John Anthony
La Pietra for
Secretary of State * Green Party
386 Boyer Ct * Marshall, MI
49068
http://members.triton.net/jalp/jalp4FBE.html
jalp4FBE@triton.net
Campaign News
*URGENT* News Release: November 2, 2010
UPDATE:
La Pietra Re-Reposts Corrected Saginaw County Candidate List
County Website Front Page
Changed -- to Link to Inaccurate List Again
Clerk's Office
Still Won't Finish Fixing List Posted in Its Webspace
or Delete Erroneous Sections and Give
Voters a Link to State List
Also, 66th County Responds to
Voting-Conditions Survey Prep Request
John Anthony La Pietra, the Green Party of Michigan candidate for
Secretary of State, is re-issuing his caution to voters in Saginaw
County not to rely on the incomplete and inaccurate candidate list
posted by the County Clerk's office.
Yesterday, he had sent out instructions through the media for how to
use the front page of the county's Website and the "ballot proofs" link
there to see accurate images of what today's ballots in their home
precincts will look like.
The homepage of the Saginaw County government Website is
http://saginawcounty.com/Default.aspx
On the left-hand side of the page, there is still a link titled
"November 2010 Ballot Proofs". At the Webpage it leads to:
http://saginawcounty.com/November2010BallotProofs.aspx
visitors will see a list of all the townships and cities in the county.
(The list is in alphabetical order -- but all of the cities are
bunched together as "City of X".)
If you click on a particular township or city's name, you will see an
image of all of the different ballots for the precincts in that city or
township. (The files are in Adobe Acrobat PDF format.) The
ballots have been sent out to the candidates, John notes, to be checked
-- proofed -- as required by law.
But there is a link above the ballot-proofs link again. It now
leads to a separate page entitled "Election Candidates, Proposals &
Results":
http://saginawcounty.com/2010ElectionCandidates.aspx
It is apparently set up to link to the postings of election
results. It also offers link to the "notice of election" -- the
ad announcing the election, the deadline for registration, the polling
places, and so on. And it has the language of proposals on the
ballot, both statewide and locally throughout the county.
But it doesn't let you see the ballots. Instead, it has a link to
"Candidates for November 2, 2010 General Election":
http://saginawcounty.com/Docs/Clerk/Elections/CANDIDATES.PDF
And if visitors go directly to the Clerk's home page:
http://saginawcounty.com/Clerk/Default.aspx
or the office's base Webpage on Elections:
http://saginawcounty.com/Clerk/Elections.aspx
they won't find that link to the ballots. Instead, under the
heading of "CANDIDATES", they'll find a link to that same
"Candidates for November 2, 2010 General Election" page.
And this page, even though it says it was updated this morning, is
still
missing all candidates for Supreme Court Justice -- and any mention of
the races for two seats each on the four education boards:
State Board of Education
University of Michigan Board of Regents
Michigan State University Board of Trustees
Wayne State University Board of Governors
The situation is better than it was. Until last week, the
county's list of candidates for tomorrow's general election was really
just a leftover from the August primary, and included only one partisan
candidate who wasn't a Democrat or Republican. But there are
still two notable errors on top of the omissions:
* Albert Chia, Jr. is a Libertarian
candidate for State Senate from the 32nd District, not for the 4th
District Congressional seat.
* And J. Matthew de Heus is the Green
Party's candidate in the 5th Congressional District, not a second
Libertarian in that race.
John tried to help Saginaw County make up for lost time and
short-staffing of the Clerk's office by preparing a corrected list
himself. He took the posted county list, added missing candidate
information from the official state list posted by the Bureau of
Elections:
formatted the information to match the county’s format, and sent
it to the County Clerk as an Adobe Acrobat PDF file. He has
received no response, and his draft list was neither posted itself nor
used to finish correcting the county’s posted list. Nor is
there a link to the state’s list from the county’s
Website.
So John has posted his corrected version of the list. He updated
his version yet again today:
"If you want to see the ballots themselves, the county's homepage can
get you there," John concludes. "If you want to see an accurate
list of candidates on the ballots of Saginaw County, my Website can
give you that. Unfortunately, you can't find good information of
either kind in the County Clerk's Webpages."
For details of John's correspondence with the Saginaw County Clerk's
Office on this issue, visit
Another
County Heard From: Alpena Sends Precinct List and Voter Counts
Alpena County has added itself to the list of counties turning out on
John's call for lists of precincts, figures on how many voters are
registered in each precinct, and where the polling places are. 66
out of 83 county clerks have now responded.
John is now looking forward to getting voting-conditions survey results
from voters in the 5,050 precincts across Michigan on and after
Election Day.
"When we put the information from the clerks and the observations of
the people together," John says, "we'll have a powerful tool for
analyzing and planning the equipping and staffing of polling places
better and more fairly -- giving us shorter lines and more time to
vote.”
Voters who want to know how their clerks responded to this request can
see an updated status report on John’s campaign Website at
John’s initial request to the clerks is also on line, at
And a copy of the survey sheet for individual voters to take with them
to the polls November 2 is posted at
*URGENT* News
Release: November 1, 2010
UPDATE:
La Pietra Reposts Corrected Candidate List for Saginaw County
County Website Front Page
Now Links Only to Proof Ballots, Not Inaccurate List
Clerk's Office Still Won't
Finish Fixing List Posted in Its Webspace
or Delete Erroneous Sections and Give
Voters a Link to State List
John Has Also Posted Updated
Versions of Statewide Write-In List,
Status of County Participation in
Voting-Conditions Survey Preparations
John Anthony La Pietra, the Green Party of Michigan candidate for
Secretary of State, cautions voters in Saginaw County not to rely on
the incomplete and inaccurate candidate list posted by the County
Clerk's office.
Instead, he suggests, they should go to the front page of the county's
Website and follow the "ballot proofs" link there -- which will let
them see images of what tomorrow's ballots in their home precincts will
look like. Or, if they want a list of all candidates on any
county ballot, they can come to his Website and see the list he
prepared and sent to the clerk's office.
The homepage of the Saginaw County government Website is
On the left-hand side of the page, there's a link titled "November 2010
Ballot Proofs". At the Webpage it leads to:
visitors will see a list of all the townships and cities in the
county. (The list is in alphabetical order -- but all of the
cities are bunched together as "City of X".)
If you click on a particular township or city's name, you will see an
image of all of the different ballots for the precincts in that city or
township. (The files are in Adobe Acrobat PDF format.) The
ballots have been sent out to the candidates, John notes, to be checked
-- proofed -- as required by law.
But if visitors go directly to the Clerk's home page:
or the office's base Webpage on Elections:
they won't find that link to the ballots. Instead, under the
heading of "CANDIDATES", they'll find a link to "Candidates for
November 2, 2010 General Election". This page:
is the one missing all candidates for Supreme Court Justice and any
mention of the races for two seats each on the four education boards:
State Board of Education
University of Michigan Board of Regents
Michigan State University Board of Trustees
Wayne State University Board of Governors
The situation is better than it was. Until last week, the
county's list of candidates for tomorrow's general election was really
just a leftover from the August primary, and included only one partisan
candidate who wasn't a Democrat or Republican. But there are
still two notable errors on top of the omissions:
* Albert Chia, Jr. is a Libertarian
candidate for State Senate from the 32nd District, not for the 4th
District Congressional seat.
* And J. Matthew de Heus is the Green
Party's candidate in the 5th Congressional District, not a second
Libertarian in that race.
John tried to help Saginaw County make up for lost time and
short-staffing of the Clerk's office by preparing a corrected list
himself. He took the posted county list, added missing candidate
information from the official state list posted by the Bureau of
Elections:
formatted the information to match the county’s format, and sent
it to the County Clerk as an Adobe Acrobat PDF file. He has
received no response, and his draft list was neither posted itself nor
used to finish correcting the county’s posted list. Nor is
there a link to the state’s list from the county’s
Website. So John has posted his corrected version of the
list. He updated his version today:
to include whatever changes the county may have made through Saturday:
For details of John's correspondence with the Saginaw County Clerk's
Office on this issue, visit
Over Half of Counties Provided
Information on Write-In Candidates;
Over 3/4
Have Shared Precinct, Polling-Place Lists and Voter Counts
On this last day before the election, John is also updating the status
of some of his other efforts to make elections fairer and better for
voters, candidates, and parties.
49 out of 83 counties and the Bureau of Elections have contributed some
information to John's comprehensive list of "official" write-in
candidates:
And about half of the counties which have some "local" write-in
candidates have provided contact information for those candidates as
well.
"Since a 2006 change to Michigan state law," John reminds voters, "only
votes for officially declared write-in candidates may be counted.
So each precinct has to have a list of all officially declared write-in
candidates, or else the election inspectors wouldn't know whose votes
they should and shouldn't count."
But under the current administration’s interpretation, the names
on those lists aren’t available to voters at the polls. The
list isn’t posted next to that sample ballot that's always up on
the wall, as you might expect it to be. And if you ask the
election inspectors at your polling place, they’re not allowed to
tell you who's running as a write-in. You'd have to go to your
local clerk’s office and ask there. “And who gets out
of line to go do that?” John asks rhetorically.
John believes this is unfair to those candidates -- and it’s
unfair to deny voters information about all of their choices.
That's why he compiled the list page and is posting it on his campaign
Website.
The turnout is even better on John's call for lists of precincts,
figures on how many voters are registered in each precinct, and where
the polling places are. 65 out of 83 county clerks have now
responded.
He is now looking forward to getting voting-conditions survey results
from voters in the 5,050 precincts across Michigan on and after
Election Day.
"When we put the information from the clerks and the observations of
the people together," John says, "we'll have a powerful tool for
analyzing and planning the equipping and staffing of polling places
better and more fairly -- giving us shorter lines and more time to
vote.”
Voters who want to know how their clerks responded to this request can
see an updated status report on John’s campaign Website at
John’s initial request to the clerks is also on line, at
And a copy of the survey sheet for individual voters to take with them
to the polls November 2 is posted at
October 31, 2010
La Pietra, Renewing
Offer Made "Dozens of Times",
Invites
Joint Recount of Secretary of State Race
It's No Trick -- and John's Not Asking
His Rivals to Treat, Either;
He's Pledging Again to "Pay My Fair
Share -- If You All Will Pay Yours"
Also
Urging Consensus on Fairer, Better Rotation of Candidates on Ballot
Is Reporting on Offer by Green Candidate
Too Scary for Mainstream Media?
It's Only Been Published as Letter to
Editor -- by Three out of 200 Papers
John Anthony La Pietra, the Green Party of Michigan's candidate for
Secretary of State, isn't giving up yet on working with his opponents
to "boost the faith of the people of Michigan that it’s worth
voting -- that their votes will count . . . and be counted."
But he's not going to rely on the media any more to
pass on his invitation to join forces and pay fair shares of the
$50,000+ fee for a statewide recount of the election. He's
e-mailing a letter directly to the campaigns of all four rivals.
In alphabetical order by last name, they are:
Jocelyn
Benson -- Democratic Party <jocelyn@votebenson.com>
Scotty Boman -- Libertarian
Party <scottyboman@hotmail.com>
Robert Gale -- US Taxpayers
Party <rgale1234@msn.com>
Ruth Johnson -- Republican
Party <rj4mi@comcast.net>
And he's making a further point about his campaign
theme of "Fairer, Better Elections" by rotating that order in
addressing them -- pointing out that "research consistently shows the
first candidate listed on a ballot can gain a significant advantage
from voters.
