Secretary of State Ross Miller or Danny Tarkankin?
With only 7 days left until I cast my ballot I still have many offices to research and decide on who I'll vote for, today I turn my attention to the Secretary of State. To summerize, I support Ross Miller for Secretary of State.
Our current Secretary of State, Dean Heller, is running for the Nevada 2nd District Congressional seat and that means either Danny Tarkanian (son of the UNLV coaching legend 'Tark the Shark' Jerry Tarkanian, and city council member Lois Tarkanian) and Ross Miller son of former Nevada Governor Bob Miller are the serious contenders for the position that controls much of the record keeping for the State. Miller want to increase information access and decrease corporate fraud... that's enough for me... but let's explore a bit to make sure.
Of course both Miller and Tarkanian have several clips on YouTUBE. I found this John Walsh endorsement for Miller creditable...
And this clip speaks to the only issue Tarkanian has really focused on, photo ID for voting
Ross Miller spoorts building an online searchable database for documents, wants to increase access for Nevada Residents to both the voting booths and public data.[source video] So far, I'm having trouble finding one disagreeable facet of Miller, his vision for the position is a technology driven approach to solving public data access and voting access nad an investigative approach to solving corporate fraud. Miller wants to reform some of the Nevada corporate goverence laws and get tougher on corporate criminals, seems reasonable and timely.
As for Danny, I'm sure he'd be adequate, but he comes across as seriously 'out of touch' and one issue focused to me. I truly believe access and quality of record-keeping will suffer under someone who, as a top priority wants to institute a photo-id check, a procedure that does in fact add an unnecessary layer of bureaucracy to a process where citizens don't vote! A 60% voter turn-out is expected this election.
Some of the most in-depth examination material I found of the candidates is this Secretary of State debate MP3 from KNPR.
Danny focuses on the voting process and the "integrity of the voting process and only 'correct'.. legal votes will be counted" --[from the above MP3]. He wants to do this using driver licenses verification via the (right now it requires a water/power/phone bill). This is a problem, but, the drivers license isn't the solution. Miller's response seems far more reasoned coming from the stance of a District Attroney, it's a two pronged approach that will both increase record keeping access and use that ease of access to faciliate investigations into voter fraud.
This brings me to a final topic to touch on and that is the Nevada Voting Machines. Yes, they are made by Sequoia, no this doesn't mean squat and Venezuela is irrelevant. They require a paper trail and are as far as I can find the most secure machines being used. However, there was a bit of a flare up back in 98', but that was during a test long before anything was in place... and again reports of lower then expected turn-out in opposition to Tarkanian's unsupported hypothesis (put a link in the comments to the proof, or at least statistics that back this in NevadaI could find none) of people voting who shouldn't be these stories (and the statistics) support Miller's position of organized fraud and vote destruction, which I did find evidence of.
One final note for Danny Tarkanian, sohuld he read this, if your such a good businessman... why didn't the Reno Chamber of Commerce[RGJ] back you?