are protocols in place so that every single voter gets their voter guide. that is the primary way people get informed on the for the people. that will not happen in the damon dunn administration. >> next we're going to hear in dan, president and founder of metro silicon valley. first response from damon and then debra. >> it seems like there is loopholes in the state of california to provide transparency to voters,

particularly last minute contributions which leaves room for all kinds of things. what steps can you take as secretary of state to improve the reporting fair political practice feilgsz to make sure, they know about the last minute donations? >> i think the problem is larger than that. also to the unions where we have money that is coming in to support candidates and the millions of dollars and they are actually influencing elections. they are going out and getting a candidate by using money. we have to make sure that money is not used in campaigns by outside groups to make sure certain people are elected. one thing we need unions are collecting $60 to $120 out of people's paychecks but that money is being used to fund

propositions. it's been used to fund candidates. what you find is a candidate -- i'm not knocking jerry brown for this, but the unions are putting $15 million behind your campaign our pensions that are spiraling out of control, how can you get honest pension reform when the people actuallythat. i think we want to deem with that or file a report that is required by the unions to make sure that we know exactly who is giving money and if these people don't have to give the money out of their paycheck every single month, they have a way to protect their money and they have to opt in, is what i want to say. we right now that information is coming to the website we are aware of 24-hour period we know who is coming on.

i would be interested in doing that, as well. we actually, we struggle sometimes with the budget cuts. i've cut 25% of my budget. the first time that the public saw any of that was this january. i've been able to take all the other budget cuts, do things like eliminate the red and blue, the voter information guide which saves us about $6700,000 a pop. -- pop.000 a pop. >> but we do pay overtime so that information in a 24-hour cycle is put up, uploaded as soon as it comes in from campaigns. there is a problem with different set of funding, citizens united case that was decided by the supreme court earlier, allows unlimited corporate funding for the first time. we are seeing as a result

campaign activities by groups that are not required to report or not required to report their donors under california law. we are going to have to revisit that issue legally in light of what has happened in this election cycle, but i think the question is more than that. how is it that we can help make people aware that that money is there. that is always a challenge with transparency and after transparency in government in 1993 when i carried the bill that put the california legislature on time. in 1996 i became the first person to ever post my own records i think voluntarily. i think that has to be part of the discussion when we're teaching, doing the high school mock election and teaching students, one of the things you have to teach funding, what is behind it. what is coming in late and what impact does it have when it comes in late, what impact does

it have when people may not know. californians are g ooking where the money is coming from and forming some pretty clear opinions about the next set of questions. >> our next question is cecilia mccoy. it will first go to debra and then damon. >> as an entrepreneur in running your business, businesses move quickly and you have to have changes in strategies, government not so much. the majority of the employees in your organization really don't work on voter registration, they work on the other aspects of your agency which is the business registration, other information, that sort of thing. what processes or procedures are you going to put into place to get your agency to function more quickly as a business? >> thank you.

of the 475 roughly employees in the secretary of state's office only 28 work in elections. 6-, the counties are the primary ones. i have made the business filings much of my work. we had a ten-day turnaround on business filings until january of this year. at that point the budget cuts and prohibition on paying overtime meant that we saw a rapid slide. it was taking up to 57 days. i very quickly went to the legislature and governor's office and got in the budget additional funding that will allow us to catch up and get our filings back on track with that two-week turnaround as well as programmer positions for two additional computer programmers that will be an interim solution for the business feilgsz until we can do a complete replacement. when i came into the office,

almost every single technology system was outdated and needed to be replaced. i know you cannot do all of them at once and expect to be successful. so the priority was the voter registration first, the business system second, although we did have to take social security numbers off the ucc filing system. that was done in early 2007. we have been able to work so now that most companies are able to file their statements as information online. we're encouraged that because -- the system when i took office was load full of people typing information in and mailed in. public access with somebody handing out a microfilm dish over the counter. much what we have in practice will get our system back to the two week turnaround time and then we'll continue to work to

