Allison’s Replacement Should . . .
Republicans need a candidate for Iowa Secretary of State, the chief elections official in Iowa. Their “placeholder” candidate has dropped out after winning a contested primary. There must be some skeletons in his closet!!
The new candidate should . . .
A. Understand computers at least to the level of the old adage “Garbage in, garbage out.” In other words, a healthy dose of skepticism is in order. Computers can be programmed honestly, erroneously, maliciously, and surrepticiously. Hackers have caused trouble for the Department of Defense and for Microsoft. It is only a matter of time before they steal votes. Maybe they already have. This means any current county auditor who uses paperless voting equipment is disqualified for being too trusting.
B. Believe in auditing elections even if it means exposing his/her own errors. This means we need something worth auditing, namely a written ballot verified by the voter. Audits should be regular, widespread, and random.
C. Insist on public control of all aspects of the election. That includes the software that runs any computers and the maintenance of any hardware that the state or county uses to facilitate election administration. Control should not be in private hands, whether corporate hands, candidate hands, or criminal hands.
Those three steps will go far to make elections transparent. Now as for making them open, a good candidate will
D. Advocate for a new registration regime for poltical parties. Iowa law prohibits registration for any party except Republican or Democrat. The Green Party currently has a lawsuit pending with Secretary Culver on this matter.
E. Advocate for public funding for campaigns. We all know that “who ever pays the piper calls the tune.” The public should pay the campaign expenses so that we can call the tunes when the legislature convenes.
F. Advocate for instant runoff voting (IRV) in Iowa’s non-partisan races for mayor. Currently a second runoff election is ordered if a candidate fails to get a majority in the first round. This is expensive and needless. The IRV system can do it all at once.
Who can be this candidate?