"And
if we can agree on that," he continues, "perhaps we can all call upon
the new Legislature to amend the Election Code to provide Michigan
voters and candidates with a fairer, better ballot order than the one
now required by statute."
Recount Wasn't John's First
Choice -- But Can't Do
More
Cost-Efficient Sampling Audits Under Current Law
The Michigan Election Reform Alliance has been offering a legislative
proposal since 2008 for the kind of sampling audits to check election
returns that other states do. In his letter to his competitors,
John gives them a link to that proposal:
http://www.michiganelectionreformalliance.org/legis.html
And
he tells them that MERA's best estimate, based on other states'
experience, is that auditing would cost about eight cents per ballot --
"which might be a bargain, considering it as 'democracy insurance'."
But
Michigan law does not yet provide a mechanism for such audits.
"So I have been proposing the next best thing available: that we
agree to call for a statewide recount of our race, sharing the cost of
the approximately $50,000 fee in proportion to the percentage of the
votes we get.
"That's
$10 per precinct times the figure of 5,050 precincts statewide
mentioned in this year's Biennial Precinct Report," John adds, showing
his work. "And I've pledged to pay my fair share of that fee --
if you all do the same."
And
John has maintained the pledge despite the fact that, as he puts it,
"if I do at all well in Tuesday's vote, my pledge could commit me to
the single largest expense of my campaign." He's been running a
Clean Elections-style campaign financially: "I don't take any PAC
money -- and while I'm delighted to take 100% of anyone's vote, I won't
take more than $100 of anyone's money."
John's
promise is also right in line with the Standing For Voters “Super
Pledge” he has signed:
http://www.StandingForVoters.org/index.php
And
he would welcome having company on that, too.
Still Looking to Spread the Word
(Even If the Media Won't) --
and
to Work Together to Make Elections Fairer and Better
John has been equally forthright about promoting the recount
proposal. He's mentioned it "dozens of times":
* In responses to ten different
candidate surveys from the media, including an MiVote "interview"
at Detroit Public Television for the MiVote project.
*
At candidate forums from Flint to Iron Mountain.
*
In one of the first of his campaign "discussion papers" --
this one about protecting election rights -- posted on his
Website on August 22, before two of his challengers had even
qualified officially for the November 2 ballot:
*
In four news releases and an "open letter to Michigan’s voters --
in care of Michigan’s newspaper editors".
Only the open letter has
gotten any notice from the general media. "Outside of some kindly
blogs," John tells his rivals in the letter, "the only mention I can
find is that three newspapers (out of almost 200) published my open
letter: two Observer &
Eccentric papers and my almost-hometown Battle Creek Enquirer." Each of his news
releases has gone out to twice as many media outlets as the letter.
John had high hopes of
telling the other candidates about his proposal in person -- or at
least through their representatives -- at a forum scheduled for the
evening of Friday, October 28 as part of the Student Debate Series at
Ferris State University's Kendall College of Art and Design in Grand
Rapids.
But after two follow-up
e-mails in the week before the event, John heard back from the faculty
advisor for the event in an e-mail sent 10pm Thursday evening that none
of the other candidates had felt willing or able to commit to that
debate -- so the event was canceled.
After confirming the
cancellation, John took some time over the weekend to "look around the
Internet for any evidence that anybody in the media ever passed my
offer on to you or to the public." Not finding any -- and not
having heard back from his rivals based on their monitoring his Website
or those blogs that did mention his news releases -- he has today made
direct contact.
Noting that the media's
delay in reporting this proposal has now lasted until Halloween, John
adds with a wry smile, "I hope the thought of reporting on this issue-
and process-related proposal, made by an alternative-party candidate
and re-issued today, isn't too scary for them."
And he assures his
rivals: "I realize that time is short, but I still hope to hear
from you all. And if I do, I will happily publicize the fact.
"After all, we as
candidates may sometimes slip and think the election is about us -- but
it's really for the voters. And we owe it to them to do what we
can to make our election fairer and better for them however we can."
A copy of John’s
letter to his opponents is visible on John’s Website at
**
URGENT ** News Release: October 29, 2010
La Pietra
Issues Corrected List of Candidates for Saginaw County
Clerk's Office Refused Requests to
Finish Fixing List Posted on Website
or Delete Erroneous Sections and Give
Voters a Link to State List
48
Counties Have Responded to Another of John's Efforts to Make
Elections Fairer and Better -- Full
List of Write-In Candidates;
About Half with Local Candidates Have
Provided Contact Info, Too
And 65 Counties Have Contributed to
Preparations for Voting-Conditions Survey
John Anthony La Pietra hasn't been elected Secretary of State yet --
but the Green Party of Michigan candidate is already doing work to make
elections fairer and better for voters, candidates, and parties . . .
particularly in Saginaw County.
The county
clerk's office has refused to finish correcting its posted list of
candidates:
or use a draft John sent
them yesterday. So John is releasing the
list to the press today and posting it on his Website, at:
Clerk's
Office Said It Was Understaffed, Couldn't Fix Its List -- So John Did It
Last week, while looking into the omission of Green candidates Dianne
Feeley and Lou Novak from ballots in Wayne County, John noticed that
the two Wayne County Commission candidates had also been left off the
county's published online candidate lists.
So he did
some checking of other counties' Websites -- and found some problems
with Saginaw County's posted candidate list:
Though this
list was dated "as of October 22", it was missing almost every partisan
candidate who'd been nominated for the fall election -- before the
August 3 primary -- by an alternative party.
(The site
also had a full set of proof ballots posted -- showing all the
candidates on the ballot for each local jurisdiction in the
county. But the link to access those ballots was below the link
for the candidate list.)
So he
e-mailed County Clerk Susan Kaltenbach Friday afternoon (October 22) to
let her know of the oversight and offer his help in fixing the list.
Kaltenbach's
reply Monday morning said, "The minor party candidates will be added
today. This information other than our local listings is still
from the primary results. We usually do not add all of the State
Candidates as they file and are listed by the Secretary of State.
Again we are short staffed and have so much data entry that is beyond
our required local that we sometimes do not have all of the State data."
John
promptly pointed out a problem with this logic: "[T]he list as it
is posted now makes it appear that the candidates you show are the only
ones on the ballot." And voters and groups who relied on the list
would "have been making decisions for the past six to ten weeks about
whom to vote for -- or whom to invite to participate in activities and
be considered for votes, endorsements, etc. -- based on the incomplete
information posted."
He noted
that other counties posted only "local" candidates on their Websites
and provided a link to the statewide Bureau of Elections list to cover
the non-local candidates.
Saginaw
County's list was updated on Tuesday:
John was now
on it, and so were some of his fellow Greens -- but not the Green Party
gubernatorial ticket of Harley Mikkelson and Lynn Meadows.
Another lieutenant governor candidate was also omitted, and a mix-up
left three candidates labeled as Libertarians in the race for the 5th
District seat in Congress, including one who was a Libertarian
candidate -- but in the 4th District.
And the
races for the four statewide boards -- the State Board of Education,
the U-M Board of Regents, the MSU Board of Trustees, and the Wayne
State University Board of Governors -- were missing from the county's
list entirely. The nominally non-partisan race for two seats on
the state Supreme Court was mentioned -- but none of the five
candidates were listed.
John
documented these omissions and corrections, hoping to help Kaltenbach
get past her office's short-staffing situation and solve the
problems. She answered: "There are plenty of other places
for the voters to get this info. We concentrate on getting the
locals and the ones we take filings for locally on the site as they do
not appear in other places."
John's
response to that thanked Kaltenbach for her efforts so far, but pointed
out:
The people of Saginaw County have a
right to rely on you to be authoritative about their ballots -- to rely
on the candidate list posted on your Website, and any other
information you put out about the election for public consumption, to
be accurate and complete.
"This
candidate list," he went on, "has been misinforming voters since it was
posted" -- and time was running out to fix it.
Wednesday
morning, a further update of the list had been posted -- and minor
updates were again posted yesterday morning and today. The latest
posted list is still missing all reference to the education-board
races, and all candidates running for Supreme Court Justice. All
partisan candidates for other state and federal offices are now
included, but there are two errors:
* Albert Chia, Jr. is a Libertarian
candidate for State Senate from the 32nd District, not for the 4th
District Congressional seat.
* And J. Matthew de Heus is the Green Party's candidate in the 5th
Congressional District, not a second Libertarian in that race.
formatted
the information to match the county's format, and sent it to Kaltenbach
as an Adobe Acrobat PDF file. He has received no response, and
his draft list was neither posted itself nor used to finish correcting
the county's posted list.
So John is
posting his corrected version of the list -- which he updated today to
include whatever changes may have been made in the county's posted list
between yesterday and today. And he is notifying the media, in
hopes that the accurate information will get to voters.
John reminds
everyone that the county has also posted proof ballots -- and those do
seem to be reliable. They are accessible from this page:
"But the
first link people who go to the county's homepage will see is to the
candidate list," he adds. "And that list, four days before the
election, is still incomplete and wrong."
For updated
details of John's correspondence with the Saginaw County Clerk's Office
on this issue, visit
Treating
Write-In Candidates as More Than Just "Mickey Mouse" Protest Votes
48 counties and the Bureau of Elections have contributed some
information to another of John's "Fairer, Better Elections"
projects: a comprehensive list of "official" write-in candidates:
And about
half of the counties which have some "local" write-in candidates have
provided contact information for those candidates as well.
State law
was changed in 2006 so that poll workers would no longer have to count
literal "Mickey Mouse" write-in votes . . . only votes for real people
who had filed the required Declaration of Intent form.
"There's a
big controversy in the Alaska courts right now," notes John.
"Incumbent Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski, who lost in the primary,
is now running a write-in campaign trying to keep her seat. And
the state Division of Elections has been offering early voters a list
of all write-in candidates if the voters ask for it. But the
state Republican Party sued to stop the Division from doing that -- and
the Democrats have joined them.
"Here in
Michigan," John adds, "state law says each precinct has to have a list
of all officially declared write-in candidates. Otherwise the
election inspectors wouldn't know whose votes they should and shouldn't
count."
But under
the current administration’s interpretation, the names on those
lists aren’t available to voters at the polls. The list
isn’t posted next to that sample ballot that's always up on the
wall, as you might expect it to be. And if you ask the election
inspectors at your polling place, they’re not allowed to tell you
who's running as a write-in. You'd have to go to your local
clerk’s office and ask there. “And who gets out of
line to go do that?” John asks rhetorically.
John
believes this is unfair to those candidates -- and it’s unfair to
deny voters information about all of their choices. That's why
he's compiling the list page and posting it on his campaign Website.
He hopes to
hear from the rest of the counties on this, too -- and maybe from some
write-ins as well. If they have additional contact information
they want John to post -- addresses, phone numbers, e-mails, home pages
-- they can contact him.
Survey of
Voting Conditions: Precinct Information from Clerks
The turnout is even better on John's call for lists of precincts,
figures on how many voters are registered in each precinct, and where
the polling places are. 65 out of 83 county clerks have now
responded.
