‘The silly season’ comes to Michigan

(photo: Wiki Images)

Politicians call the last four weeks before an election the silly season. As with Christmas, the silly season has been starting earlier and earlier as time goes on (see primary attacks by Hillary Clinton against Barack Obama), but there’s nothing like the final stretch for maximum “silly.”

History is littered with campaign tactics like October surprises, campaign sign snatching, scare tactics, dirty tricks, and bizarre claims lobbied by and against candidates. Some of it is ridiculous, some of it slimy, much of it illegal.

Door-to-door voter suppression in Lansing?

WILX-Lansing news is reporting that residents in a west side neighborhood say they have been visited recently by a man claiming to be a representative of the Barack Obama for President campaign. According to the report:

Every election, Rebecca Herlan votes at Grace Lutheran Church on Martin Luther King Junior Boulevard, so she said it was pretty strange when a man came to her front door Tuesday and told her she couldn’t vote there anymore.

“Oh no you cant vote there,” the man told Herlan. “There’s not voting there anymore you have to go to this new location at this community center on Kalamazoo Street.”

Herlan said the man claimed to be from the Obama Campaign, carried a clipboard and asked for her by name.

Herlan, being no dummy, called the Lansing Clerk’s office and was informed, no, her polling station had not changed. Obama officials told WILX that the person in question was not one of theirs.

Rumor: Absentee ballots only counted if race is close?

Also quoted in the story is Ingham County Clerk Mike Bryanton, who said that a couple days ago voters were asking him about rumors that absentee ballots weren’t going to be counted unless it was a tight race. He assured voters that every ballot will be counted no matter what.

Criminal complaint filed against Democratic state house candidate

A Portage Public Schools board member has filed a criminal complaint in Kalamazoo County against Democratic candidate for Michigan State House Julie Rogers, claiming a fundraising letter Rogers sent out portrayed her as an incumbent in the open race to replace term-limited Jack Hoogendyk — a Republican now running for a U.S. Senate seat against Democratic incumbent Sen. Carl Levin, D-Detroit. Rogers lost the race for the State House to Hoogendyk in 2006, receiving 49.449% of the vote.

Rogers allegedly distributed a fundraising letter that said “Julie Rogers 61st District” in red letters, and in smaller, blue letters “state representative.” This irked Portage Public Schools trustee Melanie Kurdys whom, WKZO radio reports, dashed off to the Kalamazoo County Sheriff’s Department to file a criminal complaint, claiming that its a misdemeanor for a candidate to say they’re an incumbent when they aren’t. Michigan Republican Chair Saul Anuzis told WKZO that Rogers owed district voters an apology.

According to the WKZO story:

[The fundraising letter's graphics] could be interpreted several ways. The signature on the letter also identifies Rogers as a candidate, and not the incumbent.

(Full disclosure, I was a student at Portage Northern High School in 1984-1988.)

‘Voter Fraud’: a tale of two clerks

WILX-Lansing is reporting that East Lansing Clerk Nicole Evans has tossed 1,000 duplicate registration forms. Evans told WILX’s Tiffany Teasley that many of the forms they are processing don’t have birth dates or addresses on them. A few miles down the road, Lansing City Clerk Chris Swope said his office is dealing with a lot of applications as well, but reports that he has seen an unremarkable “several” duplicate and incomplete applications. Swope is quoted by WILX as saying:

“You’ve got a lot of things that are making it look like there’s more fraud than I think there actually is.”

Meanwhile back in East Lansing, Evans said of returned voting ID cards:

“And if they come back to us, then we’ll flag it to challenge it for residency, so if this person really did exist, and maybe there was a problem with the post office mailing, they’ll still have the opportunity to prove that they live at that address, but that’s one way we could find out if there’s a fraudulent voter registration.”

At least she isn’t tossing those voters off the Qualified Voter List, as Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land was doing until a federal judge told her to cut it out.

Jackson man charged with voter fraud

Meanwhile, The Detroit News reports that a 23-year-old Jackson man has been charged by Attorney General Mike Cox with six counts of forgery for allegedly submitting false voter registration forms to the clerk there. Local police allegedly found two people who had voter registration forms turned in by the alleged forger, Antonio Johnson, who had not signed the forms. If convicted, Johnson could face up to 14 years in prison for each count.