Polygon, the Dancing Bear

Monday, July 14, 2008, 3:52 pm

From the Clerk-Register. Today's message for my staff.

Where I grew up, there was a busy boulevard through the center of town, with a broad median strip. One year, there was a very serious project to display large works of sculpture in this median.

They set up a committee and a jury of experts and obtained funding. Pretty soon, a series of abstract artworks were installed at intervals along the boulevard, each one with a sign announcing its title. There would be, say, a whole bunch of rusty metal shards bolted together, with a title like "Aurora of Happiness." Or a pile of huge glass balls labeled "Aggressive Ennui." Nobody but the artist understood what that was about, but the whole town was very pleased with itself over this wonderful display of Art.

A couple weeks later, another sculpture came along, which got a lot more attention than all the others put together. It was installed in the median in the dead of night by persons unknown, and consisted of what appeared to be a well-made set of wooden porch steps, nicely stained and varnished, with the title "Mother and Child."

You can imagine the cries of outrage at how some trickster or amateur had invaded the haughty circles of Art. Yes, right there on the highway median. Others thought it was a hilarious parody on the whole concept of abstract sculpture. I don't think they ever found out who was responsible.

The moral of the story is that we shouldn't pay too much attention to what is, or is not, "Art". Professors and art critics claim to have a monopoly on the definition, while others dispute it, and still others push the envelope, seeking official recognition for all kinds of odd objects and antics. If you dare to disagree with any of these folks, without holding an advanced arts degree, you'll be dismissed as ignorant and immoral.

With half a million people poised to descend on our community this week in search of Art, we're likely to hear a lot of these arguments going on.

My advice is, when somebody announces they know what Art is, or what it is not, just smile politely and back away.

Instead, let us appreciate the Art Fairs not for what they claim to represent, but what they are: an amazing display of human ingenuity and effort.

As in past years, Clerk-Register staff are invited to take a two-hour lunch break on one of the Art Fair days. You can arrange this with your supervisor.

Let's have a great week, and enjoy the weather.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —

Thursday, July 10, 2008, 2:39 pm

From the Clerk-Register. Yesterday's email message to my staff:

Late one night last week, when a big storm blew down branches and trees, the power went out at our house. From what we could see, the whole neighborhood was dark.

Some hours passed, while storms came and went. I lay awake in bed, listening to the rumble of thunder and the insistent drumming of heavy rain on the roof.

I thought, there's no way we'll have power back before morning. After all, who's going to climb up a utility pole at 1:00 am, in the middle of a lightning storm, to reconnect high voltage electric lines?

Just then, the power came back on.

Somebody DID climb up that pole, wherever it was.

It sounds terrifying, but the utility worker probably thought of it as just another day on the job. We don't think of those folks very often, but they make our modern lives possible.

We [in the Clerk/Register's office] may not be splicing electric cables in the rain after midnight, but we also do important work. People rely on us — whether they think about it or not.

Remember to take pride in everything you do.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —

Friday, June 27, 2008, 10:43 pm

From the Clerk-Register. This afternoon's email message to my staff (who work in various separate spaces in three different buildings, one of them four miles away from the other two, and rarely gather together in one place in person):

(1) Next Friday (one week from today) is the Fourth of July. Instead of having a Casual Friday on a day we're not here, the short week of June 30 through July 3 will be Casual Attire Week.

(2) My daughter sometimes complains about being teased by her classmates in elementary school. Like many parents, I have taught her to calmly respond with "That's your opinion." They're trying to get a rise out of you, I explain. The teasers win if you get mad or upset. You win by not rising to the bait.

Those conversations come back to mind when I hear about customers who are not only rude, but actively bait us, muttering or whispering personal insults as they stand at our counters, or openly sneering at our competence. Each of our offices has certain customers who come with a lot of attitude, people who you dread seeing come through the door.

Stop. Take a deep breath. Don't let them know how you feel. Take pride in your professionalism. All customers are entitled to courtesy and respect, even snarling ogres and crazy people. Suppress your instinct to reflect back their rudeness; instead, kill them with kindness. Don't give them the slightest excuse to complain about our attitude. Let them be the ones who would look ridiculous to any outside observer.

It's not easy. But you win, we all win, when this office is known for being unfailingly polite. People take notice, believe me.

Have a great weekend.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —

Thursday, May 1, 2008, 1:47 pm

More Bad Economic News from the Deeds Office

A "sheriff's deed" is recorded when a mortgage has been foreclosed and the property sold at auction. Hence, the number of sheriff's deeds recorded in the Register of Deeds office is a precise indicator of distress among homeowners in that county.

By that standard, things are looking grim here in Washtenaw County, with the number of sheriff's deeds reaching previously unheard-of levels. There were 1,151 in calendar year 2007, compared to 703 in 2006 and 433 in 2005. And so far this year we already have 500.

Here's the data by month and year since 2002:

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —

Monday, March 31, 2008, 11:25 pm

Speaking at the Ypsilanti school board meeting

This evening, the Ypsilanti school board took up the issue of selling the long-closed Ardis school on Ellsworth Road to the Hidaya Community Center/Michigan Islamic Academy, which has offered $3.9 million for it. Earlier, sale of the property to the Salvation Army fell through.

The proposed sale had aroused some opposition, some of it frankly anti-Muslim, and flyers were distributed in the neighborhood. About 300 people were at the meeting, and some 20 spoke during public comment (each with a gently but firmly enforced 3 minute limit). Here's what I said:

Good evening. I'm Larry Kestenbaum, Washtenaw County Clerk and Register of Deeds. My office is at 200 North Main Street in downtown Ann Arbor.

I'm not a resident of the Ypsilanti school district, but you're all part of my constituency, and my office serves the entire county when it comes to vital records, elections, court records, and deeds. I'm very interested in intergroup relations in Washtenaw County.

Myself, I'm Jewish, and an active member of Temple Beth Emeth, Jewish congregation, and my wife is on the board of trustees.

The closing of a school is always painful. Generations of students share memories of their formative years in those rooms. The elementary school I attended was closed some years ago, amid bitter controversy. But that school building still exists and contributes to the community, under different ownership, as a community center.

Accordingly, I am here to support the recommendation to sell Ardis School to the Hidaya Center, which I am sure will put the building to good use and benefit the whole community.

Let me share just a couple of brief anecdotes to make my point.

First, some years ago, when I was the youngest member of the East Lansing Planning Commission, we received a site plan for the MSU Islamic Center, across the street from the MSU campus, but also adjoining a single-family residential area.

The plan was approved, and East Lansing has never had cause to regret that decision. Nearby homeowners, folks I grew up with, people I represented as county commissioner, say the Islamic Center is a very good neighbor.

Second, when Ann Arbor had to close a school, they made a decision similar to the one I hope you will make tonight. They sold the Clinton Elementary School, and it became the Jewish Community Center of Washtenaw County.

As a member of the JCC organization, I view this facility with some pride. It houses a school, day care center, and meeting rooms for community events. Just yesterday afternoon, I took my daughter Sarah, who happens to be here tonight, to her Girl Scout troop meeting there.

The Washtenaw County Jewish community is still grateful for the consideration we received to purchase and reuse Clinton School. I urge you to give the Islamic community the same consideration in its bid to purchase and reuse Ardis School.

Census estimates show that Washtenaw County is growing, even as the state's population is declining. People are coming here because of our economy, still the best in the state, and because of the things this area has to offer.

A growing and thriving community naturally becomes more diverse, including religiously diverse. Yes, we'll have more Catholics and Baptists and Lutherans. But we'll also have more Jews, and Mormons, and Buddhists, and Hindus, and Muslims. And all of these groups need to build and nurture their community institutions.

That religious development is inseparable from economic development, which means: more talent, more business, more jobs, and a better future for everyone in Washtenaw County.

Thank you.

I'm happy to report that the school board approved the sale.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —

Monday, February 25, 2008, 4:42 pm

Some thoughts about campaign spending.

(Also posted to Michigan Liberal.)

In Jess Unruh's famous formulation, money is the mother's milk of politics. Nobody in a political campaign can be unmindful of this. Still, wealthy self-funded candidates such as Dick DeVos and Mitt Romney have demonstrated that it's not possible to simply buy electoral victory.

Perhaps this is an awkward subject to raise in an election year where Democrats, for once, are raising more money than Republicans. But if we and our candidates are to make the best use of this advantage, we need to understand that a well-funded campaign has its own set of risks and pitfalls.

My own cynical rule of thumb is that, the more money a campaign has, the higher the proportion that is wasted. In other words, when money is not a constraint, a big campaign stays in better hotels, eats better food, has a nicer headquarters in a more expensive neighborhood, etc., etc., things which do almost nothing to actually win the election. That's why, contrary to conventional wisdom, shoestring campaigns often beat well-funded campaigns.

Recent news coverage of one of the presidential campaigns highlights lavish spending on catering and luxury hotels, and brings this issue to the forefront.

Now, carping over specific items in one campaign might be a little unfair. Many of us have direct experience of the difficulties of quickly creating a large and temporary organization, when the tactical objectives are constantly changing, and all the participants are amateurs.

But more than that, a large organization is inherently less efficient than a small one. The bigger the entity, the higher the overhead costs, the transaction costs, the communication costs. A great metaphor for this is construction. You can build a hundred identical houses cheaper per house than you can build one house. But a skyscraper costs enormously more per usable square foot than a one-story office building.

In tangible political terms, what's necessary and what's wasteful depends critically on the context. A typical city council campaign doesn't need office space, but a gubernatorial campaign can't do without.

When planning your campaign this year, or any year, here are a few thoughts I would suggest you bear in mind.

1. The big picture. A political campaign is brought into being to win an election. Don't lose sight of the main goal when making decisions on campaign activity and spending.

2. Ethic of frugality. Don't spend campaign money on a new coffeepot, when a volunteer could loan you one for free. Spend money on voter contact instead of creature comforts. Be a good steward for the money entrusted to you by your contributors.

3. Maintain some objectivity. When you're the candidate, it's easy to see each and every manifestation of the opponent as a personal attack that has to be "answered". All too often, when the candidate sees the other side has a radio ad, or a billboard, the budget goes out the window. Sure, sometimes the campaign plan has to adapt to circumstances, but don't waste money trying to keep up with your opponent's waste of money.

4. You can't keep it secret. As soon as you file each campaign finance report, people are looking at it. You may think that the thousand dollars spent at Victoria's Secret is buried at the bottom of page 137, but it may be in the blogs the next day -- or in your opponent's next attack piece.

5. Volunteers and candidate effort are more important than money. No amount of money can buy enthusiastic support. Paid staff are easier to control and direct than volunteers, but if you can't recruit and motivate volunteers, you're not going to win.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —

Sunday, February 17, 2008, 8:12 pm

Presidents Day Fundraiser

My term as County Clerk is up at the end of the year. I love the job and I've accomplished a lot, but there's lots more to do.

Hence, I'm seeking re-election in the August primary and November general election. I have no definite word on who my opposition will be, but there have been plenty of rumors, and I need to be ready.

My campaign committee is holding a Presidents Day Fundraiser on Monday, February 18, 5pm, at Leopold Brothers Brewpub, 523 S. Main Street, in downtown Ann Arbor.

Many of us are mourning the impending loss of this place; here's a chance to visit Leopold's before it closes.

Alternatively, if you can't make it on Monday, but wish to contribute to the campaign, make checks to Kestenbaum for Clerk-Register and send them to P.O. Box 2563, Ann Arbor MI 48106. No cash or corporate checks.

What happens at a political fundraiser? Essentially, people come in, drop off a check in a bowl near the door, mill around, eat, drink, and talk about politics or whatever. At some point, somebody stands up and introduces all the politicos who are present, and I make a very brief speech. Food is free, alcohol costs. Pretty much like a party, other than that.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —

Monday, January 14, 2008, 5:30 pm

Presidential Primary: Two Dramatic Updates!

First, I was sued this morning. Nothing personal, though. Local Libertarian Party activist and attorney David Raaflaub sued the Secretary of State, the county Election Commission, and the County Clerk, asking for the presidential primary law to be declared unconstitutional, and for an injunction against holding the primary.

Mr. Raaflaub argued that being required to disclose which party primary he is voting in is a violation the Michigan Constitution's guarantee of ballot secrecy.

(I know those of you in states with party registration will find this hilarious.)

This afternoon, Judge Timothy Connors dismissed the suit.

Second, we have heard from the state Bureau of Elections that, due to an error in ballot programming, Uncommitted and Write-in votes will be counted together in many counties. In order to untangle the mess, they will have to do hand counts.

Here's a pretty good, but probably not perfect, list of the affected counties:

Alger, Alpena, Antrim, Arenac, Baraga, Cheboygan, Chippewa, Gogebic, Grand Traverse, Houghton, Iron, Jackson, Keweenaw, Leelanau, Lenawee, Luce, Mackinac, Manistee, Marquette, Montmorency, Ontonagon, Oscoda, Otsego, Presque Isle, Roscommon, Schoolcraft, Wexford.

Bottom line, if this is a close election, it will be a very long night.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —

Wednesday, January 9, 2008, 4:44 pm

Today's message to my staff: polls and New Hampshire.

After yesterday's startling result in New Hampshire, inconsistent with all the polls, the news media are asking what went wrong.

Similar questions were raised in the last Detroit mayor's race, when every poll showed that the challenger was way ahead - but the incumbent won by 14,000 votes.

The problem is that accurate opinion polling is harder and harder to do.

The mathematical theory behind polling is that you can talk to a random sample of the entire population, and come up with a pretty good estimate of what the entire population is thinking.

However, if the people in your sample are not a random sample of the relevant population, the whole concept fails.

In past times, almost everybody had a Bell System home telephone, and almost everybody answered the phone when it rang.  Polling was comparatively easy then.

Nowadays, with answering machines and Caller ID, we all have more control over who we spend time talking to.  Years of unwelcome interruptions from telemarketers have taught us to screen our calls.

More and more people are choosing to delist themselves from the telephone directory, or not to bother with a "land line" at all.  For most purposes, these people are lost to polling.

With two-career families, longer commute times, growing use of restaurants for meals, taking kids to more and more extracurricular activities, etc., it's harder for pollsters to find people at home at all.

And there's another problem.  A poll-taker who reaches a voter by phone has to cajole participation in a sometimes lengthy interview. Willingness to do this is on the decline.  After all, it's an unsolicited call from a stranger asking personal questions - no surprise that people often say "no".

When a population is very heavily polled (like primary voters in New Hampshire?) the weariness with all the calls really sets in.  And the more people who decline to participate, the less accurate the results will be.

On the other hand, if political activists and people with strong opinions are more inclined to say "yes" - that means those folks will be overrepresented, and the overall poll result will be skewed.

The growing disconnect between poll results and reality comes back to haunt us as election officials, since the media and the political campaigns rely heavily on polls for news.  It's taken for granted that polls are accurate.  When the election turns out differently than polls, we may even be accused of some kind of chicanery.

During this frenetic election year, with media outlets constantly trumpeting their latest surveys, don't forget the old campaign cliché: "The only poll that matters is the one on Election Day."

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —

Wednesday, January 2, 2008, 10:50 pm

Bad Economic News from the Deeds Office

A "sheriff's deed" is recorded when a mortgage has been foreclosed and the property sold at auction. Hence, the number of sheriff's deeds recorded in the Register of Deeds office is a precise indicator of distress among homeowners in that county.

By that standard, things are looking grim here in Washtenaw County, with the number of sheriff's deeds reaching previously unheard-of levels. There were 1,151 in calendar year 2007, compared to 703 in 2006 and 433 in 2005. The month just ended had 147, which is the highest monthly total in years, perhaps ever.

Here's the data by month and year since 2002:

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —

Sunday, December 16, 2007, 11:35 pm

Presidential Primary: Q&A

(I sent this out to my staff last week; it was picked up and posted to the county's public web site, and it will also appear in the next Washtenaw Legal News.)

Everywhere I go, people ask me about the presidential primary. When will it be held? What will the choices be? Will my vote be secret? Many of you are probably hearing those questions, too. So here are some answers:

The Michigan presidential primary will be held on Tuesday, January 15. In Washtenaw County, no other issues or races are on the ballot. The State will reimburse localities for election costs.

Voters will have to check a box to choose the Democratic or Republican ballot. If you vote by absentee ballot, you'll need to select a party ballot on an attached form. If you vote at the precinct, you'll get a form with your application to vote.

If you don't select one party's ballot, you can't vote in the presidential primary.

Under the law, the ballot selection information (the list of who chose a Democratic or a Republican ballot) will be transmitted to the state party chairs for them to use, most likely in direct mail and phone calling. It is to be kept confidential from anyone else.

After the primary, I expect that a federal judge will strike down that restriction. Depending on the ruling, that could mean the lists of Democratic and Republican primary voters become public information. Or, possibly, the judge could order that the lists be destroyed without any disclosure.

Therefore, chances are, many people will know which ballot you selected. However, the CONTENT of your ballot, who specifically you vote for, is completely secret. Whether you choose a Democratic or Republican ballot, you can vote for any one candidate, OR "uncommitted", OR write in a name which has been properly filed with the State.

The Republican candidates on the ballot are: Sam Brownback, Rudy Giuliani, Mike Huckabee, Duncan Hunter, John McCain, Ron Paul, Mitt Romney, Tom Tancredo, and Fred Thompson.

The Democratic candidates on the ballot are: Hillary Clinton, Chris Dodd, Mike Gravel, and Dennis Kucinich. Four other Democratic candidates, under pressure from Iowa and New Hampshire, withdrew their names from the Michigan ballot. These candidates are Joe Biden, John Edwards, Barack Obama and Bill Richardson.

Write-in votes WILL NOT COUNT in the primary unless the write-in candidate files an affidavit of identity with the State by January 4. It's very unlikely that any major candidate not on the ballot will file such an affidavit, since such a filing could be used against them in the New Hampshire primary.

If there are enough "uncommitted" votes to earn delegates, those delegates will be elected at congressional district conventions. Very likely, supporters of various candidates will converge to try to win those "uncommitted" delegate seats.

That being said, both national parties are penalizing Michigan for the unauthorized early primary. Republicans have reduced Michigan's delegate count by half. And planning for the Democratic National Convention in Denver next summer is going forward on the assumption that Michigan won't have a delegation there at all. No hotel space, nor seating section on the convention floor, have been allocated to Michigan. Possibly the delegates will end up being seated, after the presidential nomination has already been settled.

We election officials aren't happy with this whole state of affairs, but it's our job to conduct the election according to law.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —

Tuesday, November 27, 2007, 10:31 pm

Yet another chapter in the presidential primary saga. Or, two chapters, actually.

First, in an appalling decision, the Michigan Supreme Court reversed lower court rulings and upheld the constitutionality of giving only major parties access to the list of voters in the primary.

The decision was four to three, with the solid bloc of four right-wing Republicans (Young, Markman, Corrigan, and Taylor) outvoting the two Democrats (Kelly and Cavanagh) and one disaffected Republican (Weaver).

Michigan Supreme Court justices are nominated by party conventions, so their party labels are widely known, except on the ballot, where they are listed as "nonpartisan".

Election officials, including the Michigan Association of County Clerks, had urged the Secretary of State not to appeal the original court ruling, given the now very limited time left to prepare for the election. It will now be essentially impossible for overseas absentees, such as troops in Iraq, to participate in the election via absentee ballot.

The Traverse City Record-Eagle did a great editorial about this. An excerpt:

The Michigan Supreme Court's Engler Majority, in its never-ending quest to prove that justice not only isn't blind but in fact views everything through a lens, has again created law out of whole cloth. This time, the beneficiaries were the Republican and Democratic parties; the losers were the rest of us....

The court's assertion of political party privilege clearly flies in the face of not only common sense but decades of precedent. Further, it helps create the impression that there are two kinds of citizens -- those with political clout, and those without. It's not hard to tell which side the Engler Four favors (Chief Justice Clifford Taylor and justices Robert Young, Stephen Markman and Maura Corrigan were all appointed by former Gov. John Engler to the Supreme or state Appeals courts.)

The Supreme Court ruling meant that the January 15 primary sprung back to life without much time for election officials to prepare for it.

But then another chapter opened.

With the Michigan Democratic Party now looking toward the primary rather than caucuses, and with the Michigan Republican Party worried that a meaningless Democratic primary might motivate a lot of crossover votes from Democrats for Ron Paul, there was a push to change the law, to put the complete list of Democratic candidates back on the ballot.

The House met yesterday, and passed a bill that would put Obama, Edwards, Richardson and Biden back on the primary ballot, notwithstanding their earlier filing of withdrawal papers.

But H.B. 4507, as rewritten, does more than just that! It strips out the "secret list" provisions from the presidential primary law. It undoes a recent Court of Appeals decision which prohibited local clerks from sending out unsolicited absentee ballot applications. And it reforms the scheduling of school board elections, which most districts now have annually in May, in favor of odd-November OR even-November OR even-August.

We county clerks have been calling for some of these things for years. So, notwithstanding the last-minute change in the candidate list (a royal pain for programming and printing the ballots), I like this bill now.

Unfortunately, though it passed the House, it didn't get two-thirds for immediate effect. But they should get another shot at that today.

Today, the State Senate may or may not take action on the bill.

As the legal saga has unfolded, I've posted some updates to Daily Kos:

• Nov 7: Michigan presidential primary STRUCK DOWN.
• Nov 16: Michigan presidential primary loses again.
• Nov 21: Michigan Jan 15 pres primary REVIVED by State Supreme Court.
• Also on Nov 21, I was quoted in Musical Primaries.

Tomorrow, Wednesday November 28, I'll be appearing, alongside Mark Brewer and other party and campaign people, on a panel sponsored by the Electionn Law Project, from 12:20 to 1:20 pm, in Room 132 of the University of Michigan Law School. Should be fun.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —

Tuesday, November 20, 2007, 5:24 pm

Presidential primary update. A panel of the Court of Appeals, last Friday, voted 2-1 to uphold Judge Collette's decision throwing out the presidential primary. Yesterday, the state filed an appeal with the state Supreme Court. Time to print ballots, prepare for the election, etc., is running extremely short.

A couple of interesting documents to share:

From the State Election Director. Chris Thomas (director of the Michigan Bureau of Elections) sent the following email this afternoon to all the county clerks:

Greetings,

I wanted to touch base with you concerning the status of the presidential primary. I know for the outset that many of you were opposed to the law and to any appeal of the Ingham County Circuit Court order.

When a state law is declared unconstitutional by a circuit court there will nearly always be an appeal. The parties are the Secretary of State and the State of Michigan. The decision to appeal is not unilaterally made by the Secretary of State. Our decision to appeal is motivated by a need for a final decision at the earliest date.