He hopes the
rest of the information comes in before he starts getting
voting-conditions survey results from voters in the 5,050 precincts
across Michigan on and after Election Day.
"When we put
the information from the clerks and the observations of the people
together," John says, "we'll have a powerful tool for analyzing and
planning the equipping and staffing of polling places better and more
fairly -- giving us shorter lines and more time to vote.”
Voters who
want to know how their clerks responded to this request so far can see
an updated status report on John’s campaign Website at
John’s
initial request to the clerks is also on line, at
And a copy
of the survey sheet for individual voters to take with them to the
polls November 2 is posted at
October 27, 2010
*UPDATE* on La
Pietra’s Initiatives for Fairer, Better Elections
3/4 of Counties Have Responded to
Request for Precinct Information;
Almost 1/2 Have Sent In Lists of
Declared Write-In Candidates
Saginaw County Clerk’s Posted
Candidate List Now Includes
Most Alternative Parties and
Candidates – Though It’s Still Missing
Everyone Running for Statewide
Education Boards, Supreme Court
John Anthony La Pietra, the Green Party of Michigan’s candidate
for Secretary of State, is making progress on three of his top campaign
initiatives to make elections fairer and better for voters, candidates,
and parties.
Survey of
Voting Conditions: Precinct Information from Clerks
64 out of 83 county clerks have now responded to John’s call for
lists of precincts, figures on how many voters are registered in each
precinct, and where the polling places are. He hopes the rest of
the information comes in before he starts getting voting-conditions
survey results from voters in the 5,050 precincts across Michigan on
and after Election Day.
“When we put the information from the clerks and
the observations of the people together,” John says,
“we’ll have a powerful tool for analyzing and planning the
equipping and staffing of polling places – so we can do it better
and more fairly, and give ourselves shorter lines and more time to
vote.”
Voters who want to know how their clerks responded to
this request so far can see an updated status report on John’s
campaign Website at
http://members.triton.net/jalp/jalp4FBE_survey_county-status.pdf
John’s initial request to the clerks is also on
line, at
http://members.triton.net/jalp/jalp4FBE_ltr2co-clks101004.pdf
And a copy of the survey sheet for individual voters to
take with them to the polls November 2 is posted at
http://members.triton.net/jalp/jalp4FBE_voting_conditions_survey.pdf
Treating
Write-In Candidates as More Than Just “Mickey Mouse”
Protest Votes
40 counties and the Bureau of Elections have contributed some
information to another of John’s “Fairer, Better
Elections” projects: a comprehensive list of
“official” write-in candidates:
http://members.triton.net/jalp/jalp4FBE_write-in_list.pdf
State law was changed in 2006 so that poll workers
would no longer have to count literal “Mickey Mouse”
write-in votes . . . only votes for real people who had filed the
required Declaration of Intent form.
“There’s a big controversy in the Alaska
courts right now,” notes John. “Incumbent Republican
Senator Lisa Murkowski, who lost in the primary, is now running a
write-in campaign trying to keep her seat. And the state Division
of Elections has been offering early voters a list of all write-in
candidates if the voters ask for it. But the state Republican
Party sued to stop the Division from doing that – and the
Democrats have joined them.
“Here in Michigan,” John adds, “state
law says each precinct has to have a list of all officially declared
write-in candidates. Otherwise the election inspectors
wouldn’t know whose votes they should and shouldn’t
count.”
But under the current administration’s
interpretation, the names on those lists aren’t available to
voters at the polls. The list isn’t posted next to that
sample ballot that’s always up on the wall, as you might expect
it to be. And if you ask the election inspectors at your polling
place, they’re not allowed to tell you who’s running as a
write-in. You’d have to go to your local clerk’s
office and ask there. “And who gets out of line to go do
that?” John asks rhetorically.
John believes this is unfair to those candidates -- and
it’s unfair to deny voters information about all of their
choices. That’s why he’s compiling the list page and
posting it on his campaign Website.
He hopes to hear from the rest of the counties on this,
too – and maybe from some write-ins as well. If they have
additional contact information they want John to post –
addresses, phone numbers, e-mails, home pages – they can contact
him.
Saginaw
County Clerk’s Candidate List Is Much Better – But Still
Needs Work
Last week, two Green candidates for Wayne County Commissioner
discovered that they had been left off the ballot – including
thousands of absentee ballots that had already been mailed out.
While looking into that situation, John noticed that Dianne Feeley and
Lou Novak had also been left off the county’s published online
candidate lists.
So he did some checking of other counties’
Websites – and found some problems with Saginaw County’s
posted candidate list:
http://members.triton.net/jalp/SaginawCo_candidate-list101022.pdf
Though this list was dated “as of October
22"”, it was missing almost every partisan candidate who’d
been nominated for the fall election -- before the August 3 primary --
by an alternative party. (The site also had a full set of proof
ballots posted -- showing all the candidates on the ballot for each
local jurisdiction in the county. But the link to access those
ballots was below the link for the candidate list.)
So he e-mailed County Clerk Susan Kaltenbach Friday
afternoon (October 22) to let her know of the oversight and offer his
help in fixing the list.
Kaltenbach’s reply Monday morning said,
“The minor party candidates will be added today. This
infor-mation other than our local listings is still from the primary
results. We usually do not add all of the State Candidates as
they file and are listed by the Secretary of State. Again we are
short staffed and have so much data entry that is beyond our required
local that we sometimes do not have all of the State data.”
John promptly pointed out a problem with this
logic: “[T]he list as it is posted now makes it appear that
the candidates you show are the only ones on the ballot.”
And voters and groups who relied on the list would “have been
making decisions for the past six to ten weeks about whom to vote for
-- or whom to invite to participate in activities and be considered for
votes, endorsements, etc. -- based on the incomplete information
posted.”
He noted that other counties posted only
“local” candidates on their Websites and provided a link to
the statewide Bureau of Elections list to cover the non-local
candidates.
Saginaw County’s list was updated yesterday:
http://members.triton.net/jalp/SaginawCo_candidate-list101026.pdf
John was now on it, and so were some of his fellow
Greens – but not the Green Party gubernatorial ticket of Harley
Mikkelson and Lynn Meadows. Another lieutenant governor candidate
was also omitted, and a mix-up left three candidates labeled as
Libertarians in the race for the 5th District seat in Congress,
including one who was a Libertarian candidate – but in the 4th
District.
And the races for the four statewide boards -- the
State Board of Education, the U-M Board of Regents, the MSU Board of
Trustees, and the Wayne State University Board of Governors -- were
missing from the county’s list entirely. The nominally
non-partisan race for two seats on the state Supreme Court was
mentioned -- but none of the five candidates were listed.
John documented these omissions and corrections, hoping
to help Kaltenbach get past her office’s short-staffing situation
and solve the problems. She answered: “There are
plenty of other places for the voters to get this info. We
concentrate on getting the locals and the ones we take filings for
locally on the site as they do not appear in other places.”
John’s response to that thanked Kaltenbach for
her efforts so far, but pointed out:
The people of Saginaw County have a
right to rely on you to be authoritative about their ballots -- to rely
on the candidate list posted on your Website, and any other information
you put out about the election for public consumption, to be accurate
and complete.
“This candidate list,” he went on,
“has been misinforming voters since it was posted” -- and
time was running out to fix it.
This morning, a further update of the list had been
posted:
http://members.triton.net/jalp/SaginawCo_candidate-list101027.pdf
It is still missing all reference to the
education-board races, and all candidates running for Supreme Court
Justice. But all partisan candidates for other state and federal
offices are now included. (There is one error: Albert Chia,
Jr. is a Libertarian candidate for State Senate from the 32nd District,
not for the 4th District Congressional seat.)
For details of the correspondence to date, visit
http://members.triton.net/jalp/jalp4FBE_re_SaginawCo_candidate-list.pdf
October 24, 2010
La Pietra Kicks Off Effort
to Help Voters Get
a
Fair Chance to Know About Write-In Candidates
Five
Counties Have Responded Over the Weekend After Friday's Deadline for Filing Paperwork
He's already working on a survey to see if voting conditions are good
enough statewide, and fair to voters from precinct to precinct.
Now John Anthony La Pietra, the Green Party of Michigan’s
candidate for Secretary of State, has kicked off an effort to make
elections fairer and better for candidates and voters.
4pm on Friday, October 22 was the deadline for anyone who wanted to be
an official write-in candidate to file a Declaration of Intent
form. On Election Day, November 2, each precinct will have a list
of write-in candidates who filed the paperwork. If you write in
someone's name, but they're not on that list as a declared write-in for
that office, the write-in vote won't count. (The rest of your
ballot won't be affected.)
But under the current administration’s interpretation, the names
on those lists aren’t available to voters at the polls. The
list isn’t posted next to that sample ballot that's always up on
the wall, as you might expect it to be.
And if you ask the election inspectors at your polling place,
they’re not allowed to tell you who's running as a
write-in. You'd have to go to your local clerk’s office and
ask there. “And who gets out of line to go do
that?” John asks rhetorically.
John believes this is unfair to those candidates -- and it’s
unfair to deny voters information about all of their choices. So
he’s doing something about it.
Right after the filing deadline, he sent a Freedom of Information Act
request to all 83 county clerks and to the Bureau of Elections in
Lansing. He asked for computer files of their lists of declared
write-in candidates they are required by law (MCL 168.737a) to prepare.
All the information he gets back -- names, offices, and contact
information -- will be compiled in one big list and posted on his
campaign Website, at
http://members.triton.net/jalp/jalp4FBE_write-in_list.pdf
The page will also have links to information on how to contact the
county clerks and the counties. That way, John says, citizens can
thank the offices that have provided write-in lists, and make their own
inquiries to the ones that haven't yet.
If any write-in candidates want more of their basic campaign contact
information posted too, John will add that to his overall list.
"I'm not trying to promote anyone's views -- I just want to make sure
we the voters can see for ourselves."
A
Good Start May Show Willingness to Change Current State-Level Policy
Five counties have already sent John at least some response. He
welcomes this good start -- both for itself and because it suggests
election officials nearer the grassroots are willing to accept a change
from the current state policy.
“Michigan’s elections need to be fairer and better for
everyone,” John argues. “Especially the voters --
we’re who elections are for. And if our top elections
officials are denying us public information about legitimate candidates
at precisely the time when we could use it, that’s bad and unfair
for everyone.
“It’s a clear example of protecting established parties and
interests against even the possibility of having to recognize a protest
vote. And that’s the exact opposite of what an election is
supposed to be -- the voice of the people, a chance for us to express
what we want our government to be.”
For more information on John’s other ideas for non-partisan
administration of fairer, better elections for the people, read his
“discussion paper” on that subject at
http://members.triton.net/jalp/jalp4FBE_disc_FBE4voters.pdf
A copy of John's FOIA request for the lists of write-in candidates is
posted at
http://members.triton.net/jalp/jalp4FBE_ltr2BOE+co-clks101022.pdf
# # #
October 24, 2010
La Pietra Still Looking for
Joint Statewide Recount
to Have
SOS Race Lead the Way Towards "Auditing the Vote"
Will
Make Pledge Again at Candidate Forum Friday Night at Kendall College of Art and Design in
Grand Rapids
Hopes to Invite Four
Rivals for SOS Spot in Person to
Join in Paying Fair Shares of $50,000 Recount Fee
Sampling Audits More
Cost-Effective, But Not in State Law -- Yet
John Anthony La Pietra, the Green Party of Michigan’s candidate
for Secretary of State, hasn't heard back from any of his four
opponents saying they'll match his pledge and pay their fair shares of
the $50,000 fee for a statewide recount.
