FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DETROIT ELECTION REFORM (Please Share This Post With Your Friends) Dear Friend: Detroit is facing a deep malaise as its citizens watch their city’s value stripped and its assets dismantled. Resultanty, 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 the first of three crucial city-wide meetings to discuss Election Reform in the City of Detroit. Our reasoning for meeting is straightforward and I ask that you SHARE this note and then plan to attend. The Church is located at 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 reason is because 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, each Commissioner is also a candidate on the same election ballot which they are themselves controlling, a manifest conflict-of-interest. This has led to suspicion and wide-spread distrust of city voting results. The result 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 container by election night workers. In that same contest, an additional 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 the results. 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. Most recently, in the 2013 election cycle in which the current Commissioners were elected, massive irregularities happened 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 similar handwriting and 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 challengers sought to visually examine the ballots (which the law authorizes) they were forcably expelled from Cobo Hall by the elected Commission Chairperson’s representative. An expulsion which clearly violated Election Law and warranted a Commission investigation but none ensued. The reason is because it was the very person charged with enforcing the law who violated the law and 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 the folks in the social media-sphere, have decided to undertake a complex “Election Reform Project” . We will initiate a referendum to change the City’s Charter to create an Ordinance 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 me 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 DETROITS FUTURE Tom Barrow, President
Posted on: Sat, 13 Sep 2014 10:22:29 +0000
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