I submitted an affidavit with the appeal to the Michigan Supreme Court outlining the duties that must be completed; the time lost due to the injunction; and the need for a decision by noon on Wednesday, November 21, 2008. I informed the court that anything after that date would risk failure, error and disenfranchisement. It is our view that a primary should not be held if we cannot start work until some date after tomorrow.

If the Court rules tomorrow that the presidential primary will move forward, we will immediately e-mail all the necessary documents to you. We have talked with printers and they are ready to move forward as well. They will need information on any county or local issues or special elections scheduled to appear on the January 15 ballot.

We will be using a two ballot process: Republican Party and Democratic Party. If there are local issues or candidates there will be a third ballot. The challenge is to gauge the proper number of ballots to order. We will be providing you with a guide to begin that calculation. Essentially, it involves the 2000 presidential primary turnout and the Democratic Party turnout in the 1992 presidential primary.

I wanted to give you a heads up on this before tomorrow.

From MACC. Second, a press release issued today by the Michigan Association of County Clerks:

MACC: January Primary a "Post-Holiday Nightmare"
No time to get ballots to military overseas, the elderly and the disabled

LANSING — The Michigan Association of County Clerks today urged lawmakers to reject any temptation to resuscitate a law to hold the Michigan Presidential Primary in January, an idea the group called a "post-holiday nightmare" that would disenfranchise absentee voters.

In a letter to legislative leaders, the MACC said it opposed the law establishing the Jan. 15 presidential primary for many reasons. Notably, the group said with fewer than 60 days before the proposed primary it's too late to guarantee that absentee voters — especially military members serving overseas, the elderly and the disabled — would have time to apply for, receive and return ballots.

"Unless Santa and his reindeer are prepared to deliver the ballots, it will be virtually impossible to get absentee ballots to everyone who requests one for the Jan. 15 primary," said Saginaw County Clerk Sue Kaltenbach, who takes the helm as MACC's president in January.

The MACC's obligation to protect the integrity of the electoral process by ensuring every citizen has the opportunity to participate "could be jeopardized by any eleventh-hour attempt by the legislature to reinstitute the primary," Kaltenbach said.

The county clerks, who objected to the closed primary when it was enacted in August, also expressed concern over the projected $10 million-plus price tag. Most clerks responsibly put off incurring any expenses, including the programming and printing of absentee ballots, while the law was being challenged. They did so, in part, because the Legislature limited reimbursements to counties in the event the election was cancelled, as it has been.

"If the political parties want a state-run presidential primary that adheres to their party rules and meets their list-gathering needs, they should pay for it," said Ottawa County Clerk Dan Krueger. "A taxpayer-funded primary that would cost in excess of $10 million should be open to all registered voters, not just those willing to declare their party affiliation in order to participate."

Krueger added, "Holding a closed primary at taxpayers' expense is one holiday gift that ought to be returned unopened."

In addition, the MACC strongly believes that requiring voters to declare party affiliation could lead to the same sort of chaos and voter dissatisfaction that resulted the last time Michigan held a closed primary in 1992.

The state Court of Appeals invalidated the Act late last week after ruling that an aspect of the law is unconstitutional. The case has been appealed to the state Supreme Court. The lower court's ruling addressed only whether voter lists garnered from a taxpayer-funded primary could be provided to the state's two major political parties since that would be using public resources for a private purpose. The court ruled that doing so would violate the Constitution.

####

In theory, we should know the outcome by lunchtime tomorrow.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —

Monday, November 12, 2007, 11:40 pm

Presidential primary tale grows longer. So much has happened in the last week that it's difficult to summarize briefly.

First off, my friend Mark Grebner, along with a bunch of co-plaintiffs, sued in circuit court for a ruling against the presidential primary law. In particular, they challenged the parties' exclusive right to get lists of who voted in the Democratic and Republican primaries. Kept secret, those lists are worth an estimated $5 to $10 million.

Judge Collette agreed, and ruled that it was unconstitutional to turn over the lists of primary voters to the two major parties, while keeping them secret from everybody else. To do so was to transfer public property to private interests, which takes a two-thirds vote in the Legislature (the primary bill didn't get two-thirds). Further, he ruled, the secrecy requirement abridged the rights of other political parties, and journalists.

Curiously, the presidential primary law, as a cobbled-together compromise, contained a very unusual NON-severability clause, which provided that if any portion of the law were struck down as invalid, the entire law was invalid. Hence, Judge Collette was forced to strike down the entire presidential primary.

(Here's a Detroit Free Press editorial and a Laura Berman column (Detroit News) praising the judge for the decision.)

So the Legislature, still in session last Thursday before the two-week deer hunting recess, was expected to receive and re-enact a "cleaned up" version of the presidential primary law.

But no! The proposed new version still had the unconstitutional secret-list provisions in it. The concept was to get two-thirds in both houses, in order to overcome the giving-away-public-property objection, while ignoring the other issues. The bill was unveiled late Thursday afternoon and rammed through the Senate. It got two-thirds there. But then, it didn't get two-thirds for "immediate effect".

Normally, bills passed by the Legislature don't take effect until the following April. To give a bill "immediate effect" takes two-thirds vote. A law calling for a January 15, 2008 primary would be meaningless if it didn't take effect until three months after that.

In other words, any bill to revive the presidential primary really needs two-thirds support in both houses.

Meanwhile, the House of Representatives, meeting late into the evening, ended up not taking up the Senate-passed bill. Sensing Republican desperation to get the primary re-established, Democrats asked for the Moon: no-reason absentee voting, repeal of the voter-ID law, and allowing people to have different voter and driver addresses. Republicans refused to bend on any one of these, let alone all three.

So the legislative solution seemed to have failed, as the senators and representatives headed off for the traditional deer hunting season recess — notwithstanding that only nine of them have hunting licenses.

But no! The House and Senate are scheduled to return to session tomorrow, Tuesday, November 13, presumably to try again.

Still, there is considerable opposition to the primary among House Democrats, and the likelihood of getting two-thirds there is slim. It didn't get two-thirds in the House the first time, and that was with the Governor fighting hard for it. My understanding is that the revived primary is no longer one of the Governor's priorities.

Further, some of the legislators who recently voted for tax increases are facing recall efforts in their districts. A presidential primary would be an ideal opportunity to collect recall signatures. This probably dampens their enthusiasm to re-establish the primary.

Why did the "cleaned up" bill still have the voter list provisions in it that were struck down by the judge? Because even though the state is determined to defy national party rules by having an early primary, the state Democratic Party is determined to follow national rules in not having an "open" primary, where voters select a party primary within the voting booth. Meanwhile, the Republicans are opposed to having a primary where the names of voters who selected one party or the other are public record (as they are in most states).

Neither party really wants to have a Michigan-style open primary, the Democrats because that would provide another excuse for refusing to seat our delegates at the national convention, and the Republicans because they fear Democrats crossing over to vote for Ron Paul.

The secret-list-for-state-parties-only is the "middle road" between letting everybody choose a primary privately, and letting everybody's party choice be public. Judge Collette ruled that middle road is illegal, but that's just a detail. And both state parties are plainly salivating over the exclusive mailing list they're expecting to get.

One feature of the proposed bill is that it does all over again the process of selecting the candidates for the presidential primary. The option for a candidate to get off the ballot looks like it's still there, but (in the words of one of the drafters) it's a "hall of mirrors" — there's really no way out. So welcome back to the Michigan primary ballot, John Edwards, Barack Obama, Bill Richardson, and Joe Biden!

Meanwhile, the Bureau of Elections (via email sent last Friday at 5:17 pm) has ordered all counties and localities to cease preparing for the January 15 primary, but not to throw away what's been prepared, since the primary could be revived.

The courts were closed today (Monday the 12th) for Veterans Day, but the Secretary of State will appeal Judge Collette's order on Tuesday the 13th. The Bureau stated that she would file at the Court of Appeals, but more recent word is that she will go directly to the Michigan Supreme Court.

Since the Supreme Court is nominated at state party conventions, they are likely to be very responsive to the interests of those parties. Note that the non-severability clause in the original presidential primary law limits their options to all or nothing: they can't throw out some clauses and save others, unless they can invalidate the non-severability clause itself, which seems unlikely.

Will they be so shameless as to decide that it's perfectly okay to turn over lists of voters exclusively to the major parties?

We're pretty close to the drop-dead date for scheduling a January 15 primary, especially if overseas absentee voters (e.g., soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq) are going to take part. There's already some talk of giving up on the January 15 date, and scheduling the primary later. But that would require legislative action, which might not be politically possible.

All this last-minute furor must be giving fits to the New Hampshire official who is supposed to schedule that state's primary a week ahead of all others.

UPDATES, Tuesday morning.

(1) The legislative session scheduled for today has been canceled, and the next session won't be for another week. Presumably they decided they don't have the votes to get a new presidential primary law through in time.

(2) The Secretary of State is still saying she's going to the Court of Appeals (Michigan's intermediate appellate court), not the Supreme Court. That means they'll get a draw of any random three-judge panel -- harder for the powers-that-be to predict and control. Unless they can get it into the Supreme Court this week, I don't see much chance for a timely reversal.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —

Monday, November 12, 2007, 9:03 pm

Update on a self-proclaimed icon. Those of us old enough to remember the early 1970s probably recall the adulation for the Guru Maharaj Ji, the "14 year old Perfect Master" (he seemed to be stuck at that age for some time). His smooth, fat, baby-faced visage smiled serenely from innumerable posters in college towns in those days, plastered everywhere by the vaguely sinister Divine Light Mission. Apparently, he had millions of followers.

Woody Allen's movie Annie Hall had a scene ridiculing him.

Later, he had some kind of falling out with his mom, and she renounced his divinity. It was the sort of ending you'd expect, and I hadn't given him much thought for the last thirty-plus years.

Tonight I accidentally discovered, through Wikipedia, that he's still around, still preaching, but without claiming to be God. His face is older (he'll be 50 next month) but otherwise unchanged. He now goes by his civilian name: Prem Rawat.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —

Wednesday, October 10, 2007, 1:24 pm

The Presidential Primary. We Michiganders have sure gotten ourselves into a pickle again.

The Legislature enacted a January 15, 2008 presidential primary, defying the schedule laid down by both national parties. In compliance with national Democratic Party rules, it's a choice-of-ballot primary. But the lists of voters who chose the Democratic and Republican ballots would be disclosed only to the state party chairs, so as to mollify people who didn't want to leave a public record of which party's primary they voted in.

For a little while, it looked like Michigan and Florida had won the game by scheduling such early primaries. But New Hampshire still has a lot of leverage, so pledges were extracted from the candidates not to campaign in either state. Of course, that didn't stop candidates from visiting Michigan and Florida for "fundraising".

Then, the national Democratic Party decided to punish Florida (and presumably Michigan too) by taking away all delegate seats. This was widely seen as an empty threat. The two unauthorized primaries might be zero-delegate "beauty contests", but given the timing and the expected large participation, they could have a huge impact on the race. And by convention time, with the primaries over with, Michigan and Florida delegates would surely be welcomed back.

But our presidential primary law has an escape hatch for candidates. Five of the eight Democratic presidential candidates (under pressure from New Hampshire and the national party) filed papers by the deadline yesterday to remove their names from the ballot. Dennis Kucinich's filing lacked his signature and was rejected, so he remains on the ballot, along with front-runner Hillary Clinton, and also-rans Mike Gravel and Chris Dodd.

The Michigan presidential primary law has had that escape provision for some time; that was the mechanism by which the Democratic presidential primary was all but cancelled most years from 1980 to 2004. In retrospect, it was a big mistake to leave it in the law this year. Florida has a no-escape presidential primary, and we could have done that, too.

I suppose the Legislature could retroactively remove the escape clause and force the four candidates back onto the ballot. That would smack of changing the rules during the game, but stuff happens when everybody plays hardball. On the other hand, the candidates who withdrew their names will be portrayed as having spat in the face of Michigan voters; it might seem awfully mean-spirited to drag them back to be humiliated in the "beauty contest".

Technically, Michigan has not yet suffered any formal sanctions from the national party, and will not until a delegate selection plan is filed. Quite possibly, the state party could quietly abandon the primary for delegate selection, and go back to the February 9 caucus date that was originally planned.

Even if that happens, the primary will not be modified or canceled unless both parties agree to it. We election officials will still have to do election preparations during the holiday season. Not only that, we will still be required to print two (or three) different ballots per precinct, and will still be required to ask every voter which party's ballot they want, all to comply with Democratic Party rules — for a primary rejected by the national party, and perhaps also abandoned by the state party.

Since the Democratic front-runner will be essentially unopposed, the action will be on the Republican side. And the "closed primary" that was demanded by the Democratic Party will instead protect the Republican primary from crossover votes for Ron Paul.

That is, unless the early caucuses and primaries shake up the Democratic race, in which case we will have hundreds of thousands of write-in votes to deal with.

Legislate in haste, repent at leisure.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —

Monday, October 1, 2007, 11:50 am

From the Clerk-Register. This morning's message to my staff: about the state budget brinkmanship.

The Legislature was up all night, last night, working out the budget deal. This morning, Michigan is a little less of a national disgrace because they succeeded.

But the details are still not entirely clear. Were school elections moved to November? Neither the Bureau of Elections nor the WISD superintendent knew the answer to that this morning. I'm guessing that many desperate and sleep-deprived state legislators barely grasped the details of what they were voting on.

And it almost didn't work!

Last night, the lobbyists who represent Washtenaw County's interests in Lansing warned us that "the agreement is extremely fragile and could fall apart over the slightest misstep." And they were right. The necessary tax increases would both have failed on 19 to 19 votes in the Senate, were it not for the Lieutenant Governor's authority to cast a tie-breaking vote.

In other words, even at that desperate hour, there was no ability for the parties to join together on an agreement. A shutdown of state services was averted because a handful of gutsy mavericks broke ranks and supported a compromise.

Term limits, by weakening individual members, have made Lansing more partisan, and sharply reduced the number of independent voices in the Legislature. I'm very grateful there are still a few left.

And let's be clear on what was at stake last night. Had our state government shut down today, we wouldn't just have been a national laughingstock. We would have been sending a signal that Michigan's leaders are unable or unwilling to work together and cope with problems, even at the brink of disaster. The blame game in Lansing would have gotten national attention, and underlined the image of Michigan as an economic sinking ship. How likely is it that someone is going to want to bring their company to Michigan under these conditions?

It is a great relief not to have to wake up to that kind of debacle this morning.

And it's even better to hear the (unspecific, but reliable) report that some good news for our local economy will be announced soon.

Let's have a great week!

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —

Thursday, August 23, 2007, 11:50 pm

New York Times Outraged at Murder Case Acquittal. I came across the following editorial this evening, published May 1, 1854 (paragraph breaks added for readability):

The Moral of the Kentucky Murder.

The issue between influence and justice has been boldly made and fairly met. It has been decided that certain circles of society are not to be rudely entered by the public executioner; that certain classes are not amenable to the penalty of the law. As by law the "King can do no wrong," so the aristocracy can commit no murder.

We cannot complain that any other than this bare question of privilege was presented. The WARDS owe their acquittal to no legal chicanery — to no vulgar or hackneyed expedients. The case was fairly presented. No very essential testimony was excluded. No important evidence was manufactured. There was, indeed, some attempt to bully and browbeat and confuse certain witnesses; but, if we may judge by the reports of the trial, there was less of this than is usual in important cases. No pretence of insanity was set up; no abuse of the murdered man was resorted to.

Take the case as presented by the defence, and it was murder — wanton, premeditated, cowardly murder — murder without qualification or extenuation — without palliation or excuse. To bring the perpetrator of such a crime clear off, and upon the sole and simple ground that he belonged to their body — by the sheer dint of influence, or wealth and position — is indeed a triumph for the aristocracy of Kentucky.

To effect this, all their forces were marshalled. Clergymen came down from their studies; colonels came up from haunts, to be named only by the delicate circumlocution of "places to which young men are apt to go;" accomplished ladies left their boudoirs — all to plead for their darling associate. The halls of Congress, the offices of Government, the editor's sanctum, were subsidized for witnesses. Governors and Senators appeared as counsel.

It is not often that a person of such character holds up his hand at the bar of justice. One would have supposed, from the evidence given, that MATT. WARD was undergoing examination for some post requiring the possession of all the moral and intellectual virtues, rather than upon trial for murder.

Yet to balance all the amiable, mild, and gentle qualities attributed to him, appear the facts, proved and admitted, that he deliberately armed himself; deliberately took with him his brother, likewise secretly armed; deliberately insulted his victim, in his own house and before his own pupils; and upon the insult being resented — allowing the case to stand just as sworn to by his own accomplice — in a manner far milder than its aggravation demanded, deliberately, with a concealed weapon, shot down an unarmed man.

No array of words from his counsel — no gentle euphemism of the reverend gentleman who calls this brutal affair a "sad occurrence" — can prevent these damning facts from standing upon perpetual record. Yet, in spite of them all, the perpetrator of the deed has been borne triumphantly off.

We remember with what breathless anxiety men watched the progress of the WEBSTER trial at Boston; as they saw the law take its calm, unrelenting course, without haste, without delay, until its supreme sentence was accomplished, they breathed more deeply and freely. They felt that however corruption might have invaded social and political life, our Courts were still pure, the scales of justice were held with even poise, the regis of law in the hands of a jury was interposed between them and the assassin.

With like, with deeper anxiety — men have watched the Kentucky case. In the former instance, the murderer and his victim belonged to the privileged social classes, and the influence which might have been brought to bear as a shield for the criminal, was equally potent to call for his punishment. In this Kentucky case, the weight of social influence was all on one side; and had justice here triumphed over influence, the triumph would have been perfect.

As it is, so far as this decision can reach, it is decided that any man who has inherited or acquired wealth, or a position in certain circles of society, may at his pleasure shoot down the man who, standing outside that charmed circle, shall dare to resent any insult which a member of the privileged class shall choose to offer.

We read that, during the French Revolution, it was gravely moved in the Assembly that any law should be abolished which authorized a Noble, upon returning from hunting, to put to death a number of his serfs, in order that he might refresh himself by a bath of human blood. It would probably have been in vain to have searched for that law in the Statute-book.

If, some generations hence, a motion should be made in the Kentucky legislature to render null and void any decision, authorizing a member of the privileged classes to shoot down at pleasure a public teacher, there will be no difficulty in finding the decision intended to be set aside.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —

Monday, August 6, 2007, 4:38 pm

From the Clerk-Register. Today's message to my staff: about the voter ID law

Last month, the Michigan Supreme Court voted to revive a law requiring that voters show photo ID to vote — and created a big headache for election administrators.

On the face of it, the concept seems sensible. You need identification for many transactions, so why not voting? What's the problem with this law?

First of all, there's no evidence that crooks are showing up at the polls pretending to be other people. It's a felony, which is a pretty strong disincentive for most people. But, perhaps more to the point, it is an ineffective way to steal elections. Not knowing the vote totals in advance, the crooks would need to create thousands of fake votes — maybe ten thousand or more in a large election. For each fake vote, one of the fraudsters would have to stand in line and impersonate a different voter, any one of whom might show up either before or after, and blow the scam. With or without IDs, they could never get away with it on that scale.

Second, voting is fundamental and should be accessible to all citizens — even those who don't have or habitually carry identification with them.

Third, implementation of this law will add more steps to the voting process. That will raise the cost — we'll need more workers, more training, more forms to print and store — and lengthen the wait in line.

The law provides that people who don't have any ID can swear an affidavit to that effect. Though the law does not provide an affidavit option for those who forgot to bring an ID to the polls, the state is going to interpret the law as if it did.

On the other hand, if you choose to vote absentee, there is no need for any photo ID whatsoever. Until the Saturday before the election, you can typically go to your local clerk's office and cast your absentee ballot on the spot. Or, if you plan ahead, you can vote by mail.

Our neighbors in Ohio had to implement a similar voter-ID law in the last general election. Thanks to preparation, planning, training, and a public information campaign, they had few problems on Election Day.

Michigan can do that, too. And we will.

Let's have a great week!

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —

Thursday, July 26, 2007, 4:05 pm

From the Clerk-Register. A recent message to my staff: the perils of email

Have you ever said something you came to regret?

I certainly have. There are incidents I can remember from as long ago as my adolescence, when my careless words hurt feelings and severed friendships. I try not to dwell on these mistakes, but they come to mind from time to time, and probably will as long as I live.

But human memory is fallible. Maybe my recollection is inaccurate. Probably some of the people I offended have completely forgotten what I said.

Networks of computers, on the other hand, can remember with perfect clarity. The Internet can preserve one's words forever.

When you send an email message, you are releasing it into the world. Copies will be archived in multiple places. Even if you immediately delete it, the county's network servers retain a copy in perpetuity. Your recipient can forward it along to others - with your name still attached. The news media can obtain it either directly or indirectly. Your current and future employers, your spouse or ex-spouse, your kids and grandkids, your neighbors, all might get access to it one way or another. You can never blot it out.

Slurs or stereotypes about ethnic or racial groups, the disabled, the mentally ill, gays and lesbians, immigrants, religious believers, or even unkind remarks about specific individuals, are unprofessional and violate acceptable use policies. In the not very long run, an email message with such content is likely to embarrass and demean the sender, the recipient, this entire office, and Washtenaw County.

What might seem like harmless fun between friends might well look very different if published on the front page of the Ann Arbor News, or broadcast on CNN. And all our efforts to demonstrate respect for our customers could be for naught, if one single message convinces people that we're all sneering at them.

Let's not be paranoid about this, but please do recognize that email is not confidential. Let the words you write demonstrate your professionalism and your commitment to public service for all.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —

Tuesday, July 24, 2007, 9:30 pm

From the Clerk-Register. Today's message to my staff: a Blink link

I recently came across a passage in Malcolm Gladwell's book Blink, which speaks to an aspect of customer service.

The topic was medical malpractice lawsuits. Studies show that the most important factor determining whether a doctor gets sued or not is how they talk to their patients.

One expert says, "When a patient has a bad medical result, the doctor has to take the time to explain what happened, and to answer the patient's questions — to treat him like a human being. The doctors who don't are the ones who get sued."

Gladwell describes the research, and adds: "In the end it comes down to a matter of respect, and the simplest way that respect is communicated is through tone of voice."

In the Clerk/Register's office, we don't often get sued by our customers. But the same principles apply. We sometimes have to give people unwelcome news, and the way we do it is critical. Will they leave the office furious at us? Or will they feel they were treated fairly?

This is one reason we strive to treat every customer with courtesy and respect — even the ones who are difficult or challenging or confused. Your tone of voice, your willingness to explain and answer questions, will help the customer feel better about the outcome, whatever it happens to be.