So John will
make yet another call Friday night for the five candidates to make
their race to be Michigan's chief elections officer an example of the
need for verification of voting results. And this time, he hopes,
his rivals will hear him -- because they'll be sharing a stage in Grand
Rapids.
John would
actually prefer a sampling audit of the election, such as has been
proposed by the Michigan Election Reform Alliance (MERA), to show the
cost-effectiveness of that approach. MERA's auditing plan is
discussed in detail, with the rest of its legislative agenda, on its
Website at
http://www.michiganelectionreformalliance.org/legis.html
But state law makes no provision for audits yet, notes John. So a
recount is the best way available to “restore people’s
faith that it’s worth voting -- that their votes will
count . . . and be counted.”
Under state
law, the fee for a recount is $10 per precinct you ask to be recounted
-- and there are over 5,000 precincts in Michigan. John's
proposal is that each campaign ask for recounts in a share of precincts
equal to the candidate's percentage of the vote, and pay a fair share
of the $50,000+ total fee.
"This could be
the biggest expense of my campaign if I do at all well, but I'll pay my
fair share if the others will," John promises -- a promise in line with
the Standing For Voters “Super Pledge” he has signed:
http://www.StandingForVoters.org/index.php
Media Coverage of Pledge Limited -- So Communicating It Friday Night May Be Key
But the others may not have heard much about the proposal -- even
though John has mentioned his audit and recount proposals throughout
his campaign, wherever and whenever he has had a chance to speak:
*
In an open letter to the people September 3, in care of almost
200 newspapers across the state. To date, it has been published
in three of them.
*
In news releases August 22, September 17, and October 1 --
distributed to twice as many media outlets, and used only by a
few blogs and alternative-party
news compiler Websites.
*
In answers to at least ten candidate questionnaires from various
media.
*
In public forums, as far away as Kingsford -- but so far, he's only met
one of his four opponents.
* And in his "discussion paper" on protecting election
rights, posted on the campaign Website at
http://members.triton.net/jalp/jalp4FBE_disc_election-rts.pdf
So John hopes that his four rivals -- or at least their
representatives -- will be present at the Secretary of State round of
the Student Debate Series starting at 6:30pm on Friday, October 28 in
the Lower Level Auditorium at Ferris State University's Kendall College
of Art and Design (17 Fountain Street NW, Grand Rapids).
Restoring Trust in Election Results
Where It's
Needed Most -- in SOS Race
John also hopes to hear what the other four candidates have to say
about some events that could threaten voters' faith in the "fairness
and evenhandedness" required by the Purity of Elections clause in the
state Constitution:
*
The undercounts of votes for Presidential candidates of the Green
Party and other alternative parties in 2008, as documented by MERA and
reported by GPMI 6th
District Congressional
candidate Pat Foster's West Michigan News Company:
http://westmichigannewscompany.com/
* The omission of all alternative-party candidates but one from the
candidate list posted this past Friday on the Saginaw County Clerk's
Office Website:
http://saginawcounty.com/Docs/Clerk/Elections/CANDIDATES.PDF
*
And the need for Wayne County to reprint thousands of ballots for two
County Commission districts when the Green candidates for those seats
discovered and pointed
out that they had been left off
the ballots:
http://www.detroitgreens.org/node/335
"These are just
some examples of the reasons why we need to reassure the people that
election results are trustworthy," John says. "And where that
trust is most needed is in the office that administers elections.”
John and fellow
candidate Foster have already helped build trust on a smaller scale in
last fall's contentious Benton Harbor City Commission elections.
They persuaded the state to let them oversee *and videorecord* the
processing of absentee ballots, while protecting each voter’s
privacy and making sure the election inspectors did the same.
"Our work
helped boost public confidence in the results," John points out
proudly, "despite the fact that some of the winning margins were in
single digits."
# # #
October 20, 2010
La Pietra Posts Status of Responses
from County Clerks
to Request
for Voting-Conditions Survey Information
UPDATE: A Dozen More
Counties Heard From – Only 24 Still Silent
on Precinct Lists, Polling Places, or
How Many Voters Registered
After yesterday’s reminders and last night’s news release,
a number of county clerk’s offices have contacted John Anthony La
Pietra – the Green Party of Michigan’s candidate for
Secretary of State – today with information on how many voters
are registered in each precinct in their counties, and where the
polling places are.
John has now heard from 59 out of 83 counties
– and 50 of them have already provided all the information he
asked for in a copy-and-paste-able format as he requested, so he can
use it to develop a statewide precinct database for his Survey of
Voting Conditions.
One more county may also have sent John full
information, but he hasn’t looked at the file yet because that
county proposed to charge him for it. John points out two reasons
why no fee would be appropriate:
* There is no copying cost
involved, since the information is being sent electronically.
* And the clerks would be
assembling and using this same information themselves at this time
to plan and
prepare for the election: deciding how many ballots to buy
for each precinct,
writing the
required Notice of Election advertisements and having them published,
and so on.
So giving John
the information too doesn’t involve any unreasonable added labor
costs.
“Besides,” he adds, “the
survey is being done for the general benefit of the public – and
I’ve pledged to release the results to the public and give them
to the new Secretary of State, if it isn’t me. So any fees
that might otherwise be justified should be waived.”
Voters who want to know how their clerks
responded to this request so far can see an updated status report on
John’s campaign Website at
http://members.triton.net/jalp/jalp4FBE_survey_county-status.pdf
John’s initial request to the clerks is
also on line, at
http://members.triton.net/jalp/jalp4FBE_ltr2co-clks101004.pdf
And a copy of the survey sheet for individual
voters to take with them to the polls November 2 is posted at
http://members.triton.net/jalp/jalp4FBE_voting_conditions_survey.pdf
# # #
October 19, 2010
La Pietra Posts Status
of Responses from County Clerks
to Request
for Voting-Conditions Survey Information
Two Weeks Before the Election, and No
Word Yet from 37 Counties
on Precinct Lists, Polling Places, or
How Many Voters Registered
John Anthony La Pietra – the Green Party of Michigan’s
candidate for Secretary of State – is still waiting for 37 of the
state's 83 county clerks to let him know how many voters are registered
in each precinct in their counties, and where the polling places are.
He asked them for this information two weeks ago.
And now that there are only two weeks left before Election Day, voters
who want to know how their clerks responded to this request can see a
status report on John's campaign Website at
http://members.triton.net/jalp/jalp4FBE_survey_county-status.pdf
John's initial request to the clerks is already on
line, at
http://members.triton.net/jalp/jalp4FBE_ltr2co-clks101004.pdf
It was dated October 4 – the last day for voters
to register and still be on the rolls at the polls on November 2.
But John knew that it might take a while to get some of that
information into Michigan's Qualified Voter File. So he assured
the clerks, "I understand that this is a busy time for you – and
I do not need your precinct list immediately, since I plan to use it
together with information I will be receiving from voters on or after
Election Day.
"Still, the sooner I do have your lists in hand, the
better prepared I can be when the survey responses come in," he added.
40 counties have already given John all three types of
information he asked for – precincts, polling places, and
registered-voter counts. Four more have provided two out of three
types. One has provided links to Webpages with the
information. And one county clerk has denied having any of the
information, telling John to contact all of the city and township
clerks instead.
John has forwarded the request to the local clerks in
that county. But he is also letting the county know that other
counties have used a standard report function in the state's Qualified
Voter File system to tell him how many voters are registered in each
precinct. And the QVF report comes out as an Adobe Acrobat PDF
file – in a format that allows John to copy the figures and paste
them into a statewide database of precincts.
Tying Into Preparations for
Grassroots
Survey of
Precinct Voting Conditions
The purpose of the information from the clerks is to prepare for John's
survey of voting conditions – covering all 5,000+ precincts
statewide, if possible. He has been taking every campaign
opportunity to invite voters to join in the survey by observing their
own precincts next month – “so we’ll have the
information we need to equip and staff polling places better, and more
fairly, giving us shorter lines and more time to vote.”
A printable page of John's Survey of Voting Conditions
is posted on his campaign Website, at
http://members.triton.net/jalp/jalp4FBE_voting_conditions_survey.pdf
It asks voters who go to their polling places on
November 2 to look around – and notice and write down a few
simple facts:
* How many voting
stations, standing and sit-down, the precinct has. (And how many more
would fit in the polling place.)
* How many touch-screen voting
machines there are. (This refers to the AutoMARK systems made
available mostly for voters with disabilities,
though anyone may choose to use them.)
* How many vote-counting machines
(or “tabulators”) there are.
* How many poll-workers
(“election inspectors”) there are, and whether
there’s any room for more workers.
* What time they went to vote,
how long they stay at the polling place, and how long voting itself
takes them.
* How long the lines are.
The survey page also has spaces for voters to report
their city or township, the number of their precinct, their polling
place (and whether or not it is shared with other precincts) –
and, if they can find out from their clerk or the poll-workers, the
number of voters registered in the precinct.
Helping the Voice of the People
Express Itself Better –
Letting
Voters Know Who They Can Write In and Have it Count
John is going to write the county clerks again later this week on
another subject, too.
4pm on Friday, October 22 is the deadline for anyone
who wants to be an official write-in candidate and have votes for him
or her counted. And each precinct will get a list of write-in
candidates who have filed the paperwork to be official – they
have to, in order to know which write-in votes they have to count and
which they don’t have to count.
But, under the current administration’s
interpretation, the names on those lists aren’t available to
voters at the polls. The list isn’t posted next to the
sample ballot – and even if you ask the election inspectors at
your polling place, they’re not allowed to tell you. You
have to go to your local clerk’s office and ask there.
“And who gets out of line to go do that?” John asks
rhetorically.
John believes this is unfair to those candidates -- and
it’s unfair to deny voters full information about all of their
choices. So even before he has a chance to take office,
he’s going to do something about it.
He will send another Freedom of Information Act request
to all of the county clerks – and the Bureau of Elections –
asking for the names of all officially filed write-in candidates and
the offices they are running for. All the information he gets
back will be posted on his campaign Website. So will contact
information for the counties – so citizens can thank the offices
that provided write-in lists, and make their own inquiries to the ones
that didn’t.
“Michigan’s elections need to be fairer and
better for everyone,” John argues. “Especially the
voters -- we’re who elections are for. And if our elections
officials are denying us public information about legitimate candidates
at precisely the time when we could use it, that’s bad and unfair
for everyone.
“It’s a clear example of protecting
established parties and interests against even the possibility of
having to recognize a protest vote. And that’s the exact
opposite of what an election is supposed to be -- the voice of the
people, a chance for us to express what we want our government to
be.”
