FYI: (Please Share With Your Friends) DETROIT ELECTION REFORM (Please Share With Your Friends) Dear Community Leader: On Thursday, September 25th at 6pm in the Conference Center of the Greater Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church, Citizens for Detroit’s Future will hold a city-wide meeting to discuss Election Reform in the City of Detroit. The Church is located at 15600 Evanston St on the city’s east side. As you know, many in Detroit believe that the city’s voting system is untrustworthy and could well be dishonest. But what many do not know is that the elections are controlled entirely by a 3 member Election Commission composed of the elected Clerk, the elected Council President and the elected Mayor (who appoints the City’s Chief lawyer as his proxy). This Commission hires, oversees, controls and conducts every election and is mandated to be chaired by the elected Clerk. The concern is obvious, the Commissioners are also candidates on the same election ballots they are themselves controlling, a manifest conflict-of-interest which has led to suspicion and a wide-spread distrust of city election results. The product has been a dramatic fall off in voter participation as numerous complaints and election law violations reported to the Commission are never investigated or looked into. In point of fact, in the 2009 election cycle, of the city’s 44,215 absentee ballots cast, none could be re-counted by County Canvassers because security seals on ballot containers had been changed and were no longer the security seals placed on the same container by election night workers. In that same contest, another 19,581 ballots from neighborhood polls could also not be recounted bringing the total of tainted ballots to some 52% of the total votes cast. This, of course, casts grave doubt over anyone elected in such a tainted process. But despite numerous complaints to the Commission, no one was held accountable and there were no investigations. In 2012, a bevy of similar irregularities again occurred, went unexamined, and again no one held accountable. More recently, last year during the 2013 election cycle in which the current Commissioners were elected, massive irregularities occurred again. There, thousands of absentee and poll ballots could not be recounted and a handwriting expert reported that over 40% of the ballots cast for the mayoral write-in candidate was in had been written by the same person or persons. That same day, legally licensed election challengers were expelled from Cobo Hall after they discovered voting machines tallying more votes than there were ballots being inserted into the tabulating machines. When these legal challengers sought to visually examine the ballots (which the law authorizes) they were forcibly expelled from Cobo Hall by the elected Commission Chairperson’s representative. An expulsion which violated clear Election Law and warranted a Commission investigation but none ensued. The reason is because the very person charged with enforcing the law was the one who violated the law. The result, the public remained blissfully unaware. All of these irregularities would have been investigated had the Election Commission been independent. Resultantly, the folks at Citizens for Detroit’s Future, with your help and that of your friends and the folks in the social media-sphere, have decided to undertake a complex “Election Reform Project”. We will carry out an initiative to change the City’s Charter and create city Ordinances to provide stark safeguards and restore voter trust. But to do this, we need your help and that of your friends. Please forward this note along with a comment from you and plan to attend our session on the 25th. Finally, to be placed on our highly confidential non-shareable email/texting list, please drop a short email (name, address, city, Zip and cellphone number) to our confidential email box at confidential@aNewVisionForDetroit. Upon receiving your email, you will confidentially be entered onto our list and kept informed. Remember, even if you don’t live in Detroit, you can definitely help! Respectfully, Citizens for Detroit’s Future Thomas Barrow, President
Posted on: Mon, 15 Sep 2014 18:34:13 +0000