Bruce Kennedy (Secretary of State)

During today's show we received a phone call from Bruce. Come to find out that he is a candidate for Secretary of State but I did not have him on the scoreboard. So he e-mailed his information to me and I have put him on the scoreboard. Now Mary Kiffmeyer is at a -10 and her opponents start with an advantage simply for running against her. They all have a + 5. Bruce also gets this anti-incubent advantage.

Bruce & I had a pretty good conversation on the air about raked ballots. Basically you rank all of the candidates in the order of your preference. If no candidate wins a majority then the bottom candidate is dropped and the ballots recalculated. At the time of the call I was pretty undecided about the issue. By the end of the conversation I was convinced...this is a bad idea. At some point in the near future I hope to do a post about this topic. For the purpose of this post I will say that Bruce maintained his composure very well and I love his position that only the people who actually vote deserve to control the process. And, in my words, the others deserve to be controlled by those who vote. This idea is a very healthy idea in a republic. It is the idea that is also very crucial in understanding the truth about same-day registration...that it is horribly damaging to this society. For this I give Bruce a few points. (+ 3)

The fact that Bruce supports so strongly this ranked ballot idea forces me to deduct points (- 2).

I then decided to review his website (something I have not done for the other candidates yet).

I love his voter's pledge. There are 7 bullets all of which I think are incredibly healthy in their premises (+ 7)

I disagree with the major concepts in the voter's rights. I do not like the ranked ballot (for which I have already deducted) and I do not like what seems to be a cousin of proportional elections (- 2).

I would have liked to see more biographical and background about Bruce on his website. Some other things I would like to find out from the Secretary of State candidate are his position (in his words) on same-day registration, campaign finance laws, issues with students being able to vote at school when their permanent address is elsewhere and should the SoS be the central information provider of election results for ALL elections within the state?

I do not detect a philosophical bias in the website and that is refreshing.

Please add my results to check my math, but I come up with a total adjustment of +6 to be added to the +5 starting point for all of Kiffmeyer's opponents.