Let's have a great week!

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —

Monday, July 16, 2007, 3:58 pm

From the Clerk-Register. Today's message to my staff: it happens every summer

For four days every July, half a million people descend on downtown Ann Arbor. Major streets become crowded outdoor galleries with endless rows of booths and tents, each packed with someone's handiwork for sale.

If you work downtown, you can't help but notice the change. Parking facilities are full beyond capacity. Traffic is enormously heavier than usual, but with fewer streets to travel on. Slow moving crowds fill the streets, making even a short walk time consuming. The restaurants and gift shops are busy, but those of us who aren't catering to vast crowds of visitors are going to have a light week.

By the same token, the customers who brave the crowds to see us probably have some urgent need. They will be stressed, not just by parking and traffic issues, but by whatever problem brought them to our counter. We know how stress can make people impatient, demanding, even rude. The best response is to treat them with unfailing courtesy and respect, to pay attention to their needs, and to respond with the best service possible. We gain the respect of our community by upholding these principles even when it isn't easy.

In recognition of the special conditions of this week, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday will be casual dress days in Clerk-Register offices. And each employee will be able to take an extra hour for lunch on one of those days. Consult your supervisor for details.

Have a great week, and smile as you watch the throngs go by.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —

Thursday, July 12, 2007, 11:31 pm

Another press clipping. The Ann Arbor News ran an article on the front page about the latest passport regulation. More than that, they quoted me and even included a (dour, balding) photo:

New bump in passport road
Local clerks can't process them for people born here

Thursday, July 12, 2007
BY AMY WHITESALL
News Staff Reporter

Just when you thought you had a handle on this summer's passport saga - a new wrinkle was added.

As of June 25, the U.S. Department of State has said county clerks can no longer process passports for anyone who was issued a birth certificate from that office.

"As if the passport situation wasn't enough of a train wreck already, they've decided to add something else,'' said Washtenaw County Clerk Larry Kestenbaum. "I think it's safe to say county clerks around the state are baffled and outraged."

The move is designed to quash any incentive employees in a clerk's office might have to issue a fake birth certificate or otherwise falsify a passport application.

But Kestenbaum says it amounts to an unnecessary inconvenience for customers - and it takes a bite out of his office's business. In the weeks since the directive was announced, the county clerk's office has turned away 88 passport-seeking citizens.

The county clerk's office usually processes about 2,000 passports a year, and the processing office receives a mandatory $30 fee.

In the two-week span, that amounts to $2,640 in missed income - which will surely rise with increased demand for passports leading up to the new year.

Passport demand has been high since the Western Hemisphere travel initiative went into effect Jan. 23, extending passport requirements to all air travelers entering the country. In early June, the State Department announced relaxed rules for air travelers returning from Canada, Mexico, Bermuda and the Caribbean until Sept. 30.

The county clerk's office isn't the only place to apply for a passport - post offices and many municipal offices also can do the initial processing. But since a birth certificate is part of the required paperwork, the clerk's office offered one-stop shopping for people who couldn't find their birth certificates at home.

All local agencies send the applications to the State Department, which issues the passports.

"We're talking to our members of Congress, hoping we might get some amelioration of this," Kestenbaum said. "I heard a clerk somewhere has arranged it so birth certificates are issued on one floor and passports are processed on another to see if that will satisfy them. I think the whole thing is crazy to begin with."

Check www.state.gov/travel for information on nearby passport processing sites.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —

Tuesday, May 29, 2007, 11:22 am

Personal Best from the Fray. The online magazine Slate has a reader comments section called "The Fray".

I've been a sometime participant in the Fray, and though most of the things I have written there have long disappeared, a few remain today on Slate's web site, and six of those carry the coveted check mark that means "Fray Editor's Pick".

The comments function is about to be completely rebuilt, and I'm guessing that the old comments will disappear. I'm copying a few of them here, so I can find them later.

1. Nixon and McGovern. I wrote this in response to a Slate piece about Nixon the Populist:

Subject: Nixon and McGovern
From: Polygon
Date: Oct 2 2003 7:47AM

Greenberg is persuasive as to the history, but he writes about the American electorate as if it were essentially unchanged from 50 years ago.

Back in 1972, conservative pundits pointed to what they saw as the key difference between Nixonites and McGovernites: the Nixon voters were productive, that is, they made tangible, real-world stuff. Farmers, factory workers, tradesmen, and so forth were portrayed as morally superior to effete McGovern supporters whose occupations were caricatured as sitting around thinking and dreaming, or writing and talking.

Leaving the moral dimension out of it, they were on to something: today we recognize it as the schism between the Old Economy and the New Economy. In retrospect, McGovern's campaign was part of an epochal shift of highly educated professionals from being the most Republican occupational category to the most Democratic.

At the same time, the professional category has quadrupled its share of the vote, from 5% to 21%. As Judis and Teixera documented in The Emerging Democratic Majority, most of the economic and population growth in the U.S. is concentrated in New Economy metropolitan areas (which tend to prefer more liberal candidates), while the old farming and manufacturing regions are in relative decline.As usual, the political conventional wisdom is late catching up to changed conditions. It stands to reason that a growing population segment will grow in political influence.

2. Two Columbus Circle. During the controversy over whether to preserve 2 Columbus Circle, Timothy Noah (Chatterbox) challenged its chief defender to call it beautiful. I wrote as follows:

Subject: 2 Columbus Circle
From: Polygon
Date: Oct 17 2003 8:51AM

I'm not a fan of Tom Wolfe, but he is absolutely right about architecture. And surely 2 Columbus Circle is historically significant.

Chatterbox asks if it is beautiful. But architectural beauty has to be judged in context. Among 1964-vintage architect-designed major buildings, 2CC may be the most beautiful on earth, though admittedly that isn't saying much. (Okay, Saarinen's fascinating TWA terminal, also hated by the Modernists, might be close enough to 1964 to outrank 2CC.)

In the 1960s, the International Style was the ideology of destruction and forgetfulness. Just as Gropius discarded Harvard's architectural library, declaring history to be irrelevant to architecture, International Style architects and theoreticians sought to level historic landmarks and neighborhoods and replace them with arid concrete plazas and glass boxes. International Style buildings are unbeautiful because beauty was never the goal. Only ideological purity mattered.

What is revealing about the treatment of Stone's building is that the rigid, Stalinist, International style orthodoxy STILL has a stranglehold on the architectural profession. Architects (to this day) apologize to each other for designing those "vulgar" postmodern buildings. Postmodern ornament is permitted if-and-only-if it is "ironic", which is to say, that it's thin and fake-looking and not integral to the building. It's as if architects look forward to a messianic era when all the postmodern buildings will be stripped back to their International style "purity".

Establishment architects hate 2 Columbus Circle not because it is ugly (their own buildings are MUCH uglier), but because it was a heresy. All these years later, it is STILL a heresy, and sneering critics like Herbert Muschamp have never stopped demanding that it be demolished.

2 Columbus Circle should remain as a rebuke to the Herbert Muschamps of the world and their brutal ideological certainties.

3. The Pulitzer Prize. Jack Shafer ridiculed the Pulitzer Prize in journalism. I was one of many who responded:

Subject: Pulitzer Prize
From: Polygon
Date: Apr 7 2004 8:07AM

As other Fraysters have commented, the Pulitzer Prize in journalism actually does correlate to a large extent with talent and accomplishment.

It's silly to assign too much significance to the numbers of prizes handed out in a given year (five to one newspaper, two to another) as indicating any kind of mathematical truth about the two papers. A single year's prizes are a tiny sample size.

However, the Pulitzers have been handed out for nearly nine decades now, to newspapers in hundreds of cities large and small, all across the U.S. Some cities, like New York, Washington, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, have received dozens of Pulitzers.

My favorite trivia question: what's the largest city in America which has NEVER had a Pulitzer Prize winning newspaper? And what's the second-largest?

You used to be able to answer these questions with the World Almanac (which came from Pulitzer's New York World). Unfortunately, they have stopped publishing the list of past Pulitzer Prizes.

Shame on the World Almanac for throwing that history away. And shame on San Antonio and Columbus (answers to those trivia questions above) for having such wretchedly bad newspapers.

4. Disappearing Gas Stations. In an article about the shortage of oil refineries, Daniel Gross (Moneybox) went on to bemoan the loss of gas stations in Manhattan:

In New York, the least obtrusive component of the petroleum supply chain.the neighborhood gas station.is an endangered species. Nearly 20 percent of Manhattan's gas stations have disappeared since 1999, according to Monday's New York Times. And it's getting worse. Gotham's remaining gas stations are generally located on the far East or West sides.formerly commercial and industrial areas with easy access for delivery trucks and motorists. But these are precisely the areas that savvy builders are now seeking to develop. The gas station I used to frequent, on a run-down corner at 92nd Street and First Avenue, was demolished last summer to make way for a 32-story hotel/apartment building.

That struck me as remarkably uninformed about the consolidation of oil retailing, so I wrote the following:

Subject: Why there are fewer gas stations
From: Polygon
Date:Jun 10 2004 11:02AM

Moneybox comments on the decline in the number of gas stations in Manhattan. However, that trend is everywhere, not just in NYC, and it is not primarily due to competing land uses.

In the old days, there were lots of independently owned gas stations everywhere. Not any more — not even in places which have plenty of commercial road frontage available.

The business of selling gasoline to motorists has a very narrow profit margin. To sell sufficient volume and minimize staff costs, you need massive investment in a battery of automated self-service pumps, and a very specific type of high-traffic location.

Most 1960s and 1970s gas stations were in the wrong places for this, and their costs were too high. The economic censuses document a steep decline in the number of gas stations nationally and in almost every local area. Everywhere on commercial strips, you can recognize the shapes of those sturdy 1970s gas stations, now converted to restaurants or car dealerships or other uses.

For consumers, there is more limited choice, and a longer drive to the nearest fueling outlet, but lower prices and round-the-clock availability. Driving father is an environmental negative, but with fewer and better-run sites, there is less likelihood of gasoline leaking from tanks into ground water, and fewer neighborhood externalities.

Indeed, in most communities, the heavy traffic which is an economic prerequisite for siting a new gas station has probably already driven out anyone who might have objected to it being built.

5. Jackson, the Whigs, Slavery, and the Civil War. Fred Siegel's piece When History Meets Politics contained so many dubious assertions that it was vigorously disputed by the author of the book he praised. I was involved in the Fray debate to rebut other dubious ideas about mid-19th century America. Here are three postings:

Subject: RE: Jackson Vs. Industrial America
From: Polygon
Date: Dec 12 2005 5:29PM

First of all, the influence of abolitionists is being gigantically overstated here. Prior to the war, there were never more than 1% in the North who favored immediate abolition of slavery. No matter how evil slavery looks to us in retrospect, at the time, respect for property rights was held very high, and no one wanted to be responsible for the expropriation of a huge amount of Southern "property". Abolitionism was not a mainstream idea.

In the political rhetoric of the 1850s, to be "anti-slavery" meant to be opposed to the then-potent political influence of the slaveholders. It was roughly the equivalent of someone today who might self-describe as anti-oil-industry or anti-pharmaceutical industry, who (if mainstream) certainly isn't advocating that all the refineries or drug labs be destroyed.

It is absolutely misplaced to describe the Whigs as abolitionists; after all, many of them owned slaves. The Whig Party was a coalition of critics and complainers who were out of power most of the time and agreed on little. Whig candidates for president got elected by taking no positions on anything for fear of straining the creaky coalition. The Whig Party became a political home to critics of the slaveholders, but they also helped alienate the Southern wing and break up the party.

Subject: No, those were distinct
From: Polygon
Date: Dec 13 2005 2:03AM

The idea of confining slavery to the South and hoping for its eventual disappearance should not be confused with abolitionism.

Today, an environmentalist who says we should work to eventually reduce greenhouse gas emissions could be considered mainstream. But one who says greenhouse gas emissions should all stop NOW would be dismissed as a wacko.

There's a romantic fallacy that the North went to war to destroy slavery, parallel to that other romantic fallacy that the U.S. went to war with Nazi Germany to save the Jews of Europe. These are widely believed, but no serious historian takes either one seriously.

Subject: RE: No, those were distinct
From: Polygon
Date: Dec 13 2005 1:09PM

For decades prior to 1860, presidents had been figures who were allied with or deferential to the power and interests of the slaveholders in the South. Southern leaders were accustomed to this deference.

The ascension of Lincoln was a departure from this. Lincoln was also elected on a protectionist platform which was economically threatening to the South, dependent as it was on the cotton trade with Europe.

Lincoln was no friend of slavery, but he was not an abolitionist. He never would have been nominated or elected if he were. Operationally, his "anti-slavery" (like that of other mainstream politicos up through 1860) consisted of confronting the political power of the slaveholders on issues peripheral to slavery itself: expansion into the territories, handling of fugitive slaves, etc.

Absolutely, protecting and justifying slavery were central to secessionist rhetoric. Yes, it would be fair to argue that the South began the war in part to protect slavery. But the North's military response was intended to protect the Union, not to get rid of slavery.

Lincoln is revered as the Great Emancipator, and it is a common misconception to retroactively think of him as an abolitionist in the 1860 campaign or even earlier. You're misreading those debates and speeches if you believe this. What might seem 140 years later like mincing little distinctions carried huge weight at the time.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —

Monday, May 28, 2007, 8:09 pm

On this day three decades ago, a northern Kentucky nightclub was destroyed in one of the worst fires in American history.

When my wife was growing up in Northern Kentucky, one of her high school graduation events was held at the Beverly Hills Supper Club, in Southgate (just a few miles south of Cincinnati). It was a nightclub and a familiar venue for high school proms, wedding receptions, and so on. Many famous performers appeared there over the years.

The original building was built in 1937, but it had been greatly expanded over the years with little or no safety inspection or enforcement. It postdated Prohibition, but locals thought of it as an old speakeasy, and it was said to be a headquarters for illegal gambling.

On May 28, 1977, a fire broke out in the building, apparently caused by faulty aluminum wiring. The cheap building materials burned rapidly and generated toxic fumes. In the vast, crowded Cabaret Room, the exits were unmarked and access to them was constricted.

About two thousand people escaped from the building that night, but 165 died — most of them in the Cabaret Room.

Until last year, I had not known about Walter Bailey, a teenage busboy who saved hundreds of lives. More than a thousand people were packed into the Cabaret Room, watching a comedy act, unaware of the fire raging at the other end of the building. Bailey ran down the long hallway, jumped on stage, grabbed a microphone, warned the audience to evacuate, and pointed out the exits. Most of the crowd did escape safely. Two minutes after Bailey's warning, fire and thick smoke exploded into the room.

Wikipedia has an article about the fire. There's an edit war still going on over whether the fire that burst into the Cabaret Room was a backdraft or a flashover.

The location of the Supper Club (at the end of a long driveway some distance back from the road) has never been built on. Some rubble still remains there. There has been some agitation for a memorial at the site. Survivors and families are gathering there today to observe the anniversary.

Three years ago, when I first posted about the fire in my blog, I started a QuickTopic comment page. That board now contains comments from quite a few people who experienced the disaster either directly or indirectly.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —

Tuesday, May 22, 2007, 12:56 pm

Mulberry, 1991-2007.

Mulberry was a small black-and-white tuxedo cat who came to us in 1991, when Katie Geddes found her as a tiny, motherless kitten on her farm near Grass Lake, Michigan.

Back in 1990-91, on M-Net (local Unix-based conferencing system), "mulberry" was an anonymous writer, also known as "Thisbe Alcestis". Mulberry fascinated us all with postings of original poetry, often done as commentary on M-Net happenings and people. The real identity of Mulberry was a much-speculated-upon mystery. Some of us had figured it out by the time this kitten came along, and so it was natural to endow her with the name of the secret alter ego of the woman who had given her to us.

Even some time after that, I remember when John Perry, one of the M-Net board members, disclaiming knowledge of who was writing the mulberry postings, declared that as far as he was concerned, "Mulberry is Larry Kestenbaum's cat."

Being motherless, Mulberry grew up a bit undersocialized. The arrival of another, older cat in our household seemed to help her mellow out a bit, but she was always feisty about being crossed, and very shy or skittish with strangers; she never fully trusted anyone besides me and Janice.

We still have around our house a number of those plastic rings (about an inch-plus in diameter) from the tops of plastic milk jugs. Mulberry liked to play a game with these. She bring one of these rings to me or Janice and mew, in a particular warbling way, for us to throw them across the room. She would chase after the ring, sometimes knocking it around in a frenzy, and finally capture it. Then she did a very clever cat thing: she would put her paw down on one side of the little hoop, so that the other side rotated upward, and grasp the rising edge in her mouth. She would triumphantly bring the ring back, drop it within our reach, and mew for it to be thrown again.

I don't think she played the ring toss game in the last year or so of her life, but she was still doing it from time to time even as a fairly old cat.

Some cats engage in habits which become almost ritualized, and no cat I have known was more into this than Mulberry. When she was a young cat, she got into habit of attacking me every night about 11 pm. I came to dread this, but I also knew that once it happened, it was over for the night.

Much later, when we would confine her to our room for feeding (to keep the other cats from eating the medicine in her food), she would take a few bites of food, then urgently demand to be let out of the room. Let out, she would wander into the living room and back for no apparent reason, then return to our room to finish the meal. She did this day in and day out for quite a while.

All her life, Mulberry never liked it when somebody made the bed, and would remain on the bed, mewing insistently, while we tried to straighten the sheets and pull up the covers.

Mulberry was diagnosed with inflammatory bowel disease some years ago, and was treated with prednisone. Cats tolerate steroids much better than humans do, and as long as she had her medicine, she was fine. On occasion, she would lose her appetite and hence not get the medicine, and her condition would further suppress her appetite until she was dehydrated. So we would pack her off to the veterinarian, who would inject some prednisone, and she'd be fine again.

But when Janice came home Friday evening, Mulberry was considerably sicker than usual, and was extremely weak and passive. She barely even bothered to object when put in the cat carrier and taken to the veterinary ER.

It turned out that in addition to being dehydrated and unable to keep food down, she was jaundiced and in liver failure. Possibly she had liver cancer (quite common among cats), or possibly it was a side effect of the prednisone. Either way, any treatment would be difficult, invasive, expensive, and of dubious usefulness. We had to euthanize her.

It's ironic that the same medication which kept her alive these last seven years may have destroyed her liver. Former U.S. Senator Paul Tsongas had a similar fate. Even "miracle" drugs can carry a downside.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —

Friday, May 18, 2007, 3:48 pm

Short notes:

• My daughter Sarah (age 8) received her black belt in karate (Tae Kwan Do) last Saturday.
  
  
• Also on Saturday, at the Ann Arbor Democratic Party meeting, I finally met Juan Cole, University of Michigan professor and internationally famed blogger on Middle East issues.
  
  
• On Tuesday, I testified before the Michigan House Elections and Ethics Committee, arguing (1) in favor of students voting in college towns, where they spend most of their time and are counted by the Census for representation purposes, (2) against a proposed bill that would break the connection between driver's license addresses and voter registration addresses, and (3) in favor of amending the law to allow all voters (but particularly students) to have a separate mailing address in addition to their physical residence address. This is done anyway for the homeless and for people who insist on it, so why not open the option to everyone, and regularize it as part of the management of voter and driver lists?
  
  
• Also on Tuesday, blogger Hugh Stimson had some flattering things to say about me and my blog.
  
  
• Last night, we attended the taping of the NPR radio news quiz Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, at the Michigan Theater in Ann Arbor.
  
  
• Today is the 80th anniversary of the Bath school disaster, when an angry and paranoid school board member put explosives under the school and killed 45 people. I grew up near where this happened.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —

Monday, May 3, 2007, 6:26 pm

The Lost Convention. Congress proposed the 21st Amendment (repeal of Prohibition) in 1933, and specified that ratification would be through state conventions rather than state legislatures.

Michigan was the first state to act. The ratification convention was scheduled for April 10. Delegates, elected only a week earlier, voted 99-1 to ratify the repeal amendment.

Unlike other state elections and conventions, none of this was documented in the 1933 Michigan Manual. In 1951, a fire at the state archives destroyed most of the records.

The election and convention has sunk into such obscurity that people knowledgeable in Michigan political history had never heard of it. I myself didn't know about it until I came across it in a 1933 newspaper. Of course, I wanted to collect the information for Political Graveyard.

Over the last few months, I gathered data from county and state archives, and from newspapers published at the time. I'm delighted to report that I now have all the delegate and candidate names. I didn't try to collect and reconcile the vote totals.

Here's the report: Delegates to Michigan Convention to Ratify 21st Amendment.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —

Monday, April 30, 2007, 6:33 pm

Our presidential primary.

It's time I wrote something about the scuffle over whether Michigan will hold a presidential primary.

I spent much of Friday and Saturday in Gaylord at the statewide county clerks' conference, where this was a big topic of discussion. The county clerks as a group are opposed to holding a presidential primary, but they are starting to be resigned to the fact that it's likely to happen.

This is a complicated story, so I'll break it down into just a few points:

(1) No "open" primary. Selection of delegates to national party conventions is governed by national party rules. Democratic national rules require that any presidential preference primary or caucus be limited to people willing to call themselves Democrats, or at least, people who are participating in the Democratic primary.

That's no problem in most states, where people register by party to participate in primaries, or openly choose a Democratic or Republican primary ballot. But it doesn't work in Michigan, which allows voters to choose a party primary in the privacy of the voting booth.

One of the events which precipitated this rule was the 1972 Michigan presidential primary, which was won by George Wallace. It was clear from the geographic distribution of results that a great many Republicans, seeing no contest in their own party primary, had "crossed over" to give Wallace a win that was seen as not the expression of Michigan Democrats.

Similarly, in 2000, many Democrats voted in the Republican presidential primary, boosting John McCain to a win over George W. Bush. Among self-identified Republicans, Bush won, but they were swamped by non-Republicans, and all the votes counted the same.

The 2000 crossover vote was especially large because there were no Democratic candidates on the ballot. Rather than participate in the primary, Michigan Democrats held a caucus, essentially a party-run election. More on that below.

(2) A new primary law is proposed. Last December, the Democratic and Republican state party chairs seemed to have come up with a joint proposal for a presidential primary law. The plan (which didn't work) was to sneak the bill through the legislature in the last days of 2006. The text of the bill was kept secret, but eventually the details leaked out.

This bill has never actually been introduced, but it's still the only proposal on the table. Knowledgeable lobbyists expect that, quite soon, it will suddenly come screaming out of committee and be voted through the House and Senate in a matter of hours.

