<x-flowed>On 5/25/06, ban@richardwinger.com <richardwinger@yahoo.com> wrote:

I live in California.  Yesterday I attended a training
class for precinct elections officials.  We were
instructed not to tell independent voters that they
are free to choose to vote in the Democratic and
Republican primaries.  This is "orders from the
Secretary of State", and quite different from our
instructions in past elections.  The California major
parties have been letting independents vote in their
primaries starting in 2002 (except Republicans
excluded independents from their presidential primary
in 2004, but permitted them to vote for all office
other than president).

If an independent voter asks about his or her choices,
we can answer truthfully; but we can't volunteer any information.

I just talked to a friend, Caren Daniels-Meade, Chief of Elections in
the SoS's office, and she said this is absolutely not an SoS policy or
order and that they're putting out a press release[1] that will go out
this evening (if it already hasn't) specifying this.

Mr. Winger, was the training you attended in San Francisco? Ms.
Daniels-Meade would like to know which county this was in to act
appropriately. best, Joe

[1]: <http://ss.ca.gov/executive/press_releases/news_releases.htm>