have all the information online. eventually we'll have to go through the procurement process to rebuild the entire system. >> this is why i'm running for secretary of state. on one hand, debra says my budget was cut. she send out a letter and it says, state budget cuts have made difficult changes. reduce had agency budget by 25%, or $8.9 million over the last two years. on one hand one hand high budget has been cut and that is why the business filings have not been done in time. if many of you that have the state voter guide, she says, i have streamlined operations and cut the agency's budget by 25%.n on one hand she is taking credit for cutting the budget and misleading the people that she

is a cost cutter, on the other hand when she is not delivering service for business filings, she says my budget was cut and it's the result of other people's decisions. you can't have it both ways. on one hand they use facts to tell us one threatening. we need better leadership. every one in this room we need better leadership and california deserves better. and it's great that you go to esitter con he voter registration is not done. business filings is taken longer and voter guides in san mateo county did not get out. those are facts. you know it. i know it. they are not disputable. when i am in office i am going to make sure we have action and not just rhetoric. >> parted three of our debate

today, our questions from the audience. we were able to filter through some of those proposed questions and have selected two of those respond echbts to pose questions today. again, each of these audience members will have up to 30 seconds to pose their questions and then each candidate will have two minutes to respond. the first question will be posed by sherry with lucille packard children's hospital. >> so my question is, widespread agreement that california's government has become in many ways dysfunctional, especially as it relates to the budget process. this year the budget was hundred days late. reforms form groups are suggesting a package of changes to make them more accountable.

these proposals include adoption of a state budget with simple majority rather than the two-thirds now required, proposition 25 and a two-year budget cycle with performance based budgeting. do you agree with the suggestion and if not, why not? >> first of all, unfortunate we went with a simple majority how we would solve the problems we are facing. right now, we saw what the budget proposals from the democrats to increase taxes. we're in a position rights now where california was ranked 48th in the cost of doing business. if we enacted a budget, then we would be in much worse place, more businesses would leave the state. it's very difficult from a real practical perspective that i would agree with a simple majority for passing the budget. so, i'm not in favor right now of having a simple majority because we're going to get higher taxes and more businesses are going to leave, we're going

to have less revenues and more budget cuts, as a result our state is going to be in the worst position. at the end of the day, you can't live on exp.20 expenses, at some point you have to make the cuts. if you increase taxes where businesses are leaving, which in my business as real estate investor we were in a position where we saw our taxes going up, we come pen said and moving the business out of the state but i decided to stay and fight. people that own small businesses and larger businesses, they know that we can't compete wior nevaa or nevada because we're not in -- i know the practical results of that. >> i'm in a bit of pickle because one of my chief election officers to avoid conflicts of interests and that means i don't take a position on balloting and one of the questions, deal

squarely with the balloting issue. i have viewed my role as the defender of itself rights of every voter. i learned from watching the experience of secretary of states in florida and ohio how disruptive it is when secretaries engage in the political process. i simply don't do that. instead, i point voters to the voter information guide. i make sure we they know we have an 800 number and hot line. we'll operate in spanish as well shortly. but i do have a history of 14 years in the legislature and i also have a history of voting only once on a budget in some years. it was the 2004 budget which the budget problem was solved by a $15 billion of borrowing and wa what was touted as cutting of

the state credit card. i voted no on that budget because i thought no way in the world that was ever going to work in the long term. it's really tempting to say those words. i told you so, but i think that part of what we were seeing there, is term limits and people that had not experienced a down turn in the business cycle as part of the budgets cycle. when the business site turns down, not only is revenues down but with holding goes down and demand for services goes up. so the most critical aspect has been working orainy day fund. it's politically tempting for people to go to that and say no, we have to spend that now because we have needs for transportation, for water and other things. that is the fight we have to have. >> thank you both. we are now going to another audience member.

i would just say, i have no idea the question you are going to ask. if its proposition question, i think we just heard it's going to make it difficult for the respondents to respond. make it broader if it is a proposition question. this person from agilent technology. >> there is a ballot measure on the ballot in november that would shift the drawing of congressional boundaries from lawmakers a a citizens group. many people say that lawmakers in the past have drawn the lines only to stifle competition. how will you vote on this proposition and why? >> let's broaden that a bit to the broader issue then of redistricting. >> redistricting and responsibility for that. >> that sounds great. we're going to start with debra.