The proposal contemplates a presidential primary, on a date to be determined jointly by the party chairs, but probably February 5, 2008. It will be choice-of-ballot primary — voters will have to openly request a Democratic or Republican primary ballot. However, the written list would be kept secret from everyone except the state party organizations.

(3) Republicans know they're in a pickle. Republicans are pushing the presidential primary, and are ready to make the compromises needed to make it happen, because they have nowhere else to go. They have never run a mass participation statewide caucus, and are not very interested in devoting the millions of dollars in party resources it would take to do so.

If the law is totally unchanged, a Republican-candidates-only presidential primary will take place February 26 or so. Assuming it's not rendered irrelevant by earlier events, gleeful Democrats will be free to take part. This prospect does not excite Republican leaders.

(4) Democrats DON'T know they're in a pickle. Democrats are in a strong negotiating position, not just because the Republicans are desperate, but because the party leadership mistakenly thinks they're "ready" to hold a caucus on Saturday, February 9th.

Three years ago, the Michigan Democratic caucus was saved from being a train wreck by becoming irrelevant, so that only activists took part. Had Howard Dean not withdrawn a few days earlier, there is no possible way that the party could have handled a serious turnout.

Just for example, there were just 18 caucus sites in all of Washtenaw County — compared with about 164 voting precincts. Some of those 18 sites would have been overwhelmed with as many as 10,000 or 20,000 voters — in the very compressed time frame of just a few hours. In terms of facilities, parking, supplies, volunteers, there's just no way that could work. And Washtenaw was probably one of the better organized counties. Statewide, we could have had at least hundreds of thousands of people giving up, frustrated and angry.

Yes, there was Internet voting available, but didn't work well either. An estimated 72,000 people tried and failed to cast a ballot that way. A better implementation would help, but I hear nothing from the party about lessons learned from last time. (And of course Internet voting is feasible ONLY because there's no secret ballot in the caucus.)

(5) Joining the crowd. February 5th is turning into a nearly national primary. On the one hand, how important could Michigan be if we're voting on the same day as California, New York, etc.? On the other hand, "Super Duper Tuesday" will get wall-to-wall media coverage, and our voters are going to want to take part.

I'm saying this in response to county clerks who predict public outrage over "wasting" $10 million in scarce state dollars on the primary. I'm guessing there will be greater outrage if it turns out that Michigan ISN'T taking part in what may be seen as a national presidential election.

(6) Choice of ballot. Michiganders are used to the "open" primary system, so the choice-of-ballot system is likely to face some hostility. Opponents, including some the county clerks, darkly predict that voters will revolt at having to tell which primary they're voting in, and will yell at or even assault precinct workers.

But it's pretty silly to call choice-of-ballot "un-American" when most of America has been doing it for years.

There are bad memories of the last two-party presidential primary, in 1992, but in that case, advance registration of party preference was required — and those party preferences were painstakingly collected from voters for a couple of years. But then both parties changed the rules in the week or so before the primary, creating a lot of confusion.

(6) The secret lists. The presidential primary proposal (as it currently seems to stand) would immensely complicate election administration by requiring that those choice-of-ballot decisions, once announced in the polling place, would be written down and kept secret from everyone but the parties themselves.

In other words, there would be three poll lists in every precinct. One would be the poll book for the names of all the voters; one would be the list of Democratic primary voters, and one would be the list of Republican primary voters.

The local clerks would be required to transmit the Democratic and Republican lists to the county clerk, and destroy all other copies. The county clerks would then transmit these lists to the secretary of state (retaining no copies), and the secretary of state would send them to the Democratic and Republican state party chairs. The lists would be non-public records exempt from the Freedom of Information Act.

Many problems arise with this.

Ballots are serially numbered, and the ballot number (which appears on the tear-off stub) is recorded in the poll book for each voter. This is necessary to account for used, unused, and spoiled ballots. But presumably the Democratic ballots would be numbered in a different range than the Republican ballots? It would then be obvious who had which ballot from the poll book, which has to be public as part of the transparency of the election process. Any solution to this is going to involve vast trouble for election administration.

Some people will apply for absentee ballots. How will clerks know which ballot to send them? If the absentee ballot application includes a line about which party ballot to send, will they make the application also non-public? Concern for the purity of elections (guarding against absentee ballot fraud) ought to foreclose that. If the clerk sends both ballots, what happens if the voter marks and returns both?

In any case, if the law provides that the information is revealed to the party chairmen but not anyone else, expect some litigation. That might tie up the process in further knots, and make it even less likely that presidential candidates will regard Michigan as a good place to invest time and attention.

(7) Robo-calls. Critics point out that the parties will use their secret lists of names for robo-calling, which of course they will. So perhaps the same bill will be made more appealing and more unstoppable by adding a provision that prohibits political (or any other) robocalls. Arguably that would be unconstitutional on First Amendment grounds, but Indiana's law has been upheld so far.

Stay tuned for more developments!

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —

Thursday, March 29, 2007, 11:37 pm

"Political Graveyard" in the New York Times, 1851-2006.

As creator of the web site by that name, I'm always interested in clues about how the phrase "political graveyard" was popularized. This evening, I tried doing a search for the phrase in the New York Times archive, and turned up some interesting stuff.

Though "political cemetery" shows up as early as 1858 (and then not again for decades), the phrase "political graveyard" did not start to appear in the Times until the 1870s.

Based on what I found, two 19th century American political figures played significant roles in making "political graveyard" a common term: Henry L. Clinton and Thomas C. Platt.

Clinton was a New York City politician who (at least according to the articles in the Times) was noted for readily changing his political stripes. In February 1872, he made a speech denouncing Tammany Hall's power in Democratic politics. So, when he became an ally of Tammany, excerpts from his old speech were quoted in New York Times articles in 1875 and 1878 (emphasis added in all quotes):

The Sachems [Tammany Hall leaders] invite the Democracy [Democratic Party] to wear the threadbare, cast-off political garments of Tweed and Sweeny: to steep themselves in dishonor; to wear the garlands of political infamy, and to enjoy the hospitable entertainment of a political graveyard.

Perhaps influenced by that speech, which must have been printed in other papers for the Times to be able to quote from it word for word three years later, an Iowa newspaper editor (quoted in the Times) used the phrase in an August 1875 campaign dispatch:

These reports are not from one or two locations alone, but are general; and while all is zeal and animation in the Republican ranks, the funeral cortege of Democracy [Democratic Party] slowly wends its way to the political graveyard of annihilation and oblivion.

Though it postdated the 1872 speech, this Iowa report was apparently the first time the phrase "political graveyard" appeared in print in the New York Times (August 18, 1875).

But after these three occurrences, there was nothing more of the term in the New York Times for more than a dozen years.

"Political graveyard" returned to the news in 1888, and there were fourteen articles using the term in the fifteen years from 1888 to 1903. Of these, one was about the British House of Lords; the rest are about American politics.

And in all but two of these, "political graveyard" is used to refer to what happens to the careers of politicians who disobey New York State Republican boss Thomas C. Platt.

The first one, in December 1888, was about Platt's irritation over his scant chances of being appointed to the Cabinet by president-elect Benjamin Harrison:

The succeeding of any other New-York man will not compensate Platt, who could not get a substitute who would as effectively fill up his political graveyard as he would himself.

A little later, in 1890, a column or editorial, titled "The Assassin Method", denounces Platt and his control of the New York Republican Party, saying:

He has two instruments with which he does his work-- the corruption fund and the political graveyard. He rules through cupidity and fear, and appeals to the meanest motives of the human soul.

The next reference, from May 1890, is an article about the Republican state committee doing Platt's bidding:

The object was to denounce Hamilton Fish, Jr., and Frederick S. Gibbs for their treachery to the party during the session of the Legislature, and to warn all who acted with them that they are marked for slaughter labeled for PLATT'S private political graveyard.

Another article, soon after, refers to the same purge in similar terms:

Mr. Platt has enlarged the area of his political graveyard, and has left marked places for Messrs. Gibbs, Fish, and the eight or ten other Republicans who stood by them.

Still another editorial in 1891 denouncing Platt:

Any Republican who sought advancement by nomination for office or by official appointment would have to discard all independence, sink his self-respect, and become wholly subsurvient to the Platt machine. If he presumed to oppose or to question the decrees of the Boss he would be consigned to the political graveyard, and only the sordid and submissive would be admitted to the rewards of party activity.

A politician named Milholland opposed Platt, in April 1894, so:

Into his political graveyard Platt proposes to put the doughty Milholland.

A piece in January 1895 chronicles a brief moment of magnaminity during Platt's earlier rise to power:

He finally abandoned his political graveyard and declared a general amnesty to all who had been at war against him.

In June 1896, Platt's propensity for revenge is cited again:

Mr. Platt keeps a political graveyard in which there are said to be many unoccupied plots.

In August 1896, apparently he had a scare:

Platt's friends took the alarm, and the "boss" himself seems to have had visions of the spooks that might troop from his political graveyard with substantial knives in their voluminous sleeves.

It wasn't until July, 1900 (for the first time since 1878), that the term "political graveyard" was used in a New York Times article about American politics unconnected to Tom Platt. It was in a quote from an unnamed Democrat critical of William Jennings Bryan:

"If we make a mistake," said an Indiana man of great experience in party conventions, "this will be but a funeral march to a political graveyard."

Many of these uses of "political graveyard" are in quotations or editorials rather than in the Times' own reportorial prose. None of the quotations are from Platt himself, but I'm guessing that he must have used the phrase frequently, given the way it stuck to him for so long.

There's a further oddity. The Times uses "political graveyard" 21 times from 1900 through 1937. Then, it disappears, with no mention for more than a dozen years. Was it out of fashion, or perhaps banned by the newspaper's style book?

Hodding Carter brought "political graveyard" back to the Times in June 1950, with a Times Magazine article about Southern politics. The term has appeared in 45 articles since 1950 -- most recently (October 1, 2006) in reference to my web site.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —

Tuesday, March 20, 2007, 12:11 am

Buttermilk for the gamblers? From the New York Times, December 4, 1951:

Sometimes surprise attacks from completely unsuspected quarters briefly embarrassed the syndicate ... On the night of July 2, 1943, operatives of the Office of Defense Transportation in New York trailed a fleet of cars to a syndicate dice house in Fort Lee [New Jersey], two blocks north of the New Jersey end of the [George Washington] bridge.

The Defense Transportation men were not concerned with the dice playing at all. They had just followed the cars in a routine check on gasoline rationing, and were a little astonished when it developed that they had joined a caravan of New York dice players being conveyed to Bergen [County, New Jersey] as syndicate guests. Since the wartime regulation provided no extra gas ration for sporting gentlemen, they picked up the drivers.

Before this story got into the papers, the syndicate quietly folded its dice equipment and reopened next night in adjoining Cliffside [New Jersey]. The Prosecutor and his staff were in a spot because they had not been warned. All they found in the place was fifteen empty milk bottles and some gaming slips. Dice players incline to ulcers because the game induces tension, and the understanding syndicate always supplied milk and buttermilk for them.

I came across this while looking up information on corrupt New Jersey mayors for The Political Graveyard.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —

Monday, March 19, 2007, 11:36 pm

A note about presidential politics. I generally prefer to focus my time and attention on local rather than national politics. Still, the presidential race sets the tone for everything else, and I can't help but have opinions about it.

I've been saying for some time that I don't expect any of the four "front-runners" (Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John McCain, Rudy Giuliani) to be their party's nominees for president.

That prediction is looking pretty good right now, notwithstanding the old saw that Republicans always nominate their front-runner. McCain is fading fast, and it is inconceivable that the Republicans will nominate someone as liberal on social issues as Giuliani. Meanwhile, Obama (appealing but untested) and Clinton (heavy baggage and weak speaking skills) seem to be focused on one-upping each other.

John Edwards looks better and better. He's already been through a national campaign, and shows strong signs of having learned from the experience. He has come up with well-thought-out specifics on a number of issues, notably health care. So, I might as well say it, I'm supporting Edwards.

I'm usually pretty cautious about future elections, and a lot can change in the next year and a half. Still, George W. Bush retains enormous influence in the Republican process. A recent poll shows that GWB has 75% support in his own party: a feeble number by historical standards, but a commanding number for intraparty skirmishes. Hence, it will be impossible for next year's Republican presidential nominee to distance himself very far from the miserable failure in the White House.

We Democrats have managed to blow huge advantages in presidential elections before, but I'm guessing that won't happen this time.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —

Tuesday, March 13, 2007, 10:42 am

Last Saturday in Otsego. My friend David John Alway (1950-2007) was a big, brilliant, awkward guy from a family of big, brilliant, awkward guys. His resemblance to the Cowardly Lion was often remarked upon.

According to one of his brothers, a personality analysis once accurately characterized Dave to be both "workaholic" and "rebel". He accommodated those two sides of himself by strict compartmentalization: during the week he was a corporate drone for Upjohn (one-time pharmaceutical giant) in Kalamazoo, Michigan; on weekends, he participated in science fiction conventions, writing, and especially music (the folkish "filk" music of that community, heavy on parodies and sf-literary references).

Long before I met Dave, I knew him through a personal zine he published, the North American Therianthropic Journal (circulation, I think, equal to the 25 members of an amateur publishing association). With desktop publishing magic available to few at the time, he hugely outdid my own pseudo-pompous Proceedings of the Institute for Obscure Studies (a takeoff on the "Institute for Advanced Studies" at Princeton), which was collated together with his and others for distribution.

The therianthropy of his title was quite serious, however. Dave's passion was for half-human mythological beasts such as centaurs and mermaids, extending even to the risqué possibilities.

He was the kind of engineer who finds delight in Legos and wooden trains and other such interesting toys. And you'd better not have been in a hurry if you asked Dave to explain something. I heard that on one long car trip, he spent many hours recounting for his fellow passengers the entire history of the federal highway system.

I was baffled by his politics. He called himself a Democrat (and even donated to the Democratic National Committee), but he was an extreme Libertarian on every issue we argued. Or perhaps he was putting me on.

When I moved to Ann Arbor from Ithaca, N.Y. on a very hot day in the summer of 1990, Dave was one of the folks who showed up to help us unload the truck, though Janice became very concerned that Dave was over-exerting his ponderous frame in the heat.

Some time in the 90s, the takeover or collapse of Upjohn left Dave with early retirement; he and one of his brothers moved several miles north of Kalamazoo to the small town of Otsego, Michigan.

Dave's house includes a long common room with a high, peaked ceiling. And this space became a venue for regular, all-day gatherings of SF-community musicians and singers. I was invited to each one, but to my regret, I never made it out to Otsego while Dave was alive.

When Dave died from a heart attack last January, one such event had already been scheduled for Saturday, March 10. The family (which is to say, Dave's siblings) decided to go ahead with the gathering "To Commemorate Dave's Love of the Arts" (as the invitation stated).

On Saturday, there were, oh, some fifty people in attendance, some from as far away as Chicago or Pittsburgh, or as close as Kalamazoo. There were several of us from Ann Arbor.

The "traditional" memorial service, starting at 1:30 pm, consisted of Dave's siblings speaking about their departed brother, the audience sitting in rows of chairs. Around 2:30 pm, food was set out, the chairs were rearranged into approximately a circle, and playing cards were distributed. I received the four of clubs.

The first suit was Hearts, and the holders of the cards were called on by the concert mistress in numerical order. Many of the guests had brought musical instruments and sometimes even their own compositions, often parodies or on science fiction themes. Others sang a capella or karaoke style, or did readings. Most of them were quite good.

Newcomers had been cautioned at the outset to respond with (at least) polite enthusiasm to each and every performer, because "those who are excellent now used to be not-so-excellent, and those who are not-so-excellent will, in time, become excellent."

When my card was called, I swallowed my misgivings, stood up, and recited Poe's "The Raven" from memory. It seemed the right thing to do under the circumstances.

Around six o'clock, when the cards had run out, many pizzas appeared, and there was a lengthy break for dinner. Afterwards, the group reconvened in the circle, the cards were redistributed, and the game began again, albeit more somberly.

Some links:

• Death announcement (Peter Alway's LiveJournal)
• Gentle Bard: Debbie Ohi's obituary for Dave.
• Long list of Dave Alway tributes on LiveJournal
• Photo of Dave and one of his brothers (just a few days before Dave's sudden death).
• Photo from the event (that's me on the right)

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —

Friday, February 16, 2007, 2:33 pm

Working Cats. From the New York Times obituary of former Boston mayor and U.S. Secretary of Labor, Maurice Tobin, July 20, 1953:

As mayor of Boston, Mr. Tobin concentrated on nursing a virtually bankrupt city back to financial health and even reduced the appropriation covering milk for the two official cats in the public library. He won a reputation as an honest Mayor and defeated Mr. Curley again in 1941 for re-election by 9,000 votes.

So, as of 1941, if you believe the Times, the Boston Public Library had resident cats who were a line item in the city budget.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —

Monday, February 12, 2007, 7:35 pm

From the Clerk-Register. Today's message to my staff.

Today is the 198th birthday of Abraham Lincoln. I'm guessing we'll be hearing a lot more about him as we get closer to his 200th.

Lincoln was a lawyer; since he traveled a great deal for his practice, the county clerks and court clerks of Illinois (our long-ago predecessors) surely had a lot of contact with him during his career. From accounts of people who knew him, he didn't look majestic or impressive. Elihu Washburne wrote:

No one who saw him can forget his personal appearance at that time. Tall, angular and awkward, he had on a short-waisted, thin swallow-tail coat, a short vest of the same material, thin pantaloons, scarcely coming to his ankles, a straw hat and a pair of brogans with woolen socks.

No doubt some of the court clerks he dealt with regarded him with pity or contempt. But this awkward and poorly dressed young man went on to become the greatest president in American history.

There's no telling which of our customers might one day do great things. Indeed, some of them already have. Washtenaw County has more than its share of residents who have written novels, invented tools, discovered medicines, composed music, engineered bridges, or advanced human knowledge and progress in a myriad of ways.

And even if they haven't become nationally prominent in their fields, a great many more are unsung heroes for their devotion to their families, for overcoming personal handicaps, for healing the sick, for fighting fires and crime, for fixing our great networks of pipes and wires and roads, for service in our military, for helping make this a great community.

Sometimes we know our customers and the things they have helped make possible through their lives and work. More often, we don't know just how much someone has done. And they themselves don't know how much they will ultimately do for the country, for the community, even for us as individuals.

Treating each and every customer with courtesy and respect is a small but important way to show our appreciation for all those past and future contributions.

Let's have a great week!

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —

Monday, February 5, 2007, 11:00 am

From the Clerk-Register. Today's message to my staff.

Most local schools are closed today. This took us by surprise. As my wife said, "Don't kids go to school in Minnesota?"

Kids go to school through the winter even in the Yukon. But here in Ann Arbor, the prospect of children walking a mile to school when the wind chill is 25 degrees below zero seemed like not such a good idea. Moreover, I hear that a lot of school buses wouldn't start this morning.

The implacable chemistry of lead-acid batteries and low temperatures affects us all: my car was slow to start, too. But if you're reading this today, you're in the office anyway, and I appreciate it.

Yes, it's below zero outside, and drafty in some of our offices. Our cars are encrusted with ice and salt, and our hands ache from the cold. The papers and radio and TV are full of grim news at the local, state, and national level.

But the sun is shining, and so are the faces of the customers who appreciate our being here to serve their needs.

If you were cheering for the Colts yesterday, congratulations on the win.

Let's think positive, and have a great week!

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —

Thursday, January 11, 2007, 10:20 pm

Ann Arbor News Commends Ron Suarez Blog. Today's lead editorial in the Ann Arbor news praises one of our newest city council members for blogging, and mentions other local political blogs:

Ann Arbor's Suarez makes Web an asset: Input, interaction improves government

One of the newest Ann Arbor City Council members is using technology in a way that shouldn't, at this point, be unique - but is.

Ron Suarez, elected to represent the First Ward last year, is a tech entrepreneur who's also a bit of an evangelist for using the Internet to promote public discourse. He has morphed his campaign Web site - ronsuarez.com - into a place that lets constituents know what issues the council is considering, and what his thoughts are on those issues.

Recent posts, for example, discuss the proposed merging of two city advisory boards, financing for the Broadway Village at Lower Town project and a proposal for city-owned land across from the YMCA.

Suarez also posts excerpts from e-mails he's received that add context to the discussion, and the blog format allows anyone to comment on these postings and to read others' comments. You can search the site if you're looking for something in particular, or browse through comments by category.

For anyone who traverses the Internet and its many blogs - including local ones like Arbor Update - this will look very familiar. Some local officials, like Washtenaw County Administrator Bob Guenzel, put up regular messages on the Web. You can contact him by e-mail or phone, but there's no place to put public comments for all to read.

Chelsea City Manager Mike Steklac and Washtenaw County Clerk Larry Kestenbaum have personal blogs that usually focus on local issues and include comments from readers.

Still, it's unusual to find a council member, mayor, county commissioner or other elected representative who uses the Web like Suarez does, as a tool for input and broader interaction in decision-making.

One issue with this type of communication is that it relies on having Internet access, and those who don't have it can't participate. As access becomes ubiquitous, as TV and radio did, that won't remain a problem. Nearly all public libraries provide opportunities to go online.

While it shouldn't replace interaction in person or by phone, using the Web to inform and engage residents is a great way to improve our local government. Kudos to Suarez for leading the way.

And kudos to the News for paying attention to the local political blogs.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —

Tuesday, January 2, 2007, 10:44 pm

Another side of Jerry Ford. This afternoon, I saw a big jet fly over downtown Ann Arbor, east to west, at what seemed like a dangerously low altitude. I didn't know it until later, but it was Air Force One, carrying the remains of ex-President Gerald R. Ford back to Grand Rapids. According to a radio report, they paused en route to buzz Michigan Stadium.

Update: The proprietor of Daddy Zine also noticed the jet. On Jan. 2, he wrote: "Air Force One just flew over my house at an altitude of, like, twelve feet. My guess is they were giving Gerald Ford one last look at the University of Michigan Stadium."

The news media have been full of adoring stories about the now-deceased former president, and indeed, he was an admirably unassuming guy who ended up in the White House without having spent his life fighting to get there.

Unlike most of my friends, I never held the pardon of Richard Nixon against him. My reaction at the time, and ever since, was somewhat along the lines of that scene in the movie Dr. Zhivago when word comes that the Czar has been shot. One of the characters essentially shrugs and says, well, it had to happen.

On New Year's Eve, a friend suggested to me that this reverential treatment of the Richard Nixon Pardon was intended to prepare the public and a future president for the upcoming George W. Bush Pardon — a wrinkle which had not occurred to me.

In any case, for me, the counterpoint to the recent Jerry Ford hagiography that stuck in my mind was not the pardon, but a story from about 18 months earlier.

