Introducing Myself

Hi. My name is Pamala Smith and I am running for Vermont Secretary of State.  

As I talk you will see one of the reasons I thought of running.  You will see as I talk that there’s something abnormal and wrong here.  I’m not going to go into the specifics of it but I figured I would tell you that early and then you would notice it.  

My tagline for the campaign is Effective Oversight, Simplicity, and Transparency.  

The effective oversight part concerns professional services like health care & lawyers.  One thing that you can’t help but notices is that if you go to the current Secretary of State’s website, I you wanted to file a complaint against a professional service provider, it’s not front and center – you’re not clearly welcomed to do that.

And I think that there’s something wrong with that.  I think, first and foremost, it should be clear that you’re more than welcome to provide any information you’d like to provide in a complaint against a professional service provider.  

I’m not sure why we have to struggle at all to make a complaint – granted it’s on the second page – but it says something to me.  For effective oversight you need to confirm that you’re doing something as well as you need to be doing it.

Simplicity also applies to this example I gave.  I think any presentation, particularly the website, which is static, should be as simple as possible.  When I say simple I don’t mean simplify it so that it has less meaning.  It’s more work to produce something that’s simplified for the purpose of ease-of-use  – it is not simplified for the purpose of saving the author time.  

And regarding transparency: for the Secretary of State’s Office everyone should feel comfortable that they’re being interacted with honestly and they’re being presented with full information.  

Thank you for watching!