There is a concerted campaign to get rid of California's secretary of state, and now the paper in the state capital has called for him to resign.
Shelley's real sin is that he decertified Diebold in California and called them the crooks that they are.
In a bitter irony, the last couple of paragraphs in that very article spelled out the stakes of losing him:
The 2006 june primary looms. It will involve all statewide officeholders and so will be even more complicated than the presidential balloting was in November.
To prepare, many county elections officials, Sacramento's among them, must purchase and test new voting equipment and train poll workers on those new systems. Registrars are working furiously also to comply with federal election accessibility rules by a Jan. 1, 2006, deadline.
In addition, the state is required to have a statewide fraud resistant voter registration list in place by next year, a difficult technological feat. Achieving all of this will require leadership. Shelley is in no position to provide it. The sooner he cleans out his desk, the better off the state will be.
The rest of the editorial:
http://www.sacbee.com/content/opinion/story/12152933p-13023037c.htmlLink to letters to the editor of Sacramento Bee:
http://www.sacbee.com/static/live/opinion/letters_form.... My letter to SacBee
Given the behavior of GOP secretaries of state in Florida and Ohio, who purged legitimate voters, under-equipped minority neighborhoods, forced provisional ballots on primarily black voters, and bought GOP built rig-able voting machines, do we really want to get rid of Kevin Shelley and let Arnold appoint his replacement? All of these were well documented in John Conyers House Judiciary Committee's report on election irregularities in Ohio. Whatever Shelley's sins may be, that would be like replacing a pickpocket with Jeffrey Dahmer. I want my vote to count and be counted. Punish Shelley in any other way you see fit, but forcing him to resign will punish all of us by effectively ending fair elections in California.