In the spring of 1973, my friend Aubrey Marron was a senior at Lowell High School, in Ford's congressional district. Her government teacher (let's call him Mr. Smith), a Republican and an admirer of Congressman Ford, induced him to come to speak at the school.

All of the school's seniors were released from class to attend an assembly with Ford. Mr. Smith was the master of ceremonies. During the question and answer session, he wouldn't call on Aubrey, whose left-wing politics he was familiar with, but not all of the questions were friendly.

A transfer student from Yugoslavia asked a question about U.S. policy toward that country, and Ford went on somewhat harshly about "Soviet satellites". The student was becoming visibly upset at this characterization, but Ford didn't notice. Mr. Smith tapped the Congressman on the shoulder and whispered in his ear; Ford then reversed into shameless travelogue mode: "Yugoslavia is such a beautiful country! Why, Betty and I were in Belgrade last spring and ..."

The assembly completed, students were sent to their next class. Aubrey caught up with the Congressman in the hallway and asked him a probably challenging question about his support for the Vietnam War.

Ford, who was much taller than she was, looked down condescendingly, and said: "Don't worry, little girl, we'll take care of your country for you." And he patted her on the head.

"I wanted to kick him," said Aubrey. But she didn't.

The students dispersed to their classes, and it happened that Aubrey's next class was with Mr. Smith, the government teacher. The students sat down at their desks and awaited the teacher. Minutes passed — more minutes passed — and he didn't show up.

Half an hour into the class session, Mr. Smith came into the room looking distressed. "Aubrey, after class, I need to talk to you," he said.

What had happened was this: Ford had asked Mr. Smith for a copy of Aubrey's school record, including her full name and address and the folder containing her grades and so forth. The teacher, appalled, had stood his ground and refused. However, granting or refusing this request was up to the school's main office, and it was never made clear to Aubrey whether or not they complied.

So, what on Earth was Ford doing? When I first heard this story, many years ago, I took it for granted that the Congressman was "taking names" of suspected left-wing agitators, to turn over to some Red Squad. But why just Aubrey, and not the other students who asked pointed questions during the assembly?

Another possibility is that Ford was just playing retail politics as the hometown Congressman, wanting to send Aubrey a good-to-meet-you, thank-you-for-your-concerns kind of letter (not that it would have been well received). But if so, why didn't he ask for just her name and address, rather than her entire school record?

This episode certainly shook up the government teacher, and led those of us who knew the story to see Jerry Ford as a much more sinister figure than popularly supposed.

Today, it would be a huge scandal if a politician attempted such a thing, and anti-stalking laws would probably be invoked. But 1973 was more casual about the privacy of high school students, while political paranoia was just receding from highs we can hardly even imagine nowadays.

I was a high school freshman at the time of the Kent State killings in 1970, and along with millions of others in the antiwar movement, I thought those four deaths were just the beginning of a bloody crackdown on dissenters like us — even high school students. Meanwhile, other millions, seeing threats and disorder in what we thought were peaceful protests, feared an organized effort to overthrow the United States by force and violence.

I do not defend the establishment of Red Squads like the one in Michigan, the use of illegal wiretaps, and the compilation by police of dossiers on millions of law-abiding U.S. citizens, but I'm sure those actions were founded in fear of the violent revolution that was openly discussed on the Left and in popular culture.

Persistent critics of Ford and his presidency have brought up his veto of the common situs picketing bill (following his promise to sign it) and his inept dealings with various dictators.

But back in the fall of 1976, what seemed the final argument against Ford's re-election (persuasive to at least one friend who would otherwise have voted for a third party candidate instead of Carter) was the apparent tolerance for sneering racist views in his administration. Yes, Earl Butz was forced to resign over his infamous joke about "what coloreds want," but only after it was published and became an embarrassment.

Of course, when the funeral bell tolls, most of us are inclined to be more forgiving than vindictive. Jerry Ford was a man of his times, and (yes, as the obits all say) the man the times needed. Coming into the White House without a vast campaign apparatus or a cult of personality, and with Nixon's operatives in place throughout the Executive Branch, his options were severely constrained. I freely concede that he did the best he could as President. May his memory be for a blessing.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —

Sunday, December 31, 2006, 6:42 pm

Another press clipping. From today's installment in the Ann Arbor News series on the decline in civic engagement:

In November 2005, Ann Arbor Mayor John Hieftje gave a lecture in his University of Michigan public policy class examining the question, "Is Ann Arbor overrated?"

When a student's account of the class was posted on the weblog Ann Arbor Is Overrated (www.annarborisoverrated.com), it generated some 67 responses, a lively electronic conversation on water quality, affordable housing, and how to pronounce the mayor's name.

Eventually, Hieftje himself chimed in and invited anyone interested in talking face-to-face to meet at Leopold Brothers brewpub. Those who accepted the offer talked with the mayor about affordable housing and alternative energy - and for the record, it's pronounced "HEEF-t-ya."

"That was the kind of thing you have to have," says Washtenaw County Clerk Larry Kestennbaum, a blogger himself and frequent visitor to Ann Arbor Is Overrated. "One thing I have noticed in connection with some of the local online communities is that these groups are always stronger when there's a way for people to get together and meet each other."

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —

Saturday, December 30, 2006, 10:00 am

From the Clerk-Register. Message to my staff, sent December 18, containing some family news:

Notes for the Clerk/Register staff:

1. Last Saturday, my daughter's karate school (Keith Hafner's) sponsored a fundraising event for students to break boards, barehanded. Sarah, age 8, is a karate brown belt, but she had never done this before.

   The concept is that the board symbolizes the obstacles or difficulties in one's own life. Prior to the event, many of the students decorated their boards (substantial pieces of pine, about a foot across and 3/4 inch thick), with words to remind them what they.re trying to overcome. Most of the boards were emblazoned with the word FEAR, but Sarah, who has a temper, put ANGER on hers.

   She broke the board on the first try (click for photos).

2. In this last week before Christmas, we are seeing people who are more cheerful than usual but also more stressed than usual. Some of our customers are behind on their Christmas shopping and decorating, and rushing to finish everything on time. Others, who have no family nearby to share holidays with, are no doubt feeling lonely or grumpy. Still others are resentful at having to spend time with family they don't get along with. Plus, cold weather and difficult driving conditions sometimes get to everybody.

   Count on it: a lot of those bad feelings will be taken out on us — especially those who staff high-traffic counters like Vital Records or Court Services.

   Nobody enjoys dealing with rude or defiant customers, but it's important to maintain your composure and treat every one with courtesy and respect. Yes, it's sometimes difficult, but in the long run, it can be very satisfying to take pride in your consistent professionalism. I think I can speak for the entire county in expressing my gratitude and admiration for the work you do with customers every day.

3. "Casual Friday" dress rules apply during the week between Christmas and New Year's.

Let's have a great week!

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —

Friday, December 29, 2006, 11:20 am

Voting absentee. Michigan law currently provides a menu of legal reasons on the absentee ballot application; you have to pick one to be eligible. Most election officials of both parties have long advocated "no-reason" absentee voting. The current system is something of a charade, since anyone can declare that they "plan" to be away from their home city during the election, even if those plans later change.

In the Michigan legislature, this became a partisan issue, with Democrats supporting "no-reason", and Republicans (especially in the Senate leadership) opposing it. Now that Democrats have won control of the House, and gained seats in the Senate, action on no-reason absentee voting is expected. ("Early voting" is a related, but distinct, issue.)

I came across the following editorial in the Kentucky Enquirer (a branch of the Cincinnati Enquirer) on December 22:

The spread of `no-excuse' voting

Kentucky Secretary of State Trey Grayson wants Kentucky to follow Ohio's lead and adopt "no-excuse" absentee voting.

It would increase the number of votes cast, especially in lower-profile races. Ohio set a state elections record this November with absentee ballots accounting for 15 percent of the total. That bests Ohio's previous record of 10.6 percent in 2004. The increase is credited to a new Ohio law that says any qualified voter may request an absentee ballot - without giving a reason. About 14 percent of Hamilton County's voters [Cincinnati area] this time voted absentee.

Kentucky lawmakers should take up Grayson's early-voting plan. There could be negatives such as more risk of vote fraud or delayed vote counts, but these can be overcome.

Healthy democracies depend on a citizenry energized enough to be heard decisively at election time.

Oregon voters in 1998 did away with precinct voting altogether. Vote By Mail saves the cost of voting machines and staffing the polls. Like a take-home test from school, mail-in ballots give voters more time to study the issues and candidates before choosing. Oregon's system with its nonpartisan traditions may not lend itself to bare-knuckle Kentucky politics, but some form of "no-fault" absentee voting could boost voter participation here.

"The biggest advantage is that people would be able to schedule when they vote," says Grayson, a Boone County Republican who filed on Tuesday as a candidate for re-election. The Secretary of State has pushed other election reforms in the legislature, including a stalled bill that would have prohibited automatic "straight-ticket" voting by party.

Current Kentucky law requires that voters seeking to vote early at county clerks' offices or by mail-in ballots must qualified to do so by such reasons as advanced age, disability, military service or attending a school outside the county.

Some lawmakers will resist change for fear of increased vote fraud. A federal grand jury in October indicted a former Bath County Attorney, Donald "Champ" Maze, on charges of buying absentee votes in the primary. A "no-excuse" system might increase the opportunities for fraud.

Other lawmakers may object that a surge in absentee ballots could slow reporting of election results. Ohio's Warren County Board of Elections found the crush of absentee ballots so great that it voted late on election night to go home, with many uncounted. Hamilton County Board of Elections avoided that embarrassment by readying absentee ballots in advance for scanning on election day and by buying additional scanners.

Kentucky county clerks could help lawmakers craft an early-vote plan that's more fraud-proof and less susceptible to counting delays. The General Assembly will need to fund the change, and not just dump an unfunded mandate on county clerks.

States need to do all they can to make voting more convenient in an age of instant, electronic communications.

Though I strongly disagree with the implication of the last sentence that ballots should be transmitted by electronic means, I think Michigan and other states will see no-excuse absentee voting soon.

It sounds like Ohio's no-excuse law led to a 50% increase in the percentage of absentee ballots - from 10.6 to 15 percent. If our law changes, we election officials should be prepared for a similar increase.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —

Thursday, December 14, 2006, 8:18 pm

Ann Arbor News editorial on Election Technology. The lead editorial in today's Ann Arbor News, titled Michigan's voting system a wise choice, praises Michigan's Secretary of State for choosing the optical scan technology:

Terri Lynn Land is looking pretty smart these days.

Michigan's Secretary of State, re-elected this November to a second term, made a crucial decision when she chose optical scanning as the system for use in Michigan elections. The Nov. 7 general election was the first time in Michigan's history when voters statewide used this type of equipment, and while there were glitches, the process was relatively smooth.

Some other states that opted for touch-screen computer systems haven't fared as well, and now a federal agency has issued a report highly critical of these voting systems.

In the same report released earlier this month, the National Institute of Standards and Technology - a research entity that advises the U.S. Election Assistance Commission - endorsed optical-scan systems like the one used in Michigan, which combines paper ballots and electronic recording of votes.

The NIST report states that the absence of a paper trail causes "continued questions about voting system security and diminished public confidence in elections."

Local officials have also endorsed the optical-scan system used in Michigan. In an essay published in the Nov. 5 edition of The Ann Arbor News, Washtenaw County Clerk Larry Kestenbaum called it "the ideal 'voter-verified paper trail': clear, trustworthy and fully recountable by hand. This is better than punch cards, better than old-style paper ballots and enormously better than unrecountable methods such as mechanical voting machines or touch-screen computers with internal counters.''

Federal lawmakers are expected to introduce legislation next year requiring a voter-verified paper trail. If passed, states that invested in touch-screen technology could be spending even more to modify their systems.

In Michigan, we're already there.

Federal election laws passed in response to the 2000 debacle mandated an ambitiously rapid rollout of new voting devices. Unfortunately, little thought was devoted to how to shape and implement all these new mandates. When you make decisions at breakneck speed, no surprise that some necks get broken — or in this case, a few billion dollars goes misspent.

At least Michigan got it right.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —

Sunday, December 10, 2006, 11:07 pm

Exchange of letters between Sheriff's Dad and Ypsilanti Police Chief. Here's two more letters about the jail issue that have been widely circulated but not published. My apologies for the delay in getting these online.

Jack Minzey, a former EMU official, is the father of Sheriff Dan Minzey. Matt Harshberger is the Ypsilanti city police chief.

First, the letter from Jack Minzey to Matt Harshberger, responding to his earlier letter (posted here December 2) criticizing the Sheriff:

From: Jack Minzey
To: Matthew Harshberger
Sent: Monday, December 04, 2006 5:26 PM
Subject: Re: Jail Expansion Proposal

Matt-

I have tried to stay out of the discussions relative to the jail expansion. However, there are some points which I would like to make that are not being widely circulated by you and should be brought to the attention of everyone.

The jail issue must not be confused with the policing issue. Except as Bob Gunzel tries to find funds to expand the jail, they are quite separate issues.

I can understand if you are concerned that you might have been given incorrect information about the money being spent on the expansion costs. However, this should not be the main issue of contention. The issue is not whether the cost is 9 million or 21 million. The issue is, how many beds do we need to adequately meet the needs of our county. The fact is that the jail is currently 100 beds short of their needs. The sheriff is trying to get across the point that 96 beds, to be built in the nex three years, will not meet those needs In fact, if the beds were available tomorrow, you would still face the same situation of lock up because there would still be no room for new prisoners. We are in need of a few hundred beds, and to convince the public that 96 beds will be adequate, is really a public disservice and is going to be casistrophic. The sheriff is trying to get this message out, but no one, including Mr. Gunzel and the Ann Arbor News, is willing to let the public hear of this.

There are a couple of concerns which I have. First, why are you and Gunzel the authorities on the jail in our community rather than the sheriff or the commander of the jail, Capt. Filsinger, who is one of your residents? In fact, even Ronnie Peterson, your county representative, would give you information which does not agree with what you are telling people. Why are you not encouraging the various agencies, service clubs, and the city council to invite those directly responsible for the jail to present their information, which appears to be quite different from yours and Bob Gunzel's?

I am aware that the sheriff has explained this need to you in detail, but unlike the other chiefs in the county, you seem determined to back Mr Gunzel's inadequate proposal. These are some of the facts as I understand them.

1. They are not spending the 21 million on new beds. Only about 9 million is for new beds. The rest of the money is for renovation and will not help you with your criminal problem.
   
2. In the plan, the county administrator will come up with another 10 million bond issue for court houses in two years.
   

Since the sheriff showed you that plan, you should have understood that the current 21 million will not be for beds and that the court money he was talking about was the money to be spent in a couple of years. Thus, when he said that only 9 million was going to the jail (beds) and more than that was being being proposed for the courts, he ws not lying to you and it was simply a case of misunderstanding on your part.

Why you would allow yourself to be supportive of 96 beds is beyond me. You have seen the professional consultants report which states the jail currently needs 550 beds, and in two years, when this project is complete, it will be far greater than that. We probably need a jail with at leawt 750 beds.

Further confusing to me is that you are supporting a 96 bed increase, to be available in three years, when you have stated to several community groups that you have about 100 criminals from Ypsilalnti alone ewho should be locked up. How do those figures make sense?

Another concern should probably be your concern. You have joined forces with Bob Gunzel, and the Ann Arbor News to push a plan that falls far short of our needs for even the immediate future. A few years from now, when those beds are in place, and we still have about 17 years to pay for them, will you not be the object of peoples disatisfaction when they discover that you, while complaining about the dishonesty of the sheriff's office, were giving people bad information about what was really needed in the expansion of the jail. How will you then be viewed in terms of your leadership and truthfulness?

Jack

Next, the brief response from Matt Harshberger:

From: Matthew Harshberger
Sent: Tuesday, December 05, 2006 1:01 PM
To: Jack Minzey
Subject: RE: Jail Expansion Proposal

Hi Jack,

Thank you for voicing your thoughts and/or concerns. Although we apparently have different points of view on many of the issues at hand, we must partner together to do what is best for the Ypsilanti community - using it as our common goal to drive our efforts to improve the overall quality of life in Ypsilanti. I sincerely wish you and your family a warm, festive and safe holiday season. Take care.

Matt

Matt Harshberger, Chief of Police
Ypsilanti Police Department

A few comments. Interesting to see that critics of the 96-bed expansion plan, nominally on the same side, either denounce it (a) as grossly inadequate to serve the county's needs, or (b) as a totally unnecessary "giant jail".

To quickly expand the jail to the size envisioned by Jack Minzey (and by the sheriff) is not politically possible, since the county's voters would never approve a tax increase to fund it.

What most of the critics of incremental expansion have in common is opposition to funding it through the phase-out of the sheriff's road patrol subsidy.

But what's the alternative? Given that most of the services the county provides are mandated by state law, there is not a lot of room for major cuts. After road patrol, I think the biggest non-mandated county program is (comparatively tiny) Head Start.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —

Saturday, December 2, 2006, 11:20 pm

Another letter about the jail. The following email was sent by Ypsilanti Police Chief Matt Harshberger to many community leaders yesterday:

From: Matthew Harshberger
Sent: Friday, December 01, 2006 5:27 PM
To: [recipient list omitted]
Subject: Jail Expansion Proposal

I recently gave information to CoPAC, the Rotary Club and many others about the cost breakdown of the bond proposal for the 96-bed jail expansion. At the time that I gave out the information, I believed it was accurate. However, upon having a meeting yesterday afternoon with the County Administrator, Bob Guenzel, I learned the information that I was spreading ($9 million for jail expansion & $11 million for court facilities improvements) was patently false/wrong/inaccurate/erroneous. I, along with all the other Chiefs and Directors in Washtenaw County, received this false information directly from the Sheriff and his jail administrator. Obviously, I will not allow this error of trust to occur again. The citizens of Washtenaw County should not be misinformed about any public issue and I will not allow it to happen again. Please accept my apology.

The truth, according to the County Administration, is that the entire $21 million bond proposal is going toward jail and correctional improvements, which includes the 96-bed jail expansion and jail infrastructure improvements, including support systems due to increased capacity. The county provided a written breakdown of the costs that shows specifically the recommended improvements and the cost of each, which totals $21,177,210. Bob Guenzel will be presenting this information at the City of Ypsilanti Council meeting on Tuesday, December 5th.

I have a copy of the cost breakdown for the bond proposal and I am happy to provide copies of it to anyone that may want it.

I am very sorry for the misinformation that I gave out with regard to the bond proposal costs. It is sad that I will not be able to trust information coming from the sheriffs department until it can be confirmed, or, as in this case, denied.

Take care and I hope you have a good weekend.

Matt Harshberger, Chief of Police
Ypsilanti Police Department
505 W. Michigan Ave.
Ypsilanti, MI. 48197
Website: ypsilantipolice.org

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —

Wednesday, November 22, 2006, 4:27 pm

Bob Guenzel's letter to the Ann Arbor News. Today, County Administrator Bob Guenzel wrote as follows to the Ann Arbor News, copied to other county officials:

From: Bob Guenzel
Sent: Wednesday, November 22, 2006 2:41 PM
Subject: Concerns about the News' reporting

November 22, 2006

Mr. Pepple,

I am writing to you today to make you aware of a very real perception - mine as well as others' - that the people of Ann Arbor and surrounding communities are not being well served by the Ann Arbor News in your coverage of public safety and justice, namely the need for expansion of the Washtenaw County Jail.

I personally have been disappointed by the newspaper's lack of coverage on what I consider to be the now critical issue of jail overcrowding, and the Sheriff's handling of the same. The jail has been chronically overcrowded for more than two years, experiencing "official" overcrowdings dozens of times, leading to the early release of inmates. The current "lockdown" is the second declared by the Sheriff in the last three months. The status prohibits new arrestees from being booked into the jail, creating a dangerous situation not only for the community, but for jail staff and the inmates themselves.

In spite of this serious situation, the Sheriff refuses to act pursuant to Section 7 of the Jail Overcrowding Statute, which mandates that the Sheriff shall reduce all sentences by up to 30% in order to alleviate overcrowding. Three inmates are now suing the Sheriff because of the situation. Numerous members of the law enforcement community, the judiciary, and the Board of Commissioners have expressed to me their frustration at the Sheriff's refusal to act, some considering it a serious abrogation of official duty. These facts have been discussed at numerous public meetings, yet the Ann Arbor News has only given passing reference to the topic.

Instead, the News found it useful to report the Sheriff's assertion that I attempted to "stack" the Criminal Justice Collaborative Council (CJCC) with the appointment of former Commissioner Robert Brackenbury. Your reporters accepted this assertion as fact despite never having attended one of these regular public CJCC meetings, checking the web site for the roster of members, or speaking to any of the other CJCC members regarding their opinion of the matter.

In fact, if anyone had approached the Chair of the CJCC, the honorable Archie Brown, I am sure he gladly would have provided you with the letter he recently sent the Sheriff in which he expresses (on behalf of the entire CJCC) disappointment in the Sheriff's persistent refusal to participate in the Council. Your reporters have relied on information provided by a person who does not even attend the forum on which he presumes to comment.

I suppose what has moved me finally to write to you today was the lead in the recent story regarding the jail bond issuance. Your reporters relied on information provided by the Sheriff in stating that the jail bond issuance included funding for a new District Court which, of course, it does not. When I complained about this error, the News responded with a two-sentence correction buried in Saturday's paper.

Seriously concerned as I am about misstatements such as these (the "stacking" of the CJCC, the inclusion of funding for a new District Court in the jail bond issuance, and other instances that I could reference upon request), I am more bothered by what continues to be unstated by the News.

The implication of silence on important issues such as the Sheriff's refusal to carry out his duty, the ramifications of impediments to expansion of the Jail, as well as other vital aspects to these stories, is alarming. Without all the information, without an opportunity to get all the facts, our community will continue to face competing agendas that do not serve the common good.

My fear is that people who do not have the facts, but who have great concerns over public safety and justice, will seize on this informational vacuum to launch yet another campaign to prevent the expansion of the jail, which has been and continues to be an urgent priority for this community. Missing information or disinformation undermines the hard work of very dedicated individuals.

If you need access to more information on most of these topics, I would urge you to contact any one of the diverse 17 members of the CJCC (cjcc.ewashtenaw.org) which includes the judiciary, the Prosecuting Attorney, the Public Defender, private attorneys, elected officials, and others.

As always, my door is open to you and your staff. If there's something more I can do to be more welcoming or accessible, or to ensure that you are receiving all the information that you need, please do not hesitate to let me know.

I sincerely look forward to working with your reporters.

Bob Guenzel

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —

Tuesday, November 21, 2006, 6:31 pm

Yesterday's message to my staff.

