Kim Alexander: Voters, Ballots and the June 7 Primary

CAPITOL WEEKLY PODCAST: For the upcoming June 7 Primary, California has mailed a ballot to every registered voter in the state. Not every voter will mail their ballot back – some will opt to drop their ballots in person at a voting center, and some voters won’t cast a ballot in the primary at all.

With some 22 million ballots at large, should we be worried about voter fraud? When it comes to ballots and the California election process, Kim Alexander is the person to talk to. Alexander is the President of the California Voter Foundation which she has headed since 1994. Among CVF’s mission goals is advancing voting system security and meaningful auditing of ballots in California and nationwide.

Under Alexander’s guidance, CVF built the world’s first real-time, online campaign finance disclosure database for the 1995 San Francisco Mayoral Election. Inspired by the SF experiment, the California Legislature enacted the Online Disclosure Act of 1997, mandating that state campaigns file their data in digital formats that the Secretary of State would then post online. California campaign data first started being made freely available to the public online in 1998 via a searchable database created by CVF.

Alexander joined us to talk about the upcoming Primary and California’s Vote-by-Mail process. Plus: Who had the Worst Week in California Politics?

Episode Notes