Who will Cegavske represent?

By Gil Eisner, Las Vegas

Wednesday, Oct. 22, 2014 | 2:02 a.m.

I viewed with interest the article on the secretary of state race in the Oct. 12 issue of the Sun. One important overlooked fact is that candidate Barbara Cegavske serves on the board of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and is state chair for that organization.

ALEC is an organization comprised of industries and corporations that develop model legislation benefiting those industries and corporations. Lobbyists, special interests and selected elected officials (who are invited members of ALEC) then review and vote to approve these proposed legislative actions in closed session. In many cases, this model legislation is then introduced by the very selected elected members of ALEC who voted on them in ALEC’s closed sessions.

Typical of the legislation created by ALEC are the “stand your ground” laws, voter ID requirements, privatization of state prisons, lowering of clean-energy requirements and privatizing education, just to mention a few.

This secretary of state office governs elections and is one of the two “czars of democracy” in the state (the other is the governor).

The question is who will the next secretary of state represent, the people or ALEC?