We have all been telling each other what a short week this is, with Thursday and Friday off. Thanksgiving is not just a time for seeing family and giving thanks: it is also the last day of autumn as culturally defined, and the kickoff of the holiday season, followed all too soon by Hanukah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, and New Year's.

Our office, like most offices, isn't open the day after Thanksgiving, but all the retail stores will be. When I worked at the Lord & Taylor department store in Briarwood Mall, we were made to understand that this was the biggest sales day of the year. In other words, it was all hands on deck. Nobody in the store could have that day off, from the management office to the sales floor to the loading dock. And it was a very long day, too.

So when you do your shopping this Friday, spare a thought for all the hard working folks who are ringing up your purchases, stocking those shelves, and vacuuming the aisles. Sooner or later, each of them will come to see us, whether to pick up a birth certificate or to serve on a jury, and the roles will be reversed: they will be the customer, and we will be at their service. Courtesy and respect smooths the process, no matter which side of the counter we are on.

Individual meetings with nonsupervisory staff continue. I'm hearing feedback that it's easier to respond if you're named out in the open, so here's who I'd like to see in the next week or two: [names redacted]. Please arrange a half-hour with your supervisor and my schedule (via Outlook) for a meeting in my office.

Let's have a great week and a Happy Thanksgiving!

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —

Saturday, November 18, 2006, 12:57 pm

Belated press clippings. Last Sunday, November 12, the Ann Arbor News printed a Q & A about the election:

Insider's view of Election Day
Sunday, November 12, 2006
BY DAVE GERSHMAN
News Staff Reporter

As the supervisor of elections in Washtenaw County, Lawrence Kestenbaum discusses how the midterm elections went and why voter turnout here may be even higher than you think.

Q: Procedurally, how did the election go?

A: We had a very smooth election, I'd say. We had some scattered problems in particular areas. We had some tabulators which had to be replaced because they broke down, particularly in one jurisdiction where the tabulators were a little bit older than the tabulators in the rest of the county. But we got those replaced in the morning and, on the whole, things went very smoothly.

Q: Any specific problems at the polls?

A: There were some complaints, really scattered complaints, about voters being challenged on grounds that seemed spurious, but I don't think there was a systematic problem. I think there were some scattered places where there were issues. Very few of them even came to us. They didn't really blow up to the point that they thought to involve the county clerk as opposed to the local clerk.

Q: What was the voter turnout in the county?

A: Countywide we had just over 135,000 voters, which is a significant increase over four years ago, the last comparable election, when we had just over 108,000 voters. It was a smaller increase in the percent turnout, from about 47 to about 54 percent of the total registered voters.

Q: What do you attribute to the increase in the turnout?

A: I think that this was an election which had nationally a relative high turnout. There were some areas I heard about - not around here - where the turnout was actually higher than the 2004 presidential election, which would be amazing, given that the 2004 presidential election had a very high turnout.

We had a smaller increase here over (the last midterm election in) 2002 partly because we had less of a ceiling here. Washtenaw County has a higher turnout to begin with, and so there's not much room for a further increase.

And also because I think that unlike a lot of other areas, we didn't have a lot of contested local races on the ballot. Most of the interest in Washtenaw County was directed at the state and national level - governor, U.S. senator, and the ballot proposals, especially Proposal 2.

Q: Can you talk about the specific demographics of the county and how that might affect turnout?

A: Washtenaw County is the 10th most highly educated county in the United States out of 3,000 counties, and so it has a highly educated electorate which has a tendency to turn out. Educational attainment is the No. 1 highest correlate for voting. ... We have a lot of people here with post-graduate degrees, and certainly with bachelor's degrees ... so the turnout here is high and the turnout here doesn't vary as much from year to year as in other counties.

We also have a relatively transient population. There's a tremendous flow of people, students, and faculty and other folks who come here and leave - who move out of the area, move out of state - which creates issues with maintaining voter records for them. ... If someone leaves the state, chances are their voter registration is going to remain, even if the person thinks that they've canceled their Michigan voter registration. (And if) they've moved to New Jersey or Ohio somewhere, the other states usually don't bother to send back notice that the person has re-established themselves in another place and so the number of registered voters here is somewhat inflated. ...

I think that depending on how high of an estimate you make of the deadwood on the voter rolls, it could be more like, I'm guessing, more on the order of a 75 percent voter turnout (in Washtenaw County).

Q: There's no easy way to get those old names off the voting rolls?

A: No. Between state law and federal law and just the practicalities of trying to enlist the cooperation of other states, it is really quite cumbersome. I know that the state of Michigan has come under some criticism and some pressures from the Justice Department over just the sheer number of registered voters we have statewide. The number of registered voters is threatening to overtake the size of the eligible voter population. That is implying that we have tremendously more names on the rolls than we have people who are eligible to vote because of deadwood, because of registrations that have basically become outdated or spurious for one reason or another. The federal government's position is that having people on the rolls who are guaranteed not to vote is an invitation to, potentially, fraud.

Q: What's the trend you're seeing in terms of absentee ballots?

A: Absentee ballots are being used more widely over time and you can see the percentage creeping up little by little year by year. That may also have to do with the aging population as well. If you're 60 years of age or older you're automatically eligible to use an absentee ballot without having to state another reason.

And people certainly are aware of the fact that if you choose to vote absentee you can put down that, yes, you plan to be out of the jurisdiction on Election Day even if those plans later change. There has been a movement in the Legislature to enact basically freedom to use an absentee ballot instead of showing up in person without having to state a reason. That legislation, although supported by virtually all of the county and municipal clerks in the state and supported by the secretary of state, did not move forward in the Legislature in the last couple of years. It may in the next one.

Q: And you support that?

A: Oh, absolutely. ... If people want to vote absentee they should be able to vote absentee, and the notion of swearing to a reason is really pretty superfluous.

Q: How are absentee ballots processed?

A: Absentee ballots in almost all of Washtenaw County and probably now in most states are processed in the same precinct where you would normally vote if you were voting in person. They're delivered to the precinct, they're opened in the precinct, and the ballots are handled and processed in the precinct in the same way as other ballots. It's probably slightly more paperwork for the election workers. On the other hand, the people who vote in person need to be handled right away and the absentee ballots can be handled during slack periods. If it's an extremely busy day, that means that at the end of the day, the polls close and there's still absentee ballots to be handled and that may delay the results.

Also in the Sunday Ann Arbor News, a wrap-up article about the election results (not online), titled "Granholm's popularity only went so far Tuesday," pointed to the small number of counties to vote against Proposal 2, the anti-affirmative-action initiative, and quoted me as follows:

"Ingham and Washtenaw counties are the two most liberal counties in the state, so it's not unusual to se ethem go one way and everyone else the other way," said Washtenaw County Clerk Larry Kestenbaum, a former county commissioner in both constituencies.

"But it's hard to say, even imponderable to determine who and what issues Granholm brought along through the polls."

Kestenbaum said voters analyze candidates and proposals in different ways.

"People do pay attention to what newspapers and political leaders do say concerning candidates, but when it comes to rpoposals, people look at the paper ballot and the ballot language, and interpret what it means for them. That showed in the case of Proposal 2," Kestenbaum said.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —

Monday, November 6, 2006, 8:00 pm

Yesterday (Sunday, November 5), the Ann Arbor News published my op-ed piece about election security:

Vote with confidence
State's optical scan system provides paper-trail backup

BY LAWRENCE KESTENBAUM

With congressional elections coming up, we've all heard a lot about the possibility of voting problems, glitches or even fraud. Many local residents have been concerned enough to contact me and ask about Washtenaw County's election procedures.

The good news is that every Michigan jurisdiction uses the optical scan paper ballot, similar to the forms used in standardized school tests. Candidate names and issues are printed directly on the ballot. This is the ideal "voter-verified paper trail": clear, trustworthy and fully recountable by hand. This is better than punch cards, better than old-style paper ballots and enormously better than unrecountable methods such as mechanical voting machines or touch-screen computers with internal counters.

Concerns have been raised over the optical scan ballot tabulating equipment, which some argue is open to manipulation, either by the vendor or by partisan computer hackers. I do wish the tabulators had been engineered with security in mind, and I would have preferred open-source rather than proprietary software on these machines. But there are safeguards against fraud.

First of all, every precinct has its own tabulator. These tabulators are each put through a public accuracy test before the election, and are under the direct supervision of a bipartisan team of election workers throughout the voting day.

When the polls close, the results in each precinct are printed out and posted or announced right in the polling place, where they are collected by campaign and media representatives. Those organizations maintain their own set of totals as a check on the official ones - an important security precaution.

A hypothetical conspiracy to steal a big election, without getting caught, would have to break into and modify hundreds of individual precinct tabulators. Such a task would require a whole lot of complicit technicians. The more people involved, the greater the chance that the secret would get out.

Decentralization of the counting process, which goes on simultaneously in every precinct, makes it inherently more difficult to steal an election, because the number of votes the thieves would need to change the outcome isn't available until the precinct results are reported. Polling is much too crude to tell this number in advance.

The vendors who provide the tabulators have not escaped suspicion, particularly Diebold, whose CEO was infamously quoted as "committed to helping'' Republicans win Ohio in 2004. Washtenaw County has used Diebold Accuvote tabulators for years.

But the sharpest concerns are with Diebold's no-ballot touch-screen voting machines, which are not used in Michigan. Moreover, if Diebold were caught fiddling with election results, that would be the end of the company, the end of the careers of its executives and the end of billions of dollars in shareholder value. By itself, that doesn't prove Diebold is trustworthy, but it sets up some powerful incentives against cheating.

Finally, if there is any doubt about what transpired during a Michigan election, the ballots themselves are fundamental and available to be counted. Any losing candidate can file for a recount; any citizen can file for a recount on a proposal. The fee is $10 per precinct, one of the lowest rates in the nation. Recounts are done by hand. And the results as certified in past recounts have been extremely close to the tabulator counts.

Ideally, there should be hand-count audits routinely after every election. In the absence of enabling legislation, recounts can serve this function.

With the 2002 Help America Vote Act, election consolidation, new equipment and new scrutiny, there have been a lot of changes in the conduct of elections in recent years. Washtenaw County has come through these changes ahead of the curve. We upgraded training for election workers and reached out to recruit more of them. In August, we did a pilot hand-count audit in five precincts. We have AutoMark machines in each polling place to help disabled voters mark their ballots. We have put up a Web site - WashtenawVotes.org - with sample ballots, so that voters will know what choices they have. And we have improved election night reporting of results.

When you vote in Washtenaw County, you can be confident that your vote will be correctly counted.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —

Sunday, October 22, 2006, 10:32 pm

One of the less noticed offices on the November ballot is Michigan Secretary of State. This is the position with authority over elections, voter registration, driver's licenses and many other things in the state.

I'd like to invite you to all to meet Carmella Sabaugh, our Democratic candidate for Secretary of State, Tuesday, October 24th from 5 to 7 PM at the Arbor Brewing Company, 114 E. Washington St. in Ann Arbor.

Sabaugh is the Macomb County Clerk/Register of Deeds, a position which has given her a dozen years of experience conducting elections (among many other duties) in the state's third largest county. Not only is she a successful innovator, but has had great success working with the Metro Detroit media and winning the confidence and votes of Macomb County's notoriously fickle "Reagan Democrats".

With your support on November 7th, Sabaugh will replace Michigan's Republican Secretary of State, Terri Lynn Land (see also this critical page about Land's record).

Sabaugh has proposed a number of changes to make registration and voting easier and election results more trustworthy.

This is an opportunity to meet the candidate, not a campaign fundraiser. Please join us at Arbor Brewing on Tuesday, 5-7 pm!

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —

Sunday, October 1, 2006, 12:07 am

Political Graveyard in New York Times. Today's New York Times, in an historical sidebar to the Mark Foley scandal titled Hitting a Self-Destruct Button, cites Political Graveyard's trouble and disgrace page, and quotes me on the history of sexual scandals among politicians.

Here's the relevant excerpt, discussing "Washington's 'What On Earth Was He Thinking?' Caucus":

... But the sex subcaucus is easily the biggest.

"You always seem to have politicians doing bizarrely self-destructive things, especially involving sex," says Lawrence Kestenbaum, creator of "Political Graveyard," a history Web site that includes an exhaustive cataloging of transgressions by politicians.

Under the heading "Politicians Who Were Ever in Trouble or Disgrace," the section contains 420 entries, in chronological order, many of them involving present and former members of Congress. Among the escapades:

• Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts, was reprimanded when it was revealed that a male lover had been running a prostitution business out of his Capitol Hill apartment.
• Donald (Buz) Lukens, Republican of Ohio, who was convicted of a misdemeanor for having sex with a 16-year-old girl.
• Dan Crane, Republican of Illinois, and Gerry Studds, Democrat of Massachusetts, both of whom were censured by the House for having sexual relations with teenage pages — Mr. Crane with a female in 1980, Mr. Studds with a male in 1973.

The "Politicians Who Were Ever in Trouble or Disgrace" section comes with the devastatingly simple disclaimer "Very Incomplete!"

Mr. Kestenbaum says improprieties in the political realm tend to resonate more than in others. First, they tend to become public, necessitating apologies and, in many cases, resignations. He points out that if Mr. Foley were a purchasing manager at some store, he might actually keep his job.

"The political world tends to be very judgmental," Mr. Kestenbaum says. This creates towering spectacles of dishonesty, famous last words that are often caught on tape. Mr. Clinton created the gold standard for this when he looked into a camera and indignantly declared, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky."

Go read the whole piece.

The Political Graveyard has been online for ten years, has gotten at least 100 million hits, has been featured in many news media, but this is the first time that the New York Times has ever mentioned the web site.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —

Monday, September 25, 2006, 1:53 pm

From the Clerk-Register: Justice Courts. Today's message to my staff.

Today's New York Times has a front-page story, based on a year-long investigation: Broken Bench: In Tiny Courts of N.Y., Abuses of Law and Power.

The article documents the problems with New York State's system of "justice courts", conducted by Justices of the Peace in every township of the state. Most of the justices are not lawyers, and many seem to have no idea of legal principles or procedure. The authors write:

The examination found overwhelming evidence that decade after decade and up to this day, people have often been denied fundamental legal rights. Defendants have been jailed illegally. Others have been subjected to racial and sexual bigotry so explicit it seems to come from some other place and time. People have been denied the right to a trial, an impartial judge and the presumption of innocence.

The article gives many examples of all these things.

Michigan, too, had justices of the peace until the 1960s. Most townships elected four justices on the partisan ballot; they held voting seats on the township board. Just as in New York, few were lawyers. They heard misdemeanor cases and small civil suits. They were paid from the fines or fees they imposed. And some of the justice they dispensed wasn't very good.

The story about how JOPs were abolished has a lot to do with a little town called Webberville, in Ingham County's Leroy Township. Webberville's main street, Grand River Avenue, was then U.S. Highway 16, the main road from Detroit to Lansing before I-96 was built.

In the 1950s and early 1960s, Webberville's main industry was its speed trap. Practically anyone who drove into Webberville unawares was stopped, hauled off to a Leroy Township justice of the peace, and fined. The four justices made a lot of money.

In 1961-62, a state constitutional convention was held in East Lansing. All the Con-Con delegates from Southeast Michigan had to drive through Webberville to get there.

No surprise that the constitution they wrote — still in effect today — not only abolished JOPs, but required all judges to be lawyers, and prohibited them from being paid the fines they imposed. JOPs and other municipal courts were replaced with district courts.

I hope that New York, at long last, can find its way to the kind of solution Michigan developed forty years ago.

Individual meetings with nonsupervisory staff continue. If you receive a notice, please arrange a half-hour with your supervisor and my schedule (via Outlook) for a meeting in my office.

Let's have a great week!

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —

Monday, September 11, 2006, 11:20 pm

From the Clerk-Register: September 11. Today's message to my staff.

I'm sure I don't need to remind anyone of the terrorist attacks five years ago today. During that scary time, and afterwards, we heard many times that the world is different now, in many different ways.

Five years later, it's fair to say that a lot of things are back to pre-9/11 normal. We have long since stopped holding our breaths waiting for the next massive attack. Ordinary political bickering resumed some time ago.

But for us in local government, some of the changes wrought by 9/11 are enduring.

Our courthouse entrance is being reconstructed in response to security concerns. Our vital records office has been redefined as a gatekeeper for identity documents, and the regulations are becoming steadily more stringent. Birth certificates are now issued on serially numbered safety paper. When you renew your driver's license, you will soon have to present your birth certificate, and the Secretary of State's office will check the document's serial number with us to make sure it's genuine.

Many of the 9/11 hijackers had Virginia driver's licenses, because those were very easy to get in 2001. New regulations are intended to prevent any state from being as easygoing as Virginia, but the requirements affect all states, and are turning the driver's license into a de facto national ID card.

The courthouse will soon have built-in security gates at the entrance, replacing the lobby. Certainly we hope the changes will make it quicker and easier to handle crowds. And though I don't expect terrorists to show up at the corner of Main and Huron, the long history of violent attacks on judges by disappointed litigants should be enough to justify this.

The remaining recounts from the primary election were completed today. The only outcome which changed: the Augusta Township fire millage, which had been tied, PASSED by one vote.

Meanwhile, the "Stop-Overspending" proposal at the state level was ruled to have insufficient signatures. So, November's ballot is pretty well set.

Individual meetings with nonsupervisory staff continue. If I haven't met with you yet, please arrange a half-hour with your supervisor and my schedule (via Outlook) for a meeting in my office.

Let's have a great week!

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —

Tuesday, September 5, 2006, 2:35 pm

From the Clerk-Register: Fall Arrives. Today's message to my staff.

My daughter Sarah started third grade this morning. The weather was perfect, and there was a big crowd of parents, teachers, and kids for the annual flag-raising ceremony signifying the opening of school.

School now starts the day after Labor Day because of a new law which prohibits public schools from starting the school year any earlier. Many of us were critical of this action; it openly placed a higher value on the tourism industry than on education. But now that it's done, I can't complain about not having to gear up for the school year while August is still on the calendar. Starting after Labor Day aligns the school year with the seasons.

Of course I don't mean the traditional definition of the four seasons as starting and ending on the equinoxes (March 21 and September 21) and the solstices (December 21 and June 21). The season is usually in full swing by the time we arrive at the "technical" start date. Who thinks of December 19, say, as an "autumn" day, when we may have had weeks of cold and snow? June 21, our official first day of summer, was known to Shakespeare as "Midsummer".

Here in Michigan, the coldest quarter of the year, based on average temperature records, runs from December 8 to March 8. Extending that definition to have four seasons of equal length, fall would begin this Friday, September 8. That makes a certain amount of sense.

But in the lives of most people in our region, the seasons are bracketed by major holidays. Fall is from Labor Day to Thanksgiving; winter is from the day after Thanksgiving to Easter or Passover; spring is from then until Memorial Day; and summer runs from Memorial Day to Labor Day.

Following that schedule, I can now say: Welcome to Fall!

A couple of additional notes:

The Day of Caring donation boxes are located in all of the Clerk/Register offices until this Friday. Our Department is sponsoring three agencies, Hope Clinic, Family Life Services and the Humane Society. The wish lists for each of these agencies is attached to the box and on the e-central site. When you donate, fill out the goldenrod sheet and send it to Karen Edman in Court Services. You will receive the 2006 Day of Caring T-shirt via interoffice mail.

Individual meetings with staff members resume this week. I've been here 20 months, but I have not yet had an opportunity to meet separately with all of the nonsupervisory staff members. You can set this up yourself. When the workload permits, please arrange a half-hour with your supervisor and my schedule (via Outlook) for a meeting in my office.

Let's have a great week!

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —

Thursday, September 1, 2006, 2:47 pm

County Board/Sheriff Controversy Boiling Over. In the last few days, the fight over policing contracts has reached a new level of acrimony.

The county board and Administrator (Bob Guenzel) are acting to lay off deputies and reduce service to the three townships which have refused to sign service contracts, and the Sheriff (Dan Minzey) sued to stop this action. A hearing is scheduled in October.

Some news stories:

• County officials deny sheriff's claims of retaliation (Ann Arbor News, August 22)
• County to propose deputy layoffs: Sheriff decides to seek legal action against County (Ypsilanti Courier, August 24)
• Sheriff sues county over deputy layoffs (Ann Arbor News, August 24)
• Deputy layoffs put on hold (Ann Arbor News, August 31)

The following letter from the Sheriff was faxed to local governments:

August 30, 2006

To the Community Leaders of Washtenaw County:

Today I appeared before Monroe County Circuit Judge Costello seeking a temporary restraining order to block the County's threatened lay-off of Sheriff's employees. Although this is only the first step in a lengthy process, I am pleased to tell you that the outcome of today's hearing was an ageement that there will be no lay-offs at this time. On October 10 and 11th, we will return to court with Judge Costello hearing testimony on both sides of this matter.

Additionally, we are in the midst of another jail overcrowding emergency. In the past, when we reached this stage of the overcrowding process, we boarded inmates at other counties. I had planned to proceed with the out-county boarding later this week, utilizing the same jails as in the past, to reduce the jail population to the mandated count of 322. However, Mr. Guenzel has taken action to prevent any transfer of inmates by canceling boarding contracts with the counties we have been using for temporary housing.

Once again, I would surmise that this action is politically motivated, as the boarding contracts were cancelled the same day I filed suit against Mr. Guenzel and the Board of Commissioners to stop the impending lay-offs. You will, no doubt, be hearing much more about this issue — as the overcrowding emergency has run full course and we will be forced to lock our doors. As of September 6th, we will have no choice but to follow the law. According to statute, the Sheriff shall defer acceptance for incarceration in the general population of the county jail persons sentenced to or otherwise committed to the county jail for incarceration until the county jail overcrowding state of emergency is ended, except that the sheriff shall not defer acceptance for incarceration all persons under sentence for or charged with violent or assaultive crimes, sex offenses, escape from prison or jail, controlled substance offenses, or weapons offenses.

Jail overcrowding is a critical public safety issue. We need immediate, temporary solutions as well as a long-range plan. The Board of Commissioners and Mr. Guenzel have left me with no option but to take court action to protect the citizens of Washtenaw County. I am deeply concerned that jail overcrowding has become another political football. I will do everything in my power to keep the citizens of Washtenaw County safe.

Daniel J. Minzey, Sheriff

Yesterday, Bob Guenzel distributed the following letter in response:

It has come to my attention that Sheriff Dan Minzey has sent out a FAX/IMPORTANT NOTICE to area officials concerning the latest mandated emergency overcrowding at the Washtenaw County Jail.

