I am writing today to announce the closure of the Michigan Messenger. After four years of operation in Michigan, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news into a single site, The American Independent at Americanindependent.com. This is part of a shift in strategy, towards new forms [...]
An abstinence-only presentation provided to numerous school districts in Calhoun and Eaton Counties in October of this year provided false and misleading information to students about HIV, experts allege.
Two county registers of deeds filed a class action lawsuit Monday on behalf of Michigan’s 83 counties alleging that the Mortgage Electronic Registration Services owes millions of dollars in property title transfer taxes.
Despite evidence of the impact of mercury on children and public health, Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette last month joined with 24 other state attorneys general in filing a lawsuit to scuttle new EPA regulations that would reduce mercury emissions from power plants.
Some voters waited for hours to cast a ballot in the 2004 election in Ohio after too few voting machines were allocated in some precincts.
Prepares to monitor Tuesday’s primary in two counties, the general in November
The election system in Michigan has fundamental structural problems and is vulnerable to corruption from insiders, Jan BenDor, spokeswoman for the Michigan Election Reform Alliance, told Michigan Messenger.
“This is not the way it is supposed to be,” said BenDor, a state accredited election administrator from Washtenaw county.
MERA was founded in the wake of the 2004 recounts in Ohio by voting rights advocates who identified vulnerabilities in the Michigan system.
There are reasons to expect problems with the November election, BenDor said.
Every county has an elections commission made up of the treasurer, clerk and chief probate judge that is responsible for the security of elections, but a 2006 survey by MERA found that most of these commissions meet only if there is a recall.
That means that Michigan‘s 1,500 local election officials receive little supervision or guidance, BenDor said.
“I am sure most of them are extremely well intentioned, but they are busy,” she said, “.. and nobody is watching the store.”
Other states do it better, BenDor said, adding, “Wisconsin, for example, has a nonpartisan governmental accountability commission that supervises and systematically monitors elections and promotes continuous quality improvement on election administration.”
Election law enforcement is also a problem, according to MERA.
In Michigan the secretary of state is responsible only for enforcing campaign finance law. All other areas of election law are enforced by local authorities. BenDor said that local police lack the training and resources to carry out that responsibility and that a survey of county prosecutors found “less than a handful” of election law cases have been prosecuted in the last ten years.
The group has created a pilot project to monitor election administration practices in Washtenaw and Berrien counties during the primary election Tuesday.
BenDor said that at least three dozen volunteers will evaluate issues, including the way that ballots arrive at the precinct, the chain of custody of ballots, and opportunities to put ballots into a tabulator without being observed — traditional ballot stuffing.
“We are interested in the way that voters are handled when they have a problem and their name is not on the list.“ BenDor said. “Are the correct questions asked? Is the voter blown off or given a provisional ballot that may be inappropriate?”
The information gathered will be used to refine an election watch program for the November election.
(Photo: AFP)
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