For more information on John’s other ideas for
non-partisan administration of fairer, better elections for the people,
read his “discussion paper” on that subject at
http://members.triton.net/jalp/jalp4FBE_disc_FBE4voters.pdf
# # #
October 17, 2010
La Pietra Files
Campaign-Finance Report Early
Posts Pre-General Summary
Page on Website the (Sun)day It's Due;
e-Mails Full Packet to Lansing,
Willing to Send Hard Copy Too
Transparency -- and Commitment:
Living Up to His Promise to
"Take 100% of Anyone's Vote But No
More than $100 of Anyone's Money"
John Anthony La Pietra, the Green Party of Michigan’s candidate
for Secretary of State, today e-mailed the Bureau of Elections in
Lansing his required campaign-finance report for the "pre-general"
period -- which ends today.
The report isn't due until Friday the 22nd. But the books closed
today, and John doesn't see any reason to keep the Bureau -- or the
people -- waiting.
He's even posting the signed cover page and the summary page of his
report on his campaign Website, at
http://members.triton.net/jalp/jalp4FBE_pre-G_pp1+2.pdf
John’s Webspace is limited, so he’s not planning to post
the whole 535kB of the nine-page report. But if someone wants to
see all nine pages, they can e-mail John at
jalp4FBE@triton.net
To John, this is more than just a matter of routine transparency and
disclosure (or what should be routine, anyway). He's also
pledged, in his flyers and on the campaign trail: "I’ll
take 100% of anyone’s vote but no more than $100 of
anyone’s money."
John feels this is one important way to see to it that Michigan's Chief
Elections Officer serves the people, and is not beholden to any party
or other special interest. And one of his "discussion papers", on
"Money and Politic(ian)s", talks about several other ideas to achieve
this.
http://members.triton.net/jalp/jalp4FBE_disc_money+politic(ian)s.pdf
In the meantime, John will be calling the Bureau of Elections on Monday
to confirm that his e-mailed report has been received, and to find out
where else they would like him to send it in what medium.
For more information on John’s other ideas for non-partisan
administration of fairer, better elections for the people, read his
“discussion paper” on that subject at
http://members.triton.net/jalp/jalp4FBE_disc_FBE4voters.pdf
# # #
October 13, 2010
La Pietra Working with
County Clerks to
Prepare
for Analysis of Voting Conditions
Gathering Information on
Precincts, Polling Places, Voter Counts
to Be Ready When Citizens Send in
Survey Responses After Election
Will Follow
Up Early Next Week, Then Publicize Status of Counties’ Responses
Next, Will
Ask for Lists of Official Write-In Candidates, Post on Website After
Oct. 22 Filing Deadline to Make
Elections Fairer, Better for Them and Voters
John Anthony La Pietra – the Green Party of Michigan’s
candidate for Secretary of State – has been sending out the news
of his voting-conditions survey for months to people across the
state. Last week, he focused on 83 people in every part of
Michigan: the county clerks.
He asked their offices for updated information
identifying each precinct or absent-voter counting board (AVCB), where
their polling places are, and how many voters are registered in each
precinct. And almost half have sent John information already
– or promised to do it once last-minute registrations and changes
are in the system.
John’s request to the clerks is posted on his
campaign Website, at
http://members.triton.net/jalp/jalp4FBE_ltr2co-clks101004.pdf
It was dated October 4 – the last day for voters
to register and still be on the rolls at the polls on November 2.
But John knew that it might take a while to get some of that
information into Michigan’s Qualified Voter File. So he
assured the clerks, “I understand that this is a busy time for
you -- and I do not need your precinct list immediately, since I plan
to use it together with information I will be receiving from voters on
or after Election Day.
“Still, the sooner I do have your lists in hand,
the better prepared I can be when the survey responses come in,”
he added.
John plans to give counties the rest of this week and
part of next week to finish gathering up their latest registration
information and respond to his request before posting a general status
report on what responses he has received from which counties.
A
Positive Response from Clerks So Far – Mostly
33 counties have already answered all three of John’s
questions. A few more have pledged to send (or finish sending)
him information at various times before the election. Some have
sent partial or not-yet-updated information, or links to where part or
all of the information is already posted online.
One county answered that it didn’t have any of
the information itself, and told John to contact the local
clerks. About a third of that county’s cities and townships
have responded so far.
Another county sent a list of precincts and their
polling places, but said that John would have to pay $25 and make two
visits to the clerk’s office to buy and pick up a data disc to
get registered-voter counts for those precincts.
John pointed out
* that the county would be gathering
the information itself to prepare for the election, so there was no
reason to charge for labor;
* that a data disc would only be
necessary for an actual list of the voters themselves, which he
wasn’t requesting; and
* that the results of the
survey will be made public and given to the winning candidate for
Secretary of State, so any fees could be waived anyway
under the Michigan Freedom of
Information Act.
This county is now reportedly handling the request more
formally through its FOIA Coordinator.
Still
Trying to Urge Voters to Report on Their Local Voting Conditions, Too
John has also been taking every campaign opportunity to invite voters
to join in the survey by observing their own precincts –
“so we’ll have the information we need to equip and staff
polling places better, and more fairly, giving us shorter lines and
more time to vote.”
A printable page of John’s Survey of Voting
Conditions is posted on his campaign Website, at
http://members.triton.net/jalp/jalp4FBE_voting_conditions_survey.pdf
It asks voters who go to their polling places on
November 2 to look around – and notice and write down a few
simple facts:
* How many voting stations, standing
and sit-down, the precinct has. (And how many more would fit in
the polling place.)
* How many touch-screen
voting machines there are. (This refers to the AutoMARK systems
made available mostly for voters with disabilities,
though anyone may choose to use
them.)
* How many
vote-counting machines (or “tabulators”) there are.
* How many
poll-workers (“election inspectors”) there are, and whether
there’s any room for more workers.
* What time they
went to vote, how long they stay at the polling place, and how long
voting itself takes them.
* How long the lines
are.
The survey page also has spaces for voters to report
their city or township, the number of their precinct, their polling
place (and whether or not it is shared with other precincts) –
and, if they can find out from their clerk or the poll-workers, the
number of voters registered in the precinct.
Since his October 4 letter to the county clerks, John
has renewed that invitation to the people
* at an AAUW candidate forum in
Kingsford on the 7th;
* after a workshop on
alternative voting methods sponsored by the chapter of the ACLU at
John’s postgraduate alma mater, Cooley Law School, yesterday; and
* in a telephone
interview with Andy Robins of WMUK in Kalamazoo today.
John also issued that invitation in a videorecorded
“interview” September 30 at Detroit Public Television
(DPTV) for the MiVote.org Website. The videorecording has now
been posted on MiVote’s page about John’s campaign:
http://MiVote.org/voterinfo/candidates/887
along with a brief introduction, contact information,
and a link to his campaign’s homepage:
http://members.triton.net/jalp/jalp4FBE.html
The DPTV interview questions were provided in advance;
John’s prepared answers are posted as part of the
“Questionnaires and Answers” area of his campaign Website,
at
http://members.triton.net/jalp/jalp4FBE_Q+A_DPTV+MiVote.pdf
Helping
the Voice of the People Express Itself Better – Letting Voters
Know Who They Can Write In and Have it Count
John is going to write the county clerks again next week on another
subject, too.
4pm on Friday, October 22 is the deadline for anyone
who wants to be an official write-in candidate and have votes for him
or her counted. And each precinct will get a list of write-in
candidates who have filed the paperwork to be official – they
have to, in order to know which write-in votes they have to count and
which they don’t have to count.
But, under the current administration’s
interpretation, the names on those lists aren’t available to
voters at the polls. The list isn’t posted next to the
sample ballot – and even if you ask the election inspectors at
your polling place, they’re not allowed to tell you. You
have to go to your local clerk’s office and ask there.
“And who gets out of line to go do that?” John asks
rhetorically.
John believes this is unfair to those candidates -- and
it’s unfair to deny voters full information about all of their
choices. So even before he has a chance to take office,
he’s going to do something about it.
He will send another Freedom of Information Act request
to all of the county clerks – and the Bureau of Elections –
asking for the names of all officially filed write-in candidates and
the offices they are running for. All the information he gets
back will be posted on his campaign Website. So will contact
information for the counties – so citizens can thank the offices
that provided write-in lists, and make their own inquiries to the ones
that didn’t.
“Michigan’s elections need to be fairer and
better for everyone,” John argues. “Especially the
voters -- we’re who elections are for. And if our elections
officials are denying us public information about legitimate candidates
at precisely the time when we could use it, that’s bad and unfair
for everyone.
“It’s a clear example of protecting
established parties and interests against even the possibility of
having to recognize a protest vote. And that’s the exact
opposite of what an election is supposed to be -- the voice of the
people, a chance for us to express what we want our government to
be.”
For more information on John’s other ideas for
non-partisan administration of fairer, better elections for the people,
read his “discussion paper” on that subject at
http://members.triton.net/jalp/jalp4FBE_disc_FBE4voters.pdf
# # #
October 1,
2010
La Pietra Goes Even
More “Public” With Invitations
to Voters,
Opponents to Help Get Fairer, Better Elections
In DPTV-MiVote Interview,
Calls for Sampling Audits in Future;
Urges Other Candidates to Join in Fair
Shares of SOS Recount
Repeats Invitation to
Voters to Report on Voting Conditions
in Each Precinct – to
“Equip and Staff Polling Places Better
and More Fairly, Giving Us Shorter
Lines and More Time to Vote”
John Anthony La Pietra -- the Green Party of Michigan’s candidate
for Secretary of State – has gone even more “public”
with his leading proposals to bring Michigan fairer, better elections.
With the media generally ignoring his open letter four weeks ago and a
general news release two weeks ago, John took the opportunity of a
videorecorded “interview” at Detroit Public Television
(DPTV) Thursday afternoon, for the MiVote.org Website, to call on his
opponents to join him in paying fair shares of the fee for a statewide
recount of their race.
John noted that a program of sampling audits of elections, such as has
been proposed by the Michigan Election Reform Alliance (MERA), would be
more cost-effective. But state law makes no provision for that
yet, so a recount is the best way available to “restore
people’s faith that it’s worth voting – that their
votes will count . . . and be counted.”
John also renewed his invitation to voters to join in his
precinct-by-precinct survey of voting conditions statewide –
“so we’ll have the information we need to equip and staff
polling places better, and more fairly, giving us shorter lines and
more time to vote.”
John mentioned his proposals in addressing the last of four questions
posed to all candidates by DPTV. The questions, reportedly
drafted by MiVote sponsor the Center for Michigan, were provided to
candidates ahead of time so they could prepare answers.
John’s prepared answers are posted, as part of the
“Questionnaires and Answers” area of his campaign Website,
at
http://members.triton.net/jalp/jalp4FBE_Q+A_DPTV+MiVote.pdf
When DPTV posts his answers on line, John will provide a link to the
video from his campaign home page:
http://members.triton.net/jalp/jalp4FBE.html
Auditing
Elections Could Be Cost-Effective “Democracy Insurance”
John outlines MERA’s audit proposal in his “discussion
paper” on protecting election rights.
Developed with expert input from the
State Audit Working Group of the 2007 National Audit Summit, this plan
calls for a central audit board independent of the elected Secretary of
State’s office, which would select county audit teams to do
- manual counts of one randomly-selected race in each precinct on
election night to check for significant errors in the performance of
the tabulating equipment; and
- sampling audits soon after election day of the main statewide
races, all state Constitution ballot questions, and a predetermined
number of other randomly-selected races and issues – feeding into
the process of canvassing official election returns – to assess
and limit the statistical risk that there has been an error affecting
the result.