I am attaching two Updates that I've written for employees in the last few days concerning this and other matters. I've also made them available on our public web site as it has become clear that Mr. Minzey has widened the scope of his inaccuracies.

The Updates speak for themselves, but I would like to add some information by way of refutation, and for more complete understanding of the breadth of these falsehoods and what I can only deem self-promotion at the expense of the truth.

For more than three years, and I think I can speak for the Board of Commissioners on this point, we have poured our hearts and souls into finding a way to increase the size of the jail, easing overcrowding. We have put forth dozens of ideas and initiatives, and at almost every juncture, Sheriff Dan Minzey, the person one would think could gain most from our efforts, has been either a non-participant or an active opponent.

What is striking about the Sheriff's most recent message to local officials is that he is repudiating the one instance in which he was on the same page with the Board of Commissioners and with me by presenting a joint recommendation, passed as a Resolution at the June 7th, 2006 board meeting, to phase out the boarding of inmates at facilities in other counties.

The Sheriff made a strong presentation about facing the options of 1) Continuing to board out inmates as needed, 2) capping the number of boarded inmates; 3) ceasing immediately the boarding of inmates or 4) phasing the boarding of inmates. Sheriff Minzey gave his opinion that boarding inmates should be phased out with the end of terms for those then presently incarcerated at other jails.

Phasing out the practice of boarding out inmates was to be part of fixing the system of incarceration here in Washtenaw County. The Sheriff has been aware of many ideas and legal options that are now standard policy for other county jail facilities with similar overcrowding problems, and yet none has been implemented by this County.s Sheriff in anticipation of ending the boarding of inmates at external facilities, as he recommended in June.

• "Good Time" — Allows for the reduction of jail time due to good conduct — almost every sheriff in the state of Michigan, approved by the Court a year ago — NOT IMPLEMENTED.
• Work Release programs — NOT IMPLEMENTED.
• The County's practice of holding all court-ordered misdemeanants — UNCHANGED.
• Various methods of bond reduction at time of booking &mdash NOT IMPLEMENTED.
• Expedition of prison-bound inmates who languish in the jail where they should no longer be after sentencing — NOT IMPLEMENTED.
• A systematic review of offenders who may have warrants in other counties that could be sent to those counties or dismissed outright — NOT IMPLEMENTED.

Add to the list, Under Michigan Statutory Authority, the Sheriff has one major option to solve overcrowding that he refuses to take — a 30% reduction, across the board, of inmate [sentences] during an Overcrowding emergency.

Unfortunately, all that we're seeing during this emergency is more posturing and prevaricating from the Sheriff — and more time wasted.

Please feel free to contact me with your questions or concerns on this pressing matter.

Thanks,
Bob Guenzel

Right now, the county board is backing Bob Guenzel in this. But three of the board incumbents were defeated in the recent primary. Presumably the three townships are waiting for the new board to change course and restore the county subsidy for police services.

I attended previous workshops on jail overcrowding along with the sheriff, judges, commissioners and so on. Many different measures were discussed, but the only one which could provide instant relief was the sheriff's statutory authority to reduce sentences across the board by up to 30%.

General support was voiced around the room for this option for dealing with overcrowding emergencies, as opposed to the very costly outbedding of prisoners. I do not understand why Dan Minzey isn't using it.

Update, Sept 4: More background, and lively discussion, at Arbor Update: Sheriff's showdown: Minzey sticks to the fax.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —

Tuesday, August 8, 2006, 11:58 am

Don't Rely on Polls. Polling in the 4th Distict of Georgia shows congresswoman Cynthia McKinney trailing 39% to 52% in her runoff race with challenger Hank Johnson.

I'm not a fan of McKinney's. But I wouldn't count her out based just on a poll.

Look what happened in 2005 Detroit mayor's race: incumbent Kwame Kilpatrick, beset by troubles of his own making, trailed in EVERY poll to challenger Freman Hendrix. Polls of Detroit voters were done by all kinds of respected polling organizations. Right up to election day, there was NO poll showing Kirkpatrick leading. There was a very slight trend in his direction in the closing days, but not enough to make a dent in Hendrix's strong lead.

Yet Kilpatrick won by 14,000 votes. It was a historic failure of polling.

For all kinds of reasons, polling is getting harder and harder to do in this country. An increasing number of people, tired of telemarketers, and armed with Caller-ID, are not speaking to pollsters any more. Polling in person is pretty much precluded by gated communities and by general unwillingness to open doors to strangers.

These problems are masked if the people a pollster does get to speak with are not significantly different from the ones who are unavailable. But what if they ARE different?

Polling in low-income minority communities — such as the city of Detroit, or the 4th District of Georgia — faces precisely this difficulty. In those areas, the voters who pollsters can reach by phone ARE qualitatively different than the ones you can't. So poll results are going to be misleading.

Yes, some people in ALL demographic groups have gotten rid of "land line" (pollable) telephones, and switched to cell phones. But, in general, people who have ordinary cell phones, the ones which require a contract and monthly payments, are not really very different from people with land lines.

The problem is people who have no land line, no cell phone contract, but use instead those convenience store prepaid phones. These voters are not pollable using current methods, so their views don't count in any surveys. But many of them DO vote.

These are the poorest and angriest voters. And given a choice between a seemingly militant black candidate (like Kilpatrick or McKinney) and one who is moderate enough to get significant white support (like Hendrix or Johnson), they go with the militant.

I don't know if McKinney will win, but I bet she does significantly better than the polling seems to show.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —

Monday, August 7, 2006, 8:11 pm

Primary Election Tomorrow. Here are a couple of things about tomorrow's election. First, today's message to my staff:

Subject: From the Clerk-Register
Date: August 7, 2006

Tomorrow, Tuesday, August 8, is the primary election in Washtenaw County and statewide. At stake are dozens of offices from township trustee and city council to U.S. Senator.

And with one party increasingly dominant in Washtenaw County, the primary usually determines who is elected. We have 28 contested primaries: in 17 of these, the winner will be unopposed in the November general election. There are also 15 tax proposals (each affecting certain areas) and three recalls in Pittsfield Township. I strongly encourage everyone to take a few minutes and vote tomorrow.

Elections are just a part of all the things we do here, but our office is most visible to the public at election time. Today's Ann Arbor News features a front page photo of our own Steve Kirschner demonstrating the AutoMark voting device.

Our Elections staff is facing many challenges all at once. The new AutoMark machines were rushed into our hands to meet a federal deadline, with limited time for testing and training. The discovery of longstanding errors in geographic coding necessitated reprint of some ballots. The recall in Pittsfield Township means that we step into the shoes of the township clerk and run those polling places on Election Day. Our tabulators were upgraded, also on a hurry-up schedule with very short notice. We will be piloting a hand-count audit in six precincts to check on the accuracy of the tabulating equipment. And because this is a primary, we have the usual issues with party voting rules — you can vote in only one party's primary, and some voters get angry or confused about that - and the election of precinct delegates, including probably hundreds of write-in candidates whose votes will have to be individually counted and entered into poll books.

Despite all these issues, I expect to have a smooth election. Whether or not we like the outcomes tomorrow, the public and politicos will be confident in our results. And that reflects well on all of us, even if your job is unrelated to elections.

Let's have a great week!

And here's today's message to all the county clerks in the state from Chris Thomas, the state Director of Elections:

From: Thomas, Christopher M
To: County Clerks
Sent: Mon Aug 07 17:56:56 2006
Subject: Election Day

Greetings,

I wish you all a good election day tomorrow. The weather seems to be cooperating as it will cool off tonight and be a low humidity day tomorrow.

The "News You Can Use" coming out late this afternoon has all the updated numbers on each vendor's help desk. Also, there is policy regarding news media in the polling place. Essentially, they must live under the same rules as poll watchers. They cannot roam around the polling place nor can they talk with voters in the polling place.

Under the state contract, the vendors are required to establish a level of election day support for you and the local clerks. If you are having any difficulties with any of the vendors please call this office. We will definitely intervene to get things on track.

I realize this has been a difficult transition for many of you as both optical scan and AutoMark are new in your county. I have confidence in the quality of the systems in place. It may take an election to work through some issues and the human interaction with these systems. In addition to the Federal mandate, we chose a lower turnout election for the first test drive.

Thank you for all you have done to prepare for tomorrow and to assist local clerks in their preparations.

Chris Thomas

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —

Wednesday, July 26, 2006, 12:28 pm

Personal TV History. I usually resist the "memes" that bloggers pass around, but this one looks like fun.

A close reading of my choices would reveal me as a baby boomer with an elementary school age daughter. Probably the bulk of my lifetime television experience was in 1963-73.

Instructions: Bold all of the following TV shows which you've ever seen 3 or more episodes of in your lifetime. Bold and Italicize a show if you're positive you've seen every episode of it. If you want, add up to 3 additional shows (keep the list in alphabetical order).

24 3rd Rock from the Sun 7th Heaven Adam-12 Aeon Flux ALF Alfred Hitchcock Presents Alias Allo Allo American Idol /Pop Idol/Canadian Idol/Australian Idol America's Next Top Model/Germany's Next Top Model Angel Arrested Development Babylon 5 Babylon 5: Crusade Battlestar Galactica (the old one) Battlestar Galactica (the new one) Baywatch Beavis & Butthead Beverly Hills 90210 Bewitched Bonanza Bones Bosom Buddies Boston Legal Boy Meets World Buffy the Vampire Slayer Bug Juice Chappelle's Show Charlie's Angels Charmed Cheers Columbo Commander in Chief Coupling Cowboy Bebop Crossing Jordan CSI CSI: Miami CSI: NY Curb Your Enthusiasm Dancing with the Stars Danny Phantom Dark Angel Dark Skies Davinci's Inquest Dawson's Creek Dead Like Me Deadliest Catch Deadwood Degrassi: The Next Generation Designing Women Desperate Housewives Dharma & Greg Different Strokes Doctor Who (new Who) Doctor Who (series 1-26) Dragnet Due South Dungeons and Dragons (old cartoon) Earth 2 Emergency! Entourage ER Everwood Everybody Loves Raymond Facts of Life Family Guy Family Ties Fantasy Island Farscape Fawlty Towers Felicity Firefly Frasier Friends Futurama Get Smart Gilligan's Island Gilmore Girls Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. Green Wing Grey's Anatomy Growing Pains Gunsmoke Happy Days Head of the Class Highlander Hill Street Blues Hogan's Heroes Home Improvement Homicide: Life on the Street House I Dream of Jeannie I Love Lucy Invader Zim Invasion Iron Chef (Japan) Iron Chef (USA) Hell's Kitchen JAG Jackass Joey John Doe Kath and Kim LA Law Laverne and Shirley Law and Order Little House on the Prairie Lizzie McGuire Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman Lost Lost in Space Love, American Style M*A*S*H MacGyver Magnum P.I. Malcolm in the Middle Married... With Children Melrose Place Miami Vice Mission: Impossible Monk Moonlighting Mork & Mindy

Murphy Brown My Family My Favorite Martian My Life as a Dog My Mother the Car My So-Called Life My Three Sons My Two Dads Mysterious Cities of Gold NCIS Night Court Nip/Tuck Northern Exposure Numb3rs One Tree Hill Oz Perry Mason Picket Fences Pirates of Darkwater Pokemon Power Rangers Prison Break Profiler Project Runway Psyche Quantum Leap Queer As Folk (US) Queer as Folk (British) ReGenesis Remington Steele Rescue Me Road Rules ROME Roseanne Roswell Saved by the Bell Scarecrow and Mrs. King Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? Scrubs Seinfeld Sex and the City Six Feet Under Slings and Arrows Smallville So Weird South Park Spaced Spongebob Squarepants Sports Night Star Trek Star Trek: The Next Generation Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Star Trek: Voyager Star Trek: Enterprise Stargate Atlantis -- New season Stargate SG-1 -- New season Superman Supernatural Surface Survivor Taxi Teen Titans Teletubbies That 70's Show That's So Raven The 4400 The Addams Family The Andy Griffith Show The A-Team The Avengers The Beverly Hillbillies The Bionic Woman The Brady Bunch The Cosby Show The Daily Show The Dead Zone The Dick Van Dyke Show The Flintstones The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air The Golden Girls The Jetsons The L Word The Love Boat The Mary Tyler Moore Show The Mighty Boosh The Monkees The Munsters The Mythbusters The O.C. The Office (UK) The Office (US) The Pretender The Prisoner The Real World ROAR The Shield The Simpsons The Six Million Dollar Man The Sopranos The Suite Life of Zack and Cody The Twilight Zone The Waltons The West Wing The Wonder Years The X-Files Third Watch Three's Company Top Gear Twin Peaks Twitch City Upstairs, Downstairs Veronica Mars Wings What Not To Wear (US) What Not To Wear (UK) Whose Line is it Anyway? (US) Whose Line is it Anyway? (UK) Witchblade Will and Grace Wonderfalls Young Hercules

I added My Favorite Martian, My Mother the Car, and Teletubbies.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —

Monday, July 17, 2006, 12:47 pm

From the Clerk-Register. Today's message to my staff.

This past week brought news that the Michigan Supreme Court is considering some radical changes to the jury process.

Proposed court rules, now up for public comment, would make it possible for jurors to ask questions, take notes in court, visit crime scenes, and discuss the evidence with the rest of the jury before the close of trial. Judges would be allowed to .fairly and impartially sum up. evidence and comment to the jury about the weight of the evidence. Attorneys would be encouraged to distribute reference notebooks to jurors with exhibits and witness lists.

These are practical kinds of things that we often hear jurors ask for. After all, if you had to hear presentations and then make an important decision, wouldn.t you want to take notes, ask questions, receive written material, and so on? I think these changes would have the potential to improve the process and lead to more considered verdicts, and I.m happy to see them considered.

But in our system, practicality often takes a back seat to exacting standards for ensuring procedural fairness. Judges and lawyers are accustomed to treating juries as passive receptacles for evidence and argument, not as active participants in the process. So I expect these ideas will get a hostile reception.

You can read the complete proposal at http://www.courts.michigan.gov/supremecourt/Resources/Administrative/2005-19.pdf — and I invite you to send the Court your own comments, whether pro or con.

Let's have a great week — enjoy the hot weather and the Art Fairs!

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —

Sunday, July 16, 2006, 1:58 pm

Pittsfield Recall. Here's my overall take on the controversy,

Michigan voters have a costitutional right to recall public officials. As an activist and as a public official, I support and uphold this fundamental political right. I have even signed a recall petition or two myself.

I have long advocated that the clarity review process not be abused to frustrate the constitutional right of recall. And for at least 30 years, I have advocated that validation of recall and other petitions and signatures should be reasonable and not unduly stringent.

So, in Pittsfield Township, the proposed recall of the supervisor, clerk, and treasurer has gone to the ballot in the August 8 election. The choice is up to the voters now.

I don't live in Pittsfield any more, but I do have an opinion about the outcome. I strongly recommend a "no" vote on all three Pittsfield recalls.

I don't think that any of the claimed reasons for the recall justifies removing them from office.

First, I have a lot of experience watching local government in action. I can say that Pittsfield Township is much better governed than most, and the current officials do a better job than past Pittsfield administrations.

Second, Pittsfield is a large and growing jurisdiction with many challenges, and I don't think the compensation of these officials is out of line. Nor are they personally corrupt.

Third, the township had little choice but to approve the Wal-Mart project. The land was already zoned commercial, and refusal to allow a store to be constructed there would be fiercely and successfully contested by the developer.

I disagreed with and criticized the township's purchase of the Newmarket land ($11 million to stop a huge development), but I think the majority of township residents supported it.

The real reason for the recall is that many people see these officials as arrogant, bullheaded, and dismissive of others' opinions.

I can't argue with that. They certainly don't observe my ideal of the humility of a public servant.

But the recall, if successful, will only make this worse. In the short run, Pittsfield will get weak officials who will be run over by developers and interest groups. Some atrocious things will happen. When the outrage builds, the township will turn to even tougher, even more pugnacious, even more obnoxious leaders, who give even less credence to opposing viewpoints. A history of recalls over less than earthshaking issues will drive away other sorts of candidates.

The current officials aren't perfect. But they're doing a good job, and Pittsfield's interests would be best served by retaining them.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments

Sunday, June 25, 2006, 6:33 pm

From the Clerk-Register. Last Monday's message to my staff.

A lot of recall elections are in the works right now. Recalls are inherently tense and divisive situations, but dealing with the various contending parties is our job.

On May 2, we certified that sufficient signatures were presented to force an August 8 recall election against three officials of Pittsfield Township. The officials sued, and we were in court last Wednesday, June 7, on the plaintiffs' motion for a restraining order to stop the recall election. Less than 48 hours later, Judge Shelton issued a written opinion denying the motion, and praising the work of this office.

Today [Monday, June 19] at 12:30, the county Election Commission (myself as County Clerk; County Treasurer Catherine McClary; and Circuit Judge David Swartz) will meet to consider the clarity of reasons for recalling officials in three different units of government: Northfield Township, Lincoln Consolidated Schools, and Willow Run Schools.

It was unusual in the past to have two different sets of recalls come up for clarity hearings at the same meeting. Three is surely unprecedented.

In 1908, Michigan was one of the first states to provide a constitutional right to recall public officials from office. The recall power was significantly broadened in the 1963 state constitution, which provided that the reasons for recall "shall be a political rather than a judicial question."

It is frequently stated at clarity hearings that the role of the election commission is not to judge the truth or falsity of the reasons given by petitioners — only their clarity.

The legal guidelines for clarity give the commission a lot of room for subjective judgment about what is "clear" or "not clear".

I don't feel that the clarity process should be a roadblock preventing exercise of a constitutional right. Hence, if I can make sense of all the reasons proposed, regardless of arguable grammar or word choice, I vote to find it "clear". The other members of the Election Commission often disagree with me.

That being said, recalls, intended as an extraordinary last resort for voters, are now being wildly overused. During the almost eighteen months I have been Clerk, we have seen recall efforts against a dozen local officials.

I recently read about a survey of Michigan local officials who had been targets in recall campaigns. Their collective experience is summarized as "embarrassing, disappointing, painful, humiliating, devastating, hurtful, emotionally and financially draining." Most lost enthusiasm for public service, and saw emotional and financial effects on their families.

Elected officials gain office through an adversarial process. It is often their lot to decide controversial issues; we expect them to have thick enough skin to endure criticism from constituents who disagree. Still, it is already difficult to persuade capable individuals to put themselves forward for these posts. It certainly doesn't help when officials regularly get put through personal hell over political disagreements.

Let's have a great week!

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments

Sunday, May 28, 2006, 12:21 pm

Beverly Hills Supper Club. On this day, 29 years ago, a huge fire at a northern Kentucky nightclub killed 165 people. Here's what I wrote about it a couple of years ago:

When my wife was growing up in Northern Kentucky, the Beverly Hills Supper Club was a nightclub and a familiar venue for high school proms, wedding receptions, and so on. Many famous performers appeared there over the years. The original building was built in 1937, but it had been greatly expanded over the years with little or no safety inspection or enforcement. It postdated Prohibition, but locals thought of it as an old speakeasy, and it was said to be a headquarters for illegal gambling.

On May 28, 1977, a fire broke out in the building, apparently caused by faulty aluminum wiring. The cheap building materials burned rapidly and generated toxic fumes. In the vast, crowded Cabaret Room, the exits were unmarked and access to them was constricted.

About two thousand people escaped from the building that night, but 165 died — most of them in the Cabaret Room.

Wikipedia has an article about the fire. I had not known about Walter Bailey, a teenage busboy who saved hundreds of lives. More than a thousand people were packed into the Cabaret Room, watching a comedy act, unaware of the fire raging at the other end of the building. Bailey ran down the long hallway, jumped on stage, grabbed a microphone, warned the audience to evacuate, and pointed out the exits. Most of the crowd did escape safely. Two minutes after Bailey's warning, fire and thick smoke exploded into the room.

See the comment section below where a number of people have posted their memories of that night.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum.

Tuesday, May 9, 2006, 5:19 pm

Life After Roe. The Atlantic Monthly (June 2006) has an intriguing cover story, by Jeffrey Rosen, about the political fallout of the Supreme Court's likely reversal of the 1973 Roe v. Wade abortion ruling. Rosen predicts political upheaval and voter rebellion that would be catastrophic for the Republican Party:

If Roe falls in June 2007, abortion will almost certainly become the central issue of the 2008 presidential election. And Republicans are already worrying about the political fallout. "We'd be blown away in the suburbs, and you wouldn't see another Republican president for twenty years," a pro-choice Republican congressman recently told Roll Call.

It's an appealing storyline: Republicans would finally receive their comeuppance via getting what they asked for.

But emotionally appealing predictions are usually wrong. As a firmly pro-choice Democrat, I don't buy it.

Before 2000, political scientists warned of the "time bomb" lurking in the Electoral College: that some day, in some close election, the country would stumble into a severe political crisis when a popular vote winner failed to win the most electoral votes. For example, a 1980 League of Women Voters report stated ominously:

The election of a President who received less than a popular vote plurality is perceived by some critics as a potential constitutional crisis of the first magnitude, an outcome that would not be acceptable to the American people.

And from Becky Cain's testimony in 1997 congressional hearings on Electoral College reform:

Picture if you will a future national election in which a presidential candidate receives a majority of the popular vote, but is denied the 270 votes necessary for election by the electoral college....Imagine the public outcry today, after a long primary campaign and a grueling race for the Presidency. Imagine the public's rage at being denied their candidate of choice.

Obviously the American people did not rise up in rage after the 2000 election and declare the outcome "not acceptable". Nor, contrary to predictions by many experts, did these events trigger any serious demand to alter the system. Indeed, any criticism of the Electoral College is now dismissed as a partisan effort to undermine George W. Bush's legitimacy.

I have written before (unfortunately not on this blog or anywhere I can find easily and link to) about why things turned out this way. Suffice it to say that the American public's inclination to take to the barricades (even figuratively) on issues of abstract principle is enormously overrated.

For another thing, there is a peculiar heads-I-win-tails-you-lose quality to the discussion of Roe. If the Supreme Court sustains the doctrine, then abortion rights are protected, so we (pro-choicers) win; if the doctrine is struck down, then the voters respond by throwing out pro-life politicians, so we win that way too.

One could reasonably ask: isn't there a scenario where we could lose abortion rights? Millions of right-to-life Americans do want that to happen. Wouldn't striking down Roe be a big step in that direction?

Rosen's vision of the political impact seems to be based on the idea that the electorate is closely divided between Democrats and Republicans, so the slightest little shift would change everything.

But if the "closely divided" model is accurate, why do Republicans control the presidency, both houses of Congress, and the Supreme Court? Even here in blue-state Michigan, the legislature is almost hopelessly Republican, and the (elected) state Supreme Court is dominated by five nakedly partisan members of the Federalist Society.

