Forrest Hill (politician)

Forrest Hill is a 2006 Green Party candidate for the California Secretary of State's office, currently occupied by Bruce McPherson. He is an openly gay candidate who supports gay marriage and benefits for domestic partners. He has previously been involved with the campaigns of Peter Camejo and Ralph Nader.

Early life
Forrest Hill is a former researcher for the Institute of Theoretical Dynamics at UC Davis and has a PhD from M.I.T. While attending UC Davis, he started the campus Green Party and also got involved in the Yolo County branch, which helped to influence his current political views. He was a campaign strategist for the 2004 presidential campaign of Ralph Nader and is currently an Oakland investment analyst.

Political platform
Hill’s platform stresses the issues of DRE voting machine reform, public financing of elections, domestic partnership rights, immigrant rights and granting prisoners the right to vote, among others. His positions on voting machine reform (particularly Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) and Proportional Representation) include the ideas that all electronic voting machines should use open source software, produce Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail, be capable of implementing representative elections (such as IRV and other rank choice voting methods), and the creation of legislation to prohibit voting machine manufactures from making political contributions. Hill's uncontested primary run on the Green Party ticket for Secretary of State in June 2006 gave him 31,763 votes.

Following the June 26, 2004, the Green National Convention, Forrest Hill wrote an essay with Carol Miller, titled "Rigged Convention; Divided Party'," which described the convention elections as undemocratic. Other Green Party members responded, such as Greg Gerritt, with his piece, Green Party Tempest.