Auditors would not look at the
election-night results before doing their work. If an audit
suggests a different winner, election officials would be required to
certify a corrected result. And if the State Vote Audit Board
can’t determine a winner in any audited contest with what it
judges is a reasonably high level of probability, even after additional
recounts to explain or eliminate problems, a new election would be held.
MERA’s proposal is based on maintaining a level of statistical
confidence that the reported election results are accurate – so
samples can be smaller when the margin is bigger. And other
states that do this kind of auditing estimate the cost at about eight
cents per sampled vote.
“That sounds like it could be a reasonable price for democracy
insurance,” John notes. And he is offering to send an
“Audit the Vote” bumper sticker free to anyone who agrees
– as long as his supply lasts. Clicking on an image of the
bumper sticker on the campaign homepage will open up an e-mail message
to make the request.
More details of the audit proposal are available in that discussion
paper at
http://members.triton.net/jalp/jalp4FBE_disc_election-rts.pdf
or on MERA’s legislative agenda page:
http://www.MichiganElectionReformAlliance.org/legis.html
Recount
Proposal Includes Offer to Pay Share of $50,000 Fee Statewide Equal to
Share of Votes
Since auditing elections is not yet part of Michigan election law, John
has proposed the nearest thing to it: a full recount of the
Secretary of State race. “If we want to reassure the people
that election results are trustworthy, what better place to start than
the race for Michigan’s Chief Elections Officer?”
John’s recount proposal calls on his fellow candidates to join
him in arranging for a full recount of the Secretary of State
race. And he again renews his pledge to pay his statewide vote
percentage of the recount fee – $10 per precinct for over 5,000
precincts – if his rivals will do the same.
John points out that, with his self-imposed limit of taking $100 of
anybody’s money, “I could be committing myself to spend
more on the recount than on the rest of my campaign – if I do
well . . . and if my opponents agree with me to set an example for the
whole state with our race.”
The recount proposal is also in line with the Standing For Voters
“Super Pledge” John has signed today:
http://www.StandingForVoters.org/index.php
Voting-Condition Survey Results
Could Help Replace
Current
Standard That Only Gives 2.6 Minutes to Vote
John also renewed his call to voters across the state from the news
release on Constitution Day to join him in finding out how equal
everyone’s opportunity to vote really is in Michigan.
“Voting and election rights are critical rights, because they
help protect all our other rights,” John says. “And
the right to an equal voting opportunity is even more fundamental than
the right to vote itself.
“But if one precinct with 1,500 voters has enough equipment,
staff, and space for 20 people to vote at a time – and another
precinct with just as many voters can only accommodate five voters at a
time – which one’s going to have longer lines and longer
waits? Where will more people get discouraged and go home without
voting at all? That’s not equal voting opportunity.”
That’s why John has posted a Survey of Voting Conditions on his
campaign Website, at
http://members.triton.net/jalp/jalp4FBE_voting_conditions_survey.pdf
It asks voters to look at their polling places on November 2, and see:
- How many voting stations, standing and sit-down, the precinct
has. (And how many more would fit in the polling place.)
- How many touch-screen voting machines there are. (This
refers to the AutoMARK systems made available mostly for voters with
disabilities, though anyone may choose to use them.)
- How many vote-counting machines (or “tabulators”)
there are.
- How many poll-workers (“election inspectors”) there
are, and whether there’s any room for more workers.
- What time they went to vote, how long they stay at the polling
place, and how long voting itself takes them.
- How long the lines are.
The survey page also has spaces for voters to report their city or
township, the number of their precinct number, their polling place (and
whether or not it is shared with other precincts) – and, if they
can find out from their clerk or the poll-workers, the number of voters
registered in the precinct.
John also plans to ask all 83 county clerks how many voters are
registered in each precinct in their counties as of Monday, October 4
– the deadline for voters to register so they can vote November 2.
“State law says the minimum requirement for a polling place is 1
voting station per 300 voters registered in the precinct. The
polls open at 7am and close at 8pm. That’s 13 hours, or 780
minutes. So in a precinct with just enough equipment to be legal,
the average voter has two minutes and 36 seconds to vote,” John
calculates.
“That’s assuming everyone comes in to vote, of
course,” he adds. “But it also assumes there’s
no such thing as a peak-hour rush . . . just someone coming in the door
every 2.6 minutes, like clockwork. And never spoiling a ballot
and needing to vote again, either.
“With counts of registered voters and equipment in precincts
across the state, we can see where things are fair and where they could
be fairer.”
“You can print a copy of the survey page and bring it to the
polls with you if you want,” John says. “But please
don’t leave it there! You’ll lose your survey answers
– and if you leave the page at the voting station, you’ll
just make more work for the election inspectors who have to keep those
spaces clear of any campaigning material.”
John will also gladly collect any comments voters make, positive or
negative, about what they see happening at their polling places.
And he promises to offer his results to whoever wins the election
– and to watch what they do with the information.
“But I promise to protect commenters’ privacy rights, too
– unless someone tells me they’re willing to go
public.”
And the more voters participate in the survey, the more evidence
there’ll be about how much higher that one-per-300 standard needs
to be. “A station for every 200 registered voters still
wouldn’t give our hypothetical average voter four full minutes to
mark a ballot. How much shorter would that make the lines?”
John asks. “What about a station per 100 voters, giving
each one almost eight minutes? The surveys can tell us which
precincts have that much equipment – and what voting was like
there.”
“One way or another,” he concludes, “the survey can
help make voting conditions fairer and better for everyone.”
He’s heard one proposal to give the average person 15 minutes to
vote, by setting a new standard of providing all precincts with a
voting station for every 50 registered voters. But other reforms
might make that less necessary. “If more people can vote
absentee, or in person at the local clerk’s office the last week
or two before Election Day, fewer people will need to come to the
polling place – and the more time will be available at voting
stations for those who do vote in person.”
But, as he told the camera at DPTV, “It’ll take a lot of
reforming to get fairer, better elections – and we all need to
pitch in.”
Open Letter Sent to Almost 200
Editors; News Release
to Over
500 Media Outlets – Have You Heard the News?
All three of these topics – election audits, the joint statewide
recount, and the voting-conditions survey – were mentioned in an
“open letter” John sent voters “in care of
Michigan’s newspaper editors” – almost 200 of them
– a month ago, on September 3. And the issues were raised again
September 17 in a general news release to TV, radio, wire, and online
media as well as newspapers.
But as far as John knows, the news has only gotten to readers of
letters in the Battle Creek Enquirer, the Observer and Eccentric, and
the Westland Observer. “If you hear this news, please let
me know where and when you heard it,” he asks voters.
“You may have found a news source that really wants to inform the
public.”
This experience also goes to explain why he answered a DPTV-MiVote
question about education priorities by saying, “I also want to
help develop Michigan students’ ability to do independent
research, and track down information on parties and candidates the
media don’t always feature except as
‘also-runnings’. Maybe that could also build their
critical thinking skills, as they consider all the different kinds of
reform it would take to achieve fair treatment for all candidates
– of any party, or none.”
# #
#
September
17, 2010
La Pietra
Celebrates Constitution Day
With
Call to Guard “Equal Voting Opportunity”
Posts Survey of Voting Conditions on Website;
Invites Voters to Report
on All Precincts Statewide, and Help Build a
Case for Fairer, Better Standards
John
Anthony La Pietra – the Green Party of Michigan’s candidate
for Secretary of State – is celebrating Constitution Day by
calling on voters across the state to join him in finding out how equal
everyone’s opportunity to vote really is in Michigan.
“Voting
and election rights are critical rights, because they help protect all
our other rights,” John says. “And the right to an equal
voting opportunity is even more fundamental than the right to vote
itself.
“But
if one precinct with 1,500 voters has enough equipment, staff, and
space for 20 people to vote at a time -- and another
precinct with just as many voters can only accommodate five voters at a
time -- which one’s going to have longer lines and longer
waits? Where will more people get discouraged and go home without
voting at all? That’s not equal voting opportunity.”
That’s
why John has posted a Survey of Voting Conditions on his campaign
Website, at
http://members.triton.net/jalp/jalp4FBE_voting_conditions_survey.pdf
And
he’s asking voters in all 5,050 precincts to look at their
polling places on November 2, and ask themselves:
*
How many voting stations, standing and sit-down, the precinct has. (And
how many more would fit in the polling place.)
*
How many touch-screen voting machines there are. (This refers to the
AutoMARK systems made available mostly for
voters
with disabilities, though anyone may choose to use them.)
*
How many vote-counting machines (or “tabulators”) there
are.
*
How many poll-workers (“election inspectors”) there are,
and whether there’s any room for more workers.
*
What time they went to vote, how long they stay at the polling place,
and how long voting itself takes them.
*
How long the lines are.
The survey
page also has spaces for voters to report their city or township, the
number of their precinct number, their polling place
(and whether or not it is shared with other precincts) -- and, if they
can find out from their clerk or the poll-workers, the number of
voters registered in the precinct.
“You
can print a copy of the survey page and bring it to the polls with you
if you want,” John says. “But please don’t leave it
there! You’ll lose your survey answers -- and if you leave the
page at the voting station, you’ll just make more work for the
election
inspectors who have to keep those spaces clear of any campaigning
material.”
John will
also gladly collect any comments voters make, positive or negative,
about what they see happening at their polling
places. And he promises to offer his results to whoever wins the
election -- and to watch what they do with the information. “But
I
promise to protect commenters’ privacy rights, too -- unless
someone tells me they’re willing to go public.”
Current
Minimum Equipment Standard Only Allows 2.6 Minutes to Vote
An
important part of the survey, John says, is gathering some basic
figures so that simple mathematics can show how equal or
unequal voters’ opportunities are.
“State
law says the minimum requirement for a polling place is 1 voting
station per 300 voters registered in the precinct. The polls
open at 7am and close at 8pm. That’s 13 hours, or 780 minutes. So
in a precinct with just enough equipment to be legal, the
average voter has two minutes and 36 seconds to vote.”
“That’s
assuming everyone comes in to vote, of course,” he adds.
“But it also assumes there’s no such thing as a peak-hour
rush . . .
just someone coming in the door every 2.6 minutes, like clockwork. And
never spoiling a ballot and needing to vote again, either.”
To analyze
the survey results, John will also need to know how many voters are
registered in each precinct across the state. He
plans to ask all 83 county clerks for these figures as of Monday,
October 4 -- the deadline for voters to register so they can vote
November 2.
“With
that set of numbers, and the equipment counts from voters across the
state, we can see who has plenty of equipment and
who needs more -- where things are fair and where they could be
fairer.”
And the
more voters participate in the survey, the more evidence there’ll
be about how much higher that one-per-300 standard
needs to be. “A station for every 200 registered voters still
wouldn’t give our hypothetical average voter four full minutes to
mark a
ballot. How much shorter would that make the lines?” John asks.
“What about a station per 100 voters, giving each one almost
eight minutes? The surveys can tell us which precincts have that much
equipment -- and what voting was like there.”
“One
way or another,” he concludes, “the survey can help make
voting conditions fairer and better for everyone.”
