Politicians try to game the system. California’s secretary of state needs to stop the games by enforcing truth in advertising for how politicians identify themselves on official ballots. <\/p>\n
Secretary of State Debra Bowen was prepared to allow state Sen. Tom Harman to call himself a “prosecutor\/attorney\/senator” as he seeks the Republican nomination for attorney general, even though Harman has never prosecuted a case. <\/p>\n
Fortunately, Superior Court Judge Allen Sumner blocked it. The matter should never have gone to court. <\/p>\n
There are many other examples of politicians using the official ballot to trick voters. <\/p>\n
Republican Steve Poizner calls himself “businessman” rather than insurance commissioner in his run for governor. <\/p>\n
Republican Ted Gaines calls himself “small business owner,” rather than insurance agent or Assembly member. <\/p>\n
Alberto Torrico, a Democrat running for attorney general, calls himself “workers’ rights attorney,” apparently thinking that title will appeal to Democratic primary voters. <\/p>\n
He was a labor lawyer before winning his Assembly seat and in February joined a labor-law firm. But he should own up to the fact that he is a member of the state Assembly. <\/p>\n
Then there is Sen. George Runner, a GOP Board of Equalization candidate and a fixture in the Capitol. Rather than call himself what he is – a state senator – he got away with “taxpayer advocate\/senator,” thanks to Bowen. <\/p>\n
The secretary of state needs to require officeholders to own up to their occupation as elected officials, and prove they have spent at least a year in a post before they list it. She must insist that candidates list their “principal” occupation, meaning how they earned the bulk of their income, and not permit three separate occupations, as Harman sought. <\/p>\n
If this proves to be too difficult, the state should end the charade and deny the use of any occupational designation, as most states do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Politicians try to game the system. California’s secretary of state needs to stop the games by enforcing truth in advertising for how politicians identify themselves on official ballots. Secretary of State Debra Bowen was prepared to allow state Sen. Tom Harman to call himself a “prosecutor\/attorney\/senator” as he seeks the Republican nomination for attorney general, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4325,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-515141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4325"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=515141"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515141\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=515141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=515141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=515141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}