EUGENE, Ore. -- Three candidates, one job: Oregonians pick a new secretary of state this fall, along with a president, U.S. senator and state treasurer.

The secretary of state is the auditor of public accounts, the chief elections officer and administrator of public records.

The secretary of state also serves on the state land board and chairs the Oregon sustainability board.

The position is also first in line to replace the governor in the event something happens to the state's chief executive.

David Walker from KVAL News asked the three candidates -- Democrat Kate Brown, Republican Rick Dancer and Green Party candidate Seth Woolley about Oregon's initiative process.

Kate Brown: What I would say is as your next Secretary of State I want to put integrity back into Oregon's initiative system.

Last session I stewarded through the senate a bill to give us the tools to crack down on fraud and abuse in Oregon's initiative system. One of the provisions of the bill prohibited folks who have a conviction for fraud or forgery or ID theft from being paid signature gatherers.

That's the kind of work I want to do as your next secretary of state. I'm a firm believer in Oregon's initiative system. I believe it belongs in the hands of law abiding Oregonians.

Seth Woolley: Well I don't think we should work to restrict it. I think the main problem with it is there's too much money involved in the gathering signatures and advocating this and that. I think if we had some sort of reasonable limits that it would be much more you know you wouldn't have really one side the big money side controlling it.

I think one proposal that would actually help is if we had an initiative primary where we took the initiatives and reduced the signature counts put them in the primary and any that pass there would then go into the general election ballot where we can have a look at it in more detail.

Rick Dancer: I think we are to a point where we almost have made this too difficult for the average citizen to use, and I get that from Phil Keisling, former secretary of state, who just got the signatures he needed for measure 65, who in an op-ed piece said something similar to that that it was very difficult so for a regular citizen to use it we're on the edge I think.

I want to go in and crack down on the abusers, the people who are fraudulently signing signatures but right now the state doesn't do that.

We do the big people but we don't do regular folks. Igot names of folks who have been caught doing this and the state never prosecuted them. We need to go make an example and say uh-uh, this is a sacred process and you don't get to do this. Yeah, I think it is a sacred process.