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NEWS RELEASE:

10/08/2005 CFABA.ORG 'Report Card' Of
How California Counties Did Providing Candidate Lists.

For Immediate Release:
Contact Robert Colaco at (818)757-1776.

Saturday, October 08, 2005

CFABA.ORG completes sending out their candidate questionnaires and gives a complete 'Report Card' of how each California County did in providing candidate lists.

Citizens For A Better America ® (CFABA.ORG) is a national, grassroots, nonconnected, independent, political committee established on October 15, 1992 whose primary focus is to elect morality and values based candidates from the very lowest to the very highest political positions all over the U.S.A. It is not controlled or authorized by any candidate or their committee(s). All expenses are paid for by Citizens For A Better America®.

Volunteer National Chairman and Founder of Citizens For A Better America® (CFABA.ORG), Robert Colaco, commented:

"One of the goals of Citizens For A Better America ® is to improve the entire election process. This is not an easy goal to achieve. One of the ways to achieve this goal is to improve the process by which candidates for office communicate with their constituency and their constituency communicate with them.

We believe strongly that one of the ways that is achieved is by having easy access to candidate contact information such as phone numbers, email and website addresses. To this end we have been encouraging election officials at all levels of government all across the United States of America to provide this information to the voters. We are thrilled and delighted when they do, we are disappointed when they do not. This 'Report Card' is an attempt to begin the process of making public how specifically the election officials do on making this information available to the voters.

In this case, we have focused on California Counties and what they did for their voter for the November 8, 2005 election. We visited the various California Counties Election Websites two weeks after the close for filing had expired. It was our experience that some election officials post these list even earlier then close of filing, some post it as the candidates are filing. We wanted to have complete lists so we chose to waited for the close of filing to pass and time for the lists to be posted.

The following California counties had websites with candidate lists that also had e-mail addresses on their lists for one or more candidates, or they sent us a list with email addresses. These counties received a grade of 'C' or better, check the 'Report Card' below for their grades. This is the order they were contacted in.

S01. Los Angeles County List -
352 questionnaires were sent on 08/09/2005 and 09/20/2005.

S02. Ventura County List -
16 questionnaires were sent on 09/20/2005.

S03. Fresno County List -
08 questionnaires were sent on 09/20/2005.

S04. San Mateo County List -
118 questionnaires were sent on 09/20/2005.

S05. Marin County List -
28 questionnaires were sent on 09/20/2005.

S06. Sonoma County List -
05 questionnaires were sent on 09/20/2005. Sonoma County sent us a list but did not post it to their website, so we have converted it to PDF format and posted it to our website.

S07. Mendocino County List -
35 questionnaires were sent on 09/20/2005. Mendocino County sent us a list but did not post it to their website, so we have converted it to PDF format and posted it to our website.

S08. San Joaquin County List -
09 questionnaires were sent on 10/08/2005.

S09. Monterey County List -
45 questionnaires were sent on 10/08/2005.

S10. City & County of San Francisco List -
08 questionnaires were sent on 10/08/2005.

Aside from Los Angeles County with 352 emails sent, there were a total of 272 questionnaire's that we e-mailed out to the candidates in the nine (9) other California Counties listed above.

We are often asked, What about all the other 48 counties in California, besides Los Angeles? So we decided it was time to do a 'Report Card' on just how well those election officials were doing in making it easy to find out who was running and on how to contact those that were.

We have listed below all of the Counties in California and what was the status of their websites when we went looking for candidate lists with clickable email addresses, and the grade we gave them for providing information for this Nov. 8 2005 California Special Election.

First, we used the page on the California Secretary of State's website as our guide. Their website had a listing of the various "County Elections Officials" with email and website addresses for each if supplied. We examined the websites of those counties that had websites, checking for a candidate list with clickable email addresses (this in addition name, addresses and phone number) for this Nov. 8 2005 election. Second, we sent via email on 08/15/2005 An Open Letter Requesting Candidate Lists to all the counties where we had been unable to locate a candidate list on their websites.

As we used the page on the California Secretary of State's website as our guide. The county number is the number the California Secretary of State's webpage lists as a number.

The California Secretary of State's webpage we used is located at:
[http://www.ss.ca.gov/elections/elections_d.htm]

Grading system used by CFABA.ORG:

Grade A (Best) = All contact information available for voters. Such as full mailing address, phone number, email and website address. Email and website addresses are clickable within an Internet browser. All of this information is posted on their Internet website as an HTML formatted webpage rather than some other format like a PDF file.

Grade B = Had Candidate List on their Website with clickable email addresses but used a PDF formatted page instead of an HTML formatted page. This means users must download a PDF reader to be able to view the webpage. If they used a HTML formatted page then the email addresses were not clickable.

Grade C = They had a candidate list but it did not have email addresses. Or they had to send us their list of candidates via email and that list had email addresses on it.

Grade D = They did not have a candidate list on their website, and they could only send us the list either by fax or regular mail instead of by email. This meant they only had paper copies of their lists and were not thinking of their constitutes who use the Internet as a main source for getting information. Or, if they could send it via email the list did not contain email addresses.

Grade F (Worst) = Did not have any kind of a candidate list on their website or did not have a website. When requested to provide either a link to where it is on their website or a list they "Did not respond to our request." The counties that did not have an email or website address on the California Secretary of State's webpage [http://www.ss.ca.gov/elections/elections_d.htm] are receiving an F Grade as well, because it demonstrates a lack of interest in constitutes who use the Internet as a main source for getting information.

Grade N/A = Did not have an election, there was no way to see what grade they would be given.

A total of twenty six (25) counties did not respond to our request sent on 08/15/2005 An Open Letter Requesting Candidate Lists. The bottom line is they ignored us. That is forty four percent (44%) of California County Registrar Recorder / County Clerks did not even have the courtesy to send us a simple email. We are extremely disappointed with the counties that did not respond to our request. They received a Grade of F, for failure.

It is our goal continue to do this same kind of 'Report Card' on all election officials in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and the U.S. Territories of AMERICAN SAMOA, GUAM, PUERTO RICO, and the US VIRGIN ISLANDS.

If you are a registered voter in one of the counties receiving less than an 'A grade', we would encourage you to contact your county officials and encourage them to improve.

Or, if you are an official in one of the counties receiving less than an 'A grade', we would encourage you to improve.

If you are an election official somewhere outside of California and you know that you would not receive an 'A grade' then we would encourage you to improve, since soon we may be grading your website like we have done here.

We want to see election officials using the Internet to its fullest. Voters use the Internet, so election officials should make it easier for them to find the information they need. Any election official who doesn't use the Internet to its fullest is behind the times, the voters expect more and these officials should change or be replaced," said Colaco.

###

This is the end of News Release from Citizens For A Better America ® (CFABA.ORG).

If you use this story or link to it, we would appreciate you sending us a notice. Thank you!