He’s
heard one proposal to give the average person 15 minutes to vote, by
setting a new standard of providing all precincts with a
voting station for every 50 registered voters. But other reforms might
make that less necessary. “If more people can vote
absentee, or in person at the local clerk’s office the last week
or two before Election Day, fewer people will need to come to the
polling place -- and the more time will be available at voting stations
for those who do vote in person.”
Open
Letter Sent to Almost 200 Editors – Have You Seen It in Your
Newspaper?
The survey
was the main topic mentioned in an “open letter” John sent
voters “in care of Michigan’s newspaper editors” --
almost
200 of them -- on September 3, two weeks ago.
John saw
the letter Monday on the editorial page of the Battle Creek Enquirer
– and Google shows that it also appeared as a
letter to the editor in yesterday’s Observer and Eccentric
and Westland Observer.
“If
your newspaper ran it, or runs it -- as a letter to the editor, an
actual news story, or both -- please let me know,” he asks voters.
The open
letter also mentioned an invitation to John’s fellow candidates
to join him in arranging for a recount of the Secretary of
State race. And he renews the pledge he made in the letter to pay his
statewide vote percentage of the $10-per-precinct recount
fee -- if his rivals will do the same.
He knows a
post-election sampling audit, as described in a proposal by the
Michigan Election Reform Alliance, would be a more
efficient and cost-effective first step toward verifying vote results.
It could serve the same function as statistical sampling of
statewide ballot petitions does now. But there’s no provision yet
in state law for an election audit.
“For
now,” John says, “a recount may be the best we can do to
use our race to set an example and start building voters’ trust
that
it’s worth their while to vote because all votes will be
counted.”
John’s
campaign home page is at
http://members.triton.net/jalp/jalp4FBE.html
The Survey
of Voting Conditions page is at
http://members.triton.net/jalp/jalp4FBE_voting_conditions_survey.pdf
John’s
September 3 open letter is at
http://members.triton.net/jalp/jalp4FBE_ltr-100903.pdf
The main
page for the Michigan Election Reform Alliance’s proposal for
post-election audits is here:
http://www.MichiganElectionReformAlliance.org/legis.html
To contact
John’s campaign for Secretary of State, please e-mail
jalp4FBE@triton.net
or write
to 386 Boyer Court; Marshall, MI 49068; phone 269-781-9478.
For a list
of all of the 2010 Green Party of Michigan candidates, please visit
http://www.MIGreens.org/candidates2010.php
or contact
GPMI at 548 S Main St; Ann Arbor, MI 48104; 734-663-3555.
# #
#
September
15, 2010
La Pietra Welcomes Posting of Sample Ballots
by State Website – But
“There
Are Still a Few Bugs in the System” of Informing Voters and
Candidates
Last Week, Bureau of Elections Told
Candidates to Confirm or Correct
Campaign Links at Voter Information Center by
“Wednesday, September 17, 2010”;
A Week Later, There’s Been No
Correction of Non-Existent Deadline Date –
or Even Notice to Candidates that Sample
Ballots Can Now Be Checked
One of the
first things John Anthony La Pietra – the Green Party of
Michigan’s candidate for Secretary of State – did after
turning
on his computer this morning was browse to the Michigan Voter
Information Center (MVIC) to see if the system was ready yet to
show him a sample ballot.
It was
– but when he clicked on his own name, MVIC’s link took him
to the wrong Webpage. So apparently, as he told the
Bureau of Elections, “there are still a few bugs in the
system” of informing voters about candidates.
John was
relieved at first when he saw the ballot for Marshall City Precinct 2
on his screen. It meant he had a chance to meet a
mistaken deadline set in a memo last week from the Bureau of Elections.
In the
memo, the Bureau told all state- and federal-level candidates they had
to check links from sample ballots to their campaign
Websites by “Wednesday, September 17, 2010” or else
corrections couldn’t be guaranteed.
Of course,
there is no such date as Wednesday, September 17, 2010.
“My
best guess is that someone made what my sister calls a
‘word-process-O’,” John says. “They edited a
memo from 2008
telling candidates the same thing – but when they changed the
year to 2010, they forgot to change the date number.”
John
pointed out this problem and others to the Bureau on the 9th, the same
day he got the memo. And he asked the Bureau to
“reconsider the deadline and change it if necessary, take
responsibility for the situation, and give candidates both enough
notice
and enough time to make sure the voters are fully and accurately
informed.”
Bureau
staff responded the next day – Friday, September 10 –
explaining that the ballot-generating system also needed
information about local candidates and proposals, and that was still
coming in from county clerks. The response estimated that
ballots would be “available early next week.”
The same
afternoon, John thanked the responders for that information – and
renewed his request for an update on the
impossible deadline. Getting no further response, he made a point of
checking the MVIC site to see if it had started working yet. No luck
there either – until this morning, when he saw his name displayed
on the sample ballot . . . with a link.
And then
the good luck was tempered when he found out that the link took him to
his personal homepage, not his campaign
homepage.
So,
considering that the deadline the Bureau meant to set might well be
today, John reported the problem – and asked again for
action on resetting a deadline.
“I
renew my call on the Bureau to inform all candidates immediately of a
new, extended deadline for reviewing their campaign
links. My first thought on that extension would be that if the Bureau
gets notices out today by USPS and e-mail and makes next
Monday (September 20, 2010) the new deadline, that might do the most to
make up to candidates for the delay and the confusion
while affecting the Bureau’s own schedule as little as
possible.”
John
acknowledges and welcomes other signs of progress. One of MVIC’s
menu buttons, which used to send browsing voters to
the list of primary-election candidates, now properly links to the list
of candidates for the November 2 general election.
But there
was still at least one more problem with John’s sample ballot: it
had no link at all to the Website of another Green Party
candidate – Harley Mikkelson of Caro, running for governor on a
ticket with Lynn Meadows of Ann Arbor. The omission is
puzzling, considering that a link to HarleyMikkelson.com is included on
the general-election candidate list.
“At
least people who click on their MVIC ballots and go to my personal
homepage can find another link there to my campaign
homepage,” John notes. “Right now, they don’t have
any direct path to find out about Harley and Lynn.”
And time
is of the essence – both because voters are losing more and more
of the opportunity to find out about all their choices
this fall, and because the Bureau’s mistaken deadline means
candidates may be running out of time to confirm or correct Weblink
information on MVIC’s sample ballots.
But John
will keep working with the Bureau – and candidates – to get
full and accurate information to the voters. “Because, after
all,” as he told the Bureau in today’s e-mail, “it is
the voters we’re all trying to inform – theirs is the
paramount interest here, not
ours in any of our other roles.”
John’s
campaign home page is at http://members.triton.net/jalp/jalp4FBE.html
The MVIC
memo is posted at http://members.triton.net/jalp/jalp4FBE_MVIC-memo100907.pdf
and
John’s correspondence with the
Bureau
of Elections since then is at http://members.triton.net/jalp/jalp4FBE_corresp-re-MVIC.pdf
To contact
John’s campaign for Secretary of State, please e-mail jalp4FBE@triton.net
or call
269-781-9478.
For a list
of 2010 Green Party of Michigan candidates, please visit http://www.MIGreens.org/candidates2010.php
or contact
GPMI at 548 S Main St; Ann Arbor, MI 48104; 734-663-3555.
# # #
For
further reference:
The
general-election candidate list is at http://miboecfr.nictusa.com/election/candlist/10GEN/10GEN_CL.HTM
The
gateway page for MVIC is at http://www.michigan.gov/sos/0,1607,7-127--51051--,00.html
and the
online center’s main page is at https://webapps.sos.state.mi.us/mivote/
MVIC’s
“Candidate Information Links” page,
which
now correctly links to the list of
general-election
candidates, is at http://www.michigan.gov/sos/0,1607,7-127--51051--,00.html
The
homepage for the Harley Mikkelson for Governor campaign is at http://www.HarleyMikkelson.com
September
9, 2010
La Pietra Calls on Bureau of Elections to
Fix More Errors
in
Process of Informing Voters About General-Election Candidates
Voter Information Center Not Ready to Show
Sample Ballots or Campaign Links;
Candidates Given Wrong Deadline Date to
Verify Invisible Information
For the
second time in a week, John Anthony La Pietra – the Green Party
of Michigan’s candidate for Secretary of State – is trying
to get that office and its Bureau of Elections to do their jobs and
give voters fair and accurate information about candidates.
Last
Friday, exactly a month after the August 3 primary, the Bureau finally
posted on line a list of candidates who will be on the
November 2 general-election ballot. But John noticed that the list,
while it included links to some candidate Websites, did not offer
a link to his campaign homepage – which he’d reported to
the Bureau August 2 on his Statement of Organization form – or
those
of four of his fellow GPMI candidates.
The Bureau
corrected that omission yesterday. And then in today’s mail, John
received a memo from the Bureau to all
“Candidates Appearing on the November General Election
Ballot” announcing that their links would also appear on the
sample
ballots produced for voters by the Michigan Voter Information Center
(MVIC) Website.
Having
already verified his campaign Weblink on the candidate list, John went
to do what else the memo suggested: check a
sample ballot at the MVIC site, and verify that the Weblink was there
too – and accurate.
Instead,
he found no sample ballot, no link to check – and more mistakes
on top of those:
* The
candidate list MVIC sent him to was the old one for the August 3
primary, not the new one for the November 2 general
election. “It’s been over five weeks since the
primary,” John points out. “Almost half of the time between
the two
elections is gone, and the Bureau is still pointing voters at the wrong
list.”
* And the
memo set a “Wednesday, September 17” deadline for
candidates to ask for corrections of mistaken or omitted
Weblinks. Any change requested after that date “is not guaranteed
to be published on either the candidate listing or the
MVIC ballot.” But John reminded the Bureau in his reply to the
memo: “September 17 is next Friday; if next Wednesday
was the intended date, that would be September 15.” And since
candidates can’t check for errors or omissions yet, and
don’t know when they will be able to, both dates may be too soon
to be a fair deadline.
John is
asking that the first problem be fixed immediately. If it cannot be
fixed by tomorrow, then he calls on the Bureau to
announce tomorrow a firm timetable for fixing it. He also calls on the
Bureau to “reconsider the deadline” for confirming campaign
Weblinks, “change it if necessary, take responsibility for the
situation, and give candidates both enough notice and enough time to
make sure the voters are fully and accurately informed.”
John also
wants the Secretary of State’s office and the Bureau of Elections
to look at this problem as an opportunity to start
serving the public more effectively and efficiently. “I strongly
believe that these offices’ duty to inform the voting public
about
candidates for a general election starts as soon as the first
candidates qualify for that ballot. I believe this is a matter of
fairness to
candidates and to voters alike. But it should also be considered as
better management, a way of smoothing out the peaks in
workload that will inevitably happen if the Bureau waits until all
information is in before doing anything with any of it.”
John’s
campaign home page is at http://members.triton.net/jalp/jalp4FBE.html
The MVIC
memo is posted at http://members.triton.net/jalp/jalp4FBE_MVIC-memo100907.pdf
and
John’s reply is at http://members.triton.net/jalp/jalp4FBE_reply2MVIC-memo100909.pdf
To contact
John’s campaign for Secretary of State, please e-mail jalp4FBE@triton.net
or call
269-781-9478.
For a list
of 2010 Green Party of Michigan candidates, please visit http://www.MIGreens.org/candidates2010.php
or contact
GPMI at 548 S Main St; Ann Arbor, MI 48104; 734-663-3555.