>> i was one of the co-authors in the measure in the legislature that created the current redistricting commission. so i may not be able to comment again, there is an ample track record, i co-authored ab-32. i think that it firsthand after the 2000 census, frankly i was shocked when we were well in process wh are zero women who are ho were near the process. it wasn't a surprised to me that the districts that were drawn had a greater disproportional impact on women than they did on men. there were a number of women that were quite literally drawn out of a district. it's not just people to draw districts that suit themselves

it was a deal that was cut to basically preserve the status quo on both sides. if i look at the vote, you'll see two votes, mine was one of them. i'm not afraid to stand up and say i disagree. i'm not afraid to take action even if it is unpopular. i think that is why i got the john f.kennedy profile award after the work was completed. it was what some called a gutsy move but in my time of the legislature, i find that i can't sleep at night if i don't do what is the right thing to do. so we're going to have a very interesting scientific study because you would have the legislative things drawn by the

commission and the other seats by the legislature. if they say as we are, we are going to know a lot about the difference. >> i appreciate b the question. there are issues that we face in this state. tax system where 1% of all the taxpayers pay 40% and pay the revenues when people are making money, that is one set of the issue. we have issues that restrict our total revenue so it puts businesses out. i think the greatest issue that our state faces is this gridlock thats is called by partisanship. it's how these districts are gerrymandered so that our state senate seats are determined in the primary. if you were a republican in orange county, you have to

g governor way right. otherwise you get recalled. you have this partisan legislature that can't get anything done. we can't get actual progress on budgets. when we have redistricting and hopefully we can get it extended to actually extend that, then what we're going to find we're going to have districts that will be drawn with nice squares or rectangles and get more competitive districts. we're going to get fair representation of out of those districts. some of thatock will gridlock wl subside. we'll get better policies. we can find agreement on budgets we can find agreement on issues that shifted our actual revenues in our state.

>> now we are going to slightly adjust closing comments from two minuteseconds so yohe seconds su are able to get in your full closing comments. we'll start those with damon and complete those with debra. >> i want to thank you all for joining us today. i think as we have seen, an incumbent leader that has made excuses and shifted the blame. voter guide didn't get done, it was the vendor's fault. the the database, it was the vendor's fault. shen voterllow up on voter fraud in san diego or somehow most of registrars in san diego, that was a conspiracy theory. they're not being honest about it. business filings are getting done much later. they are working on things that done in october and they should

have been done in may. we need a leader t beeeds to be accountable. you have to get things done. you have to execute it, execute it, execute it. and that go things are not going to get better. at the end of the day, i grew up on a farm don't have a lot of money. he said if you like what you're getting, keep doing what you are doing. i think california, it's time to make a change. we need new leadership and i'm your candidate. >> i'm very proud of my record. ly stand happily for re-election. we've completed a great deal of work. you cannot ask people to participate and to vote if they don't have confidence that when the votes are tal tallied that

the right person will be sworn in. that was the most critical thing to do. since then i have worked very hard on a lot of small things that you may never see, redesigr the voter registration form. working to use a cloud computing system so instead of spending a billion million dollars to buy a new server that we need for three hours on election night, we use cloud computing. i think we first got a bill for $16 but we got a $7 refund so that instead of $800,000 for the equipment. we have federal program for overseas voters and taken the social security numbers off the commercial code filings and referred many cases all but three cases in san diego to

prosecution. gotten a judgment against someone who was using business filings to make it look like you had to pay to file. many other things. thank you. debra and damon and distinguished panelists. thank you for your participation. i would like to thank all of our sponsors. as a reminder, silicon valley leadership neither endorses candidates nor offers political contributions but we like to keep i informed on candidates' positions on particular issues. we wish you well on the campaign trail and to all of our listeners today and our audience please don't forget to vote. thank you very much.

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