Face The State Staff Report
Bernie Buescher has served less than a week as Colorado's new Secretary of State but his office is already busy prioritizing its agenda under new leadership.
State of Colo.
While Buescher may be new to the office, most of his staff is not. The Secretary of State has only one political appointee, the Deputy Secretary of State, and this position will remain filled by Bill Hobbs, who was originally appointed in 1999 under former Secretary of State Donetta Davidson. As a result, according to spokesman Rich Coolidge, the staff at the Secretary of State's office has remained virtually unchanged since previous office holder, Mike Coffman, left after being elected to Congress.
Coolidge elaborated on Buescher's priorities for the next two years, when Buescher will face an election for the post, which include certification of voting equipment and improving transparency surrounding the certification process.
"[Secretary Buescher's] first priority deals with certification of voting equipment," said Coolidge. "The Secretary wants to revisit legislation that will give our office flexibility in certifying voting equipment...A new registration system will provide tools for our office and the public to review voting trends."
The legislation Coolidge is referring to is House Bill 1155, passed during last year's legislative session. This bill allowed Coffman to certify thousands of voting machines, with restrictions, for use in the November election but is scheduled to sunset July 1st, meaning all electronic machines used last year would have to be re-certified for use in future elections.
Coolidge said it is among Buescher's priorities to revisit this legislation so that all machines used in the 2008 election remain certified and only new machines would have to be checked and certified.
Coolidge also said candidates and voters can expect a new campaign finance reporting database this summer.
"This summer we are rolling out a new campaign finance system," he said. "It will make it much easier for candidates to do reporting and will allow the public and media to generate easier and better reports that drill into the specific data they are looking for instead of just dumping data on our Web site."
For now, however, the Web site remains nearly identical to the one Coffman used. The one exception being a giant photo of a grinning Buescher that greets users at the home page.