#
# #
For
further reference:
The
general-election candidate list is at http://miboecfr.nictusa.com/election/candlist/10GEN/10GEN_CL.HTM
The
gateway page for MVIC is at http://www.michigan.gov/sos/0,1607,7-127--51051--,00.html
and the
online center’s main page is at https://webapps.sos.state.mi.us/mivote/
MVIC’s
“Candidate Information Links” page,
which
so far links only to the list of
primary-election
candidates, is at http://www.michigan.gov/sos/0,1607,7-127--51051--,00.html
September
3, 2010
(a
month after the primary –
and
finally a candidate list
from
the Bureau of Elections!)
An
open letter to Michigan’s voters – in care of
Michigan’s newspaper editors . . .
I’m
inviting voters statewide to join me in surveying how good or bad
– how equal or unequal – Michigan’s voting
conditions are.
When
you go to the polls November 2, take a moment. Look around. Check your
watch. Count things. Then
please tell me:
*
Your city/township and precinct number.
*
Your polling place. (Do other precincts use it, too?)
*
How many voting stations (standing and sit-down) did your precinct
have? (How many more would fit?)
*
How many touch-screen voting machines?
*
How many vote-counting machines (tabulators)?
*
How many election inspectors? (Any room for more?)
*
What time did you go, how long were you there, and how long did voting
itself take?
*
How long were the lines?
*
If you can find out, how many voters were registered in your precinct?
Send
your answers – plus comments on the voting process – to
John Anthony La Pietra for Fairer, Better Elections;
386 Boyer Court; Marshall, MI 49068. Or e-mail jalp4FBE@triton.net. (And tell me where to send my thanks
for
your help.) There’s a survey form at http://members.triton.net/jalp/jalp4FBE_voting_conditions_survey.pdf
I’m also inviting my Secretary of
State rivals – Libertarian Scotty Boman, Robert Gale of the US
Taxpayers Party,
Democrat Jocelyn Benson, and Republican Ruth Johnson – to join me
in having our election recounted . . . or
audited; see http://members.triton.net/jalp/jalp4FBE_disc_election-rts.pdf. I pledge to pay my voters’
percentage of the $10-per-precinct recount fee for 5,050 precincts
statewide – if they’ll do the same.
And I invite newspapers, other media, and
interest groups to tell their audiences all about all five of us.
John Anthony
La Pietra for
Secretary of State * Green Party
386 Boyer Ct * Marshall, MI
49068
http://members.triton.net/jalp/jalp4FBE.html
jalp4FBE@triton.net
August 28,
2010
La Pietra Calls for Fair Treatment of All
Candidates
Qualified
for November Ballot, Better Information for All Voters
Notes Libertarian, US Taxpayers Candidates
Have Been Waiting Months
for Public Acknowledgment in Bureau of
Elections Candidate List
John
Anthony La Pietra was nominated as the 2010 Secretary of State
candidate for the Green
Party of Michigan (GPMI) at the
party’s 2010 state convention July 31-August 1. But almost a
month later, the Bureau of Elections has not published or posted his
name on its authoritative list of candidates for the November 2 general
election.
And
he’s not alone. The Greens nominated two dozen more candidates
for state-level offices the weekend before the deadline
date of Primary Election Day, August 3. Independent candidates (those
with “No Party Affiliattion”) had to file their petitions
by
July 15, and reportedly almost two dozen of them did. And many
candidates have been waiting even longer.
The US
Taxpayers’ Party of Michigan nominated 29 state-level candidates
at its convention two months ago – on June 26. And
the Libertarian Party of Michigan’s convention was May 24, so
their 71 state-level candidates have been denied recognition for
over three months.
(Another
member of the Michigan Third Parties Coalition, the Socialist Party of
Michigan, filed suit July 21 claiming a space on the
ballot – and nominated seven candidates on the 24th. That same
Saturday was the alleged date of the Tea Party’s nominating
convention; their ballot petitions and nomination paperwork are now
both under legal review.)
Delay
by Secretary of State’s Office Denies Voters Impartial
Information About Voting Choices
“The
voters should already know about all these candidates,” John
points out. “Once candidates started qualifying for the general
election, the Secretary of State’s office should have started
posting each candidate’s name, address, party (or independent
status), the office they’re running for, and when and how they
earned their place on the November 2 ballot.
“The
list couldn’t be final and official until after this
weekend’s Democratic and Republican conventions at the earliest.
But so
what? The Bureau of Elections posts unofficial primary-election
candidate lists weeks or months before the mid-May filing
deadline. Why? So people considering voting – or running for
office themselves – can make informed decisions.”
This
year’s primary-candidates list is on line athttp://miboecfr.nictusa.com/election/candlist/10PRI/10PRI_CL.HTM
The
matching list for 2010 general-election
candidates
should probably be at this address:http://miboecfr.nictusa.com/election/candlist/10GEN/1GEN_CL.HTM
The delay
is unfair to candidates nominated by convention and caucus in the ways
and at the times required by state law. But
more important, says John, it’s unfair to the voters. “We
deserve all the information our government has about all of our voting
choices. Those in power now shouldn’t get to pick and choose
which candidates aren’t important for us to hear about.”
Also,
media outlets and civic organizations that hold public debates and
forums, or interview or survey candidates on key issues,
tend to rely on the Bureau’s information to tell them which
candidates should be invited to participate. “Even a short delay
by the
Department can wind up denying candidates a fair chance to reach a lot
of voters,” John concludes.
“Candidates
have deadlines for reporting the money they get and spend on their
campaigns. If I am elected Secretary of State, I’ll
make sure the Department reports to the voters about all state-level
candidates within a week at most after they qualify for the
ballot – and I’ll work with county and local clerks to help
them do the same for local candidates.
“That’s
one simple way we can make elections fairer and better for candidates
and voters.”
Opponents
Willing to Work Together to Inform the Public
John has
contacted the Michigan Third Parties Coalition about possibly acting as
a clearinghouse to help voters and civic groups
connect with convention-nominated candidates in case the Secretary of
State’s office continues its silent treatment. One of his
rivals, Libertarian Scotty Boman, has welcomed the suggestion. USTPM
candidate Robert Gale has not yet responded.
John also
invites all independent/NPA candidates – and any nominees of the
Natural Law Party of Michigan, which is not a
member of MTPC – to contact him and join in helping to make sure
the voters are fully and fairly informed.
John’s
campaign home page is at: http://members.triton.net/jalp/jalp4FBE.html
To contact
John’s campaign for Secretary of State, please e-mail jalp4FBE@triton.net
or call
269-781-9478.
For a list
of 2010 Green Party of Michigan candidates, please visit
http://www.MIGreens.org
or contact
GPMI at 548 S Main St; Ann Arbor, MI 48104; 734-663-3555.
#
# #
For
further reference:
The
Libertarian Party of Michigan candidate list is at http://mi.lp.org/Shared%20Documents/candidates.aspx
The US
Taxpayers Party of Michigan slate is posted at http://www.ustpm.org/candidates.html
An
introduction to the Michigan Third Parties Coalition,
with
links to member parties, can be found here: http://sites.google.com/site/mserard/michiganthirdpartiescoalition
August 22,
2010
La Pietra Issues Three “Position
Discussion Papers”
on
Secretary of State Campaign Website
Offers Ideas on Protecting Election Rights,
Withdrawing Petition
Signatures, and How to Make Elections Fairer
and Better for Voters
John
Anthony La Pietra, nominated by the Green
Party of Michigan (GPMI) as the
party’s 2010 candidate for Secretary of State,
has posted the first three “position discussion papers” on
his campaign Website. The home page is at:
http://members.triton.net/jalp/jalp4FBE.html
John wants
these papers to do more than just present some ideas he has on the
topics – he wants to stimulate discussion and
bring out more ideas from others. “Our state’s government
needs all the good ideas it can get,” he says.
* In one
of the papers, John discusses some different ways we have – or
could have – of protecting our vital election
rights: auditing
elections, recounts, election challengers and poll-watchers, and so on.
* Another
paper addresses the controversies surrounding the 2006 Michigan Civil
Rights Initiative petition and this year’s
petition to put The Tea Party on the ballot – by looking at how
some other states have tried to handle the thorny question
of when and how voters should be able to withdraw
their names from political petitions.
* And,
going back to his campaign’s overarching theme, John has written
up some ideas on how to make elections work
fairer and better for all voters –
ways to encourage voters to participate, to let votes express more of
what voters want,
and to boost voter confidence in the fairness and impartiality of
election administration.
The
campaign currently has limited Webspace available, but John promises to
do what he can to share responses he gets to
these discussion papers – and to some others he plans to write as
the campaign continues. The first three also contain some
invitations – including one to Michigan voters to survey the
voting equipment and conditions at precincts statewide, and another to
his fellow SOS candidates to join him in making their race an example
for a statistical audit or a full recount.
To contact
John’s campaign for Secretary of State, please feel free to e-mail
jalp4FBE@triton.net
or call
269-781-9478.
For more
information on GPMI and its other candidates, contact
Green
Party of Michigan
548
South Main Street
Ann
Arbor, MI 48104
http://www.MIGreens.org
734-663-3555
August 11,
2010
La
Pietra Announces Secretary of State Campaign Website
Address Restates Basic Theme: “JALP
for Fairer, Better Elections”
Coming Soon: Ideas on How to Make Elections
Fairer and Better
for All Voters, Candidates, Parties, and
Independents
John
Anthony La Pietra, nominated by the Green
Party of Michigan (GPMI) as the
party’s 2010 candidate for Secretary of State,
has opened up a campaign Website. The home page is at:
http://members.triton.net/jalp/jalp4FBE.html
The name
of the site – and the campaign – reflects John’s main
theme: that the Secretary of State should be working to make
elections fairer and better for all of Michigan . . . all voters and
all candidates, all parties and all independents. And John will start
posting ideas on how to do that on the site in the next week or so.
Campaigning on Issues and Information
John aims
to continue his informative style of campaigning from his 2008 campaign
for Calhoun County Clerk-Register of Deeds. For example, among the
other pages he is posting on the Website are a column
describing different ways that different people
and groups vote – and a “sampler” so voters can try
for themselves.
Another
page on the Website will be a brief description of the Ten Key Values
of the Green Party (in both HTML and PDF). Many
of them are directly related to the work of the Secretary of State,
John believes – in particular, two of what Greens call the
“Four
Pillars”: grassroots democracy and social justice.
Some basic
biographical information will also be forthcoming. And John invites
suggestions for other things to be included. “I want
to carry out this public office for the people – so my campaign
has to be for the people as well.”
To contact
John’s campaign for Secretary of State, please feel free to e-mail
jalp4FBE@triton.net
or call
269-781-9478.
For more
information on GPMI and its other candidates, contact
Green
Party of Michigan
548
South Main Street
Ann
Arbor, MI 48104
http://www.MIGreens.org
734-663-3555
#
# #
except
where otherwise indicated or as linked to other sites,
all news
here is prepared and distributed (with donated labor) by
John Anthony
La Pietra for
Secretary of State * Green Party
386 Boyer Ct * Marshall, MI
49068
http://members.triton.net/jalp/jalp4FBE.html
jalp4FBE@triton.net