Yes, Al Gore did win a half-million more votes than GWB in 2000. But Gore was heir to an administration which was credited for a balanced budget and a sustained economic boom. Surely the economy is the most important motivator for swing voters; anyone who wanted to keep the economy under the same stewardship would have voted for Gore, regardless of their views on other issues.

And yes, John Kerry did get some 48% of the popular vote in 2004. But that was after it was obvious to anyone who was paying attention that the GWB administration was a catastrophe. Lots of avowed Republicans decided that Kerry was a lesser evil. Still, Bush won.

Like it or not, voters with even moderately liberal views are a minority in this country. The Supreme Court isn't going to change that by overruling Roe.

Yes, if abortion becomes more politically salient, people would be forced to face the conflict between their views on abortion and their party affiliation. Presumably, some pro-choice Republicans would start to vote for Democrats. Of course, at the same time, faced with the same stark choice, some pro-life Democrats would start to vote for Republicans.

But another effect would work to reduce both of those numbers. Most people who feel some loyalty to a political party have plenty of reasons for doing so that matter to them. Given a conflict between their views on abortion and their party's views on abortion, it's not necessarily the party loyalty that loses. They could change their views on abortion to conform to their party loyalty.

Indeed, we have seen this happen already. Among politicians, for example, Richard Schweiker (R) switched sides to become strongly pro-life, and Jim Blanchard (D) switched sides to become strongly pro-choice. Undoubtedly millions of voters have emulated them in the past thirty-plus years.

The more abortion views match party identification, the less the status quo could be disturbed by any Supreme Court ruling. And the status quo is political control by anti-abortion Republicans.

Hence, I think a woman's legal right to control her own body is in grave danger.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments

Monday, May 2, 2006, 8:31 pm

Election Day: Much Happening. Today is Election Day in Washtenaw County, and most of the rest of the state, as school districts vote on board members and tax proposals. We also have a countywide proposal for 1/5 mill of property tax to pay for a new police and fire radio system.

At this writing we are waiting for results.

Today is also the 35th day from the submission of recall petitions against three Pittsfield Township officials, and the deadline for me to certify the sufficiency or insufficiency of signatures on those petitions.

For each of the petitions, 2,246 valid signatures were required. On petitions to recall Township Supervisor James Walter, we found 2,358 signatures to be valid. On petitions to recall Township Clerk Feliziana Meyer, 2,275. On petitions to recall Township Treasurer Cristina Lirones, 2,381. Hence, I certified that sufficient signatures were submitted for all three officials.

Here's the Ann Arbor News story about the certification.

In the normal course of things, an August recall election would be the next step, but litigation is expected, and the three officials will ask a judge to consider evidence that the entire petition drive was fraudulent.

And also today, on schedule (okay, a very tight schedule), the state rolled out its solution to the federal requirement (via the Help America Vote Act or HAVA) that disabled voters be afforded a private way to cast votes in polling places.

The "AutoMARK", as it is called, will be a new piece of voting equipment for each polling place. Equipped with a screen, headphones, foot pedal, suck and puff straws, etc., it will mark a standard ballot so that it can be counted by the tabulator in the same way that all other ballots are counted.

The good news for county and municipal clerks is that the machines will accept the same programming that is currently done for all three brands of tabulators in use in Michigan. Clerks had feared a doubling of ballot programming time and costs.

If these machines are delivered to local units, and are up and running properly for the August 2006 primary, Michigan will have just barely made the federal HAVA deadline.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments

Monday, May 1, 2006, 8:03 pm

Women in Politics. Here's an editorial from the Ann Arbor News, Wednesday, April 8, 1931.

Why Not Have More Women in Politics?

Mrs. Ruth Bryan Owen, of Florida, member of the national house of representatives, advocates more women in public office. "It is time that Uncle Sam gets a wife," she said at a recent women's political meeting in Kansas City. "He has been a bachelor long enough. Woman's love of beauty and man's practical knowledge both are needed in the community. The community and the whole nation has become the home today, and the woman's place is in the home."

Representative Owen is right, in theory at least. More women in public office should have a tendency to remove the dirt from politics. The trouble is that many women are forced by domestic circumstances to keep house and look after children. Either of those occupations requires plenty of time, if it is rightly handled: the upbringing of children is more than a full-time occupation. Economic conditions will not permit maids and governesses in every home, and we doubt if it is a good idea, anyway, for governesses to mother the nation's children.

Men can learn to do housework, but few feel so disposed. The question of self respect sometimes enters the situation. And men simply cannot be the mothers. If the race is to continue, mothers must undertake most of the responsibility. Nature refuses to let men bring children into the world.

There are practically insurmountable drawbacks to a political life for a large percentage of the nation's women. The nineteenth amendment cannot endow physiological equality.

For that matter, there is no convincing evidence that women in general appreciate the franchise that was granted by the amendment. They do not vote in large numbers. Their place may not be "in the home," in the restrictive sense of the term, but too many are found there on election day. They should display greater interest in elections than they do, if all the time, pains, money, worry and energy spent in the crusade for suffrage is to be considered justified.

True, there are far too many men who do not vote. But that is no excuse for the small feminine vote at every election. If Uncle Sam needs a wife, she should set a good example at the polls, as a beginning of her political usefulness. Certainly she should not follow hubby's bad example.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments

Monday, May 1, 2006, 2:52 pm

Restaurant inspection reports now online! I'm delighted to report that Washtenaw County (and several other counties on the same system) is making restaurant inspection reports available to the public via a searchable online database.

Here's an excerpt from today's letter to my staff in which I discuss this:

Readers of the Ann Arbor News are familiar with the typical content of these reports, but most newspapers don't choose to embarrass potential advertisers in this way.

More than 20 years ago, I attempted to do a very crude version of this in a portion of Ingham County. I went to the Environmental Health office, copied information from inspection reports, and posted them on a local public access computer system for others to see.

In those days, the inspectors would assign a numeric score to each food establishment based on the inspection report. A perfect score (no violations) would be 100. For each violation, a few points would be subtracted. A score like 97 or 98 would be "almost" perfect. A place with a lot of violations might have a score of 70. Anecdotally, a really bad restaurant had so many violations that the score was less than zero.

It was a simple, numeric summary of an inspection report. But sanitarians did not like the scoring system, because they felt it was misleading. A perfect score would be easy to achieve for a small place which specialized in a couple of easy pre-packaged foods, but almost impossible for a busy full-service restaurant that did a lot of its own food preparation.

Think of it this way: a score like "20 wrong" might be awful on a 30 question test, but pretty good if the test had 1,000 questions. Similarly, an inspection score of 80 (one hundred minus 20 points) would be shockingly bad for a snack bar, but excellent for a fancy restaurant.

So, some years ago, they did away with numeric scores.

Instead, on the new web site, for any restaurant or food service location, we can read of very specific problems found in inspections.

Every so often you find something appalling or almost amusingly bad — "SOCK FOUND IN SOUP USED AS WRAP FOR DRIED SPICES. THE SOCK IS PROHIBITED FOR USE AS A FOOD CONTACT SURFACE" — but most of it is very routine, everyday stuff, like hand washing supplies and the temperature of coolers.

The lack of numbers makes it hard to quickly compare one eatery with another, but you do gain some appreciation for what our fellow county employees in Environmental Health are doing on their workdays: measuring temperatures, looking under sinks and into floor drains, checking expire dates on packages, examining chemical test strips, and on and on.

Their dedicated work helps keep all of us safe and healthy.

Let's have a great week!

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments

Friday, April 21, 2006, 1:05 am

The "Matrimonial Market" in 1935. I came across the following little debate in the Ann Arbor News (March 27, 1935):

Is Grade B Spouse Better Than None?

by Dorothy Dix

"Is it better to have an indifferent husband--a sort of second-class instead of first-class husband, so to speak--than to have none at all?" asked a girl of a group of married women.

"Now," she went on, "I am financially independent. I have interesting work that I enjoy doing, that fills my time and makes me feel that I am of some use in the world. I am not in love and no Prince Charming has ever ridden down my street. But I am wondering if I am making a mistake in not marrying because I have not found my ideal and whether it wouldn't be better to marry some ordinary man whom I merely like and respect than to be an old maid."

"No. A thousand times no," cried one of the women to whom she was speaking. "A man can put up with a make-shift wife, ut a woman has to have the husband that she craves, or else marriage is cinders, ashes and dust to her. It doesn't matter so much to a man whom he marries because his life is lived mosly out of the home and his thoughts are filled with outside interests. His hopes and ambitions and struggles and triumphs and failures absorb him. But a woman's life is centered in the home. If she doesn't find her happiness there, she doesn't find it anywhere, and the core of a woman's happiness is always the husband who is her heart's desire.

"Of course, many women do marry their opportunities when they can't get their preferences. They take the men they can get when they can't get the men that they want and they live miserably and scrappily ever afterward. To this class belong the bored wives who yawn in their husband's faces and who always want to step out somewhere of an evening; the complaining wives who consider themselves martyrs because they have to keep house and rear children; the lazy wives who never think it worth while to make their husbands comfortable, and the whining wives who always tell you wnat brilliant careers they could have had if they hadn't got married.

"Marriage is full of sacrifices for a woman even at its best, an the only thing that justifies it and makes it worth while to her is for her to have married her own particular tin god that she can spend the remainder of her life worshipping. Believe me, there is a lot of peace and happiness and comfort in single blessedness and in having your own individual pocketbook and latchkey, and a woman is a fool who trades these off for anything short of the very best the matrimonial market affords."

"I don't agree with you at all," said another woman. "I think that almost any sort of husband is better than no husband at all. Marriage is the vocation to which God has called women and they are only content when they follow it. A woman's life without a man in it is an unflavored dish, flat and tasteless. She has to have a husband to pep it up, to give it some savor.

"Why, a woman even has to have a husband to cook for to put any punch in her housekeeping. It doesn't seem worth while to her to get up a good dinner unless a man is to help eat it. Three-fourths of the widows and old maids live on a tea-and-toast diet or something they can get out of a can.

"And women have to have husbands to dress up for after they begin to get to the time when corsets are a burden and a kimona looks good to them, to keep them from getting sloppy. And they have to have husbands coming home at night to put a point to their days, even if they know they are going to be grouchy or about as conversational as store dummies. For it is better to have somebody to quarrel wiith than nobody to speak to at all.

"Then, of course, there is the matter of money, and nobody can deny that a husband is a mightty handy thing to have around the house when bills come in, even if he isn't exactly the hero of your girlish dreams. Maybe he isn't all your fondest fancy painted, but is is somebody to stand between you and the world and you don't have that gone feeling that you used to have when you wondered what would happen to you if you got sick or lost your job.

"Furthermore, most married women are better taken care of than they could take care of themselves. It would take many and many a long year's work to get the average women to the place where she could have the nice little home and the car that she marries, if she had to earn them herself."

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments

Thursday, April 20, 2006, 10:11 pm

Barbara Bauer and other "Literary Agent" Scammers. Via Making Light, we learn of yet another little fraud subculture, in the form of "agents" who rip off authors while pretending to find publishing deals for them.

There's a list of 20 worst agents [link updated 5/26/06] from Writer Beware, which says:

None of these agents has a significant track record of sales to commercial (advance-paying) publishers, and most have virtually no documented and verified sales at all (many sales claimed by these agents turn out to be vanity publishers). All charge clients before a sale is made, whether directly, by charging fees such as reading or administrative fees, or indirectly, for "editing services."

See also Writer Beware and Preditors & Editors.

Teresa Nielsen Hayden published the list and then, like some others, she received a cease and desist threat from one of the notorious scammers, Barbara Bauer. Since exposing and ridiculing scammers is also an interest of mine, I am happy to support Teresa by linking to the sites she recommends on this.

These scam "literary agents" remind me of the Manutius "publishing house" in Umberto Eco's novel Foucault's Pendulum.

It was more than just a vanity press. With fake, glossy "literary magazines" and staged book signings and social events, Manutius lulled its authors into an expansive belief in their own importance.

Then the publisher would quietly let slip to the author that the book wasn't selling as well as hoped, and all those newly printed volumes would have to be pulped unless, ahem, someone came up with the money to buy them all...

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments

Monday, April 17, 2006, 3:45 pm

From the Clerk-Register. Today's message to my staff.

Not long ago, I received a copy of a recent article [subscription site; click "cancel" on password dialog to see citation] sent by our Public Defender, Lloyd Powell. "Thought provoking," he said.

The article describes the unhappy tendency in schools, organizations, and workplaces for specific individuals to become identified as scapegoats, leading all the others to gang up against them, usually over vaguely defined offenses or problems. The targeted person may be ostracized, or even humiliated, in an attempt to isolate them and drive them out of the class or club or office.

I'm sure all of us have seen examples of this phenomenon in our own experience, whether we have taken part in it, been victimized by it, or both.

Once again, I am reminded of the old Jewish parable that Heaven and Hell are exactly the same - except for the way the inhabitants treat one another.

No one deserves to be mistreated or harassed. And everyone loses when the tone of a social environment degenerates into ugly scapegoating.

But you can be part of the solution.

When you come to work here in the Clerk-Register's office, or really in any office, part of your job is to get along with your co-workers, to treat every one of them with courtesy and respect.

Perhaps there is something you dislike about one of your colleagues. That's inevitable in any group of people.

But here at work, it is your responsibility to put that dislike aside, and treat the person as a valued member of your team. Focus, instead, on what you like about them.

If someone in your office has a behavior that annoys you, quietly take it up with them directly. Don't gossip about it to other staff.

Perhaps you feel that a co-worker has wronged you in some way. If so, you should try to find it in your heart to forgive them. Do you really want to spend the rest of your work life seething at the person at the next desk?

Each one of you took a solemn oath to "faithfully discharge the duties" of your position.

"Faithful," that is, not just to the details of the work you do, but to the integrity of the office and the work environment.

"Faithful" means showing courtesy and respect every workday, not just to our customers, but to our co-workers.

Let's take that oath seriously.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments

Thursday, April 13, 2006, 10:44 pm

Lisa Radtke. Just one week ago this evening, I attended the honors banquet for the Political Science department at Eastern Michigan University. I was the guest speaker, and I talked about the world of politics and my own experiences in it.

Lisa Radtke, a 23-year-old graduating senior, was one of the honorees, as president of the Public Administration Club. She stopped at the table where I was sitting and chatted with us. I was impressed with her.

One of her professors wrote:

She was in my 100 student introductory class perhaps 3 years ago and stood out in my mind as energetic, animated, and engaged. Very sweet young woman. It was nice to continue to know her as an advanced student in our department, and the work she did ... on the Public Administration Club really made a nice contribution to the department.

The following evening, Lisa Radtke was shot and killed by her own mother.

Here are some of the headlines in local media:

• EMU student's death a sad shock to many (Ann Arbor News, the most complete report)
• Mom charged in daughter's death (Detroit News)
• Mother faces murder charge in shooting of daughter, 23 (News-Herald)
• EMU senior killed in Taylor (Eastern Echo)
• Mother Accused of Shooting, Killing Daughter (WDIV News)
• EMU should issue posthumous degree (Eastern Echo)

The causes of this senseless tragedy are not hard to find. According to the Ann Arbor News:

But as [Lisa] Radtke's future came together, police and family members say her mother's life was unraveling.... Sharon Radtke, 56, had lost her job as a legal secretary in February and was having trouble making ends meet. With the job went her health insurance and ability to afford medication for depression that had been prescribed for her a few years earlier.

[Sharon Radtke] suffered from depression and had taken medication until her insurance ran out, and she couldn't afford the $200 a month for the pills....

Here, in other words, we have a person with mental illness who was apparently helped to maintain an even keel through medication. After the job disappears, her life comes apart. Unmedicated, increasingly agitated (e.g., "she was getting more devastated all the time"), and in distress over the prospect of becoming homeless, she kills her beloved daughter.

I supppose technically Sharon Radtke might have been eligible for Medicaid. But the devil is in the details, and poor people are served slowly and badly. Continuity of medical care from private insurance to Medicaid would be difficult under the best of circumstances, and impossible for a person under emotional and financial stress.

Needless to say, this wouldn't have happened under the kind of comprehensive health insurance system that exists in nearly every industrialized country besides the U.S.

UM law student Kurt Hunt has links to almost two dozen bloggers who wrote about their memories of Lisa Radtke.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments

Sunday, March 26, 2006, 10:23 am

Local School on Comics Page. This morning's Speed Bump comic strip, on the first page of the Ann Arbor News Sunday comic section, shows several kindergartners in "letter jackets". On the left edge of the panel, the back of one jacket is partly visible with "Eberw-" and "Element-".

Is this a reference to Ann Arbor's own Eberwhite Elementary School? Yes! Turns out the cartoonist, Dave Coverly, lives in Eberwhite's attendance area. And the sign on the left edge of the panel looks like it has the Ann Arbor Public Schools logo.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments

Monday, March 13, 2006, 3:45 pm

From the Clerk-Register. Today's message to my staff.

Most of us came to work through the rain this morning. The rain has stopped for the moment, but another line of storms will be here soon. A tornado watch has been called.

It's pretty easy to feel downcast on a gray day when rain is falling on your head, when passing cars and trucks splash dirty water on your clothes or your windshield. Unless we are farmers or gardeners, we don't usually consider the lifegiving aspect of rain. Wet, annoyed, and in a hurry, we all think first of our own inconvenience and discomfort.

At least we don't take it personally. Setbacks and frustrations and accidents are part of the human condition, as are joys and accomplishments, and we learn to take the bad with the good.

But some people don't see it that way. Bad things don't happen by accident; they're all arranged by an evil conspiracy. Every small disaster is seen as further proof of this. There are no coincidences in the world of a paranoid person, no loose ends. Everything means something, because the conspiracy controls it all.

The word "paranoid" is not a synonym for "fearful". Paranoid people are very sure of themselves. They know what is going on, and see the rest of us as naïve or ignorant.

Nor does paranoid mean "crazy". Though paranoia can be a delusion, a symptom of mental illness, it certainly affects a lot of otherwise normal and rational people.

Paranoia is rampant in competitive endeavors like business, sports, and politics. After all, the other team certainly doesn't have your best interests at heart, and it's a short step from there to seeing the "enemy" as having hidden alliances and powers to control all kinds of things.

Paranoid explanations of world events may seem nonsensical at first glance, but they gain unexpected credence because they're neater and more emotionally appealing. Instead of multiple independent actors capable of doing evil, a paranoid sees them all working together in an all-powerful secret organization.

Of course, like anyone, paranoid individuals come to the Clerk-Register's office to transact business with us. In extreme cases, they may be condescending (if they see you as an innocent dupe) or hostile (if they see you as part of the conspiracy).

But regardless of deluded motivation, they are still our customers. If someone brings you an impossible request, calmly explain that you cannot fulfill it. These situations can be stressful; it is important to keep your cool and treat the customer with courtesy and respect.

And maybe some day they will come to realize we weren't plotting against them after all.

Let's have a great week!

Update, March 16: Following a comment pointing out the issue, I changed "unusual or impossible request" to simply "impossible request". "Unusual" requests should be no problem in my office.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments

Tuesday, March 7, 2006, 9:05 pm

MARD v. MLTA, continued. For those of you who were still curious after the last installment of this soap opera, here's more:

Conflict has escalated between the Michigan Association of Registers of Deeds (MARD), representing the 83 county officials whose offices maintain the state's land records, and the Michigan Land Title Association (MLTA), a trade group representing title insurance companies.

Most Michigan counties have two separate positions of "County Clerk" and "Register of Deeds"; Washtenaw County has combined them, so I am both County Clerk and Register of Deeds, and thus a member of MARD.

Title companies are the most avid users of land records, especially the most recently filed land records, since they want to be sure that the titles they are insuring are safe from last-minute liens or other encumbrances. Obviously they want to get access to the information as cheaply as possible, and they are frustrated by the smaller counties which continue to charge the statutory rate of $1 per page, even if the page is delivered as a digital image. Counties that do "bulk sales" of deed images at a reduced rate often restrict resale of the information, so as to maximize the number of entities buying directly from the county.

The title companies have been pushing legislation (House Bill 5124) to put some of their desires into law, and this has been strenuously opposed by MARD. A hearing of the House Local Government Committee had been scheduled in Lansing tomorrow morning on the bill, and both sides were organizing to get lots of interested folks to show up and testify. Suddenly, this afternoon, the hearing was canceled.

Earlier, MARD president Lori Wilson (Montcalm County Register of Deeds) sent the following to a legislator, copied to other Registers of Deeds:

President of MLTA Jerome Jelenick call me last week with a threat, if we don't support HB5124 then are hurting our Counties. That the Register of Deeds offices will be getting sued and not only a couple of them, all of them! He said we will have more in attorney fee's than we would ever lose in bulk sales. I think he is getting scared that his bill isn't going anywhere so he is trying the scare tactic. I told him that with the law suits that are facing the Register's and now with his treats I didn't feel that we could ever negotiate and come up with wording that we agree on therefore I would see him in Lansing. He couldn't even agree to disagree, must be he is losing lots of money and wants to make it up at the taxpayers expense.

Today, just after 5:00 pm, MLTA president Jerome Jelinek sent the following reply to the Registers of Deeds (along with a copy of Lori Wilson's message quoted above):

Subject: Response to Lori Wilson E-mail

Dear MARD Members:

I just received a copy of the attached e-mail attributable to your president, Lori Wilson. Given the gross inaccuracies contained in the e-mail and the overall irresponsible action of distributing such misinformation, I feel it necessary to respond.

As you may read for yourself, Lori indicates that I threatened mass litigation if HB 5124 was not supported by MARD. First, I have not and would not make any "threats" regarding this issue. I have and will continue to conduct MLTA business in a professional manner.

Second, additional litigation and continued escalation of acrimonious behavior between Register of Deeds and those in the title industry is exactly what I have been fighting against since my term as president of the Michigan Land Title Association began last summer. Litigation is a wasteful process and should be avoided if at all possible. Furthermore, Register of Deeds and title companies have worked well together for decades; many still do. We are, in many ways, mutually dependent. Efforts by those to distance and destroy these long standing relationships are extremely regrettable and, in my opinion, constitute poor leadership.

What I most recently communicated to Lori Wilson was in response to her informing me that MARD was not in any way going to attempt to compromise and resolve this dispute. I informed Lori that as presidents of our respective associations, I felt it our obligation and in the best interests of both associations to resolve this matter through compromise and get back to our long history of working together to resolve common issues. A legislative compromise is our best hope of avoiding the current dark environment of lawsuits and appeals leading to more lawsuits and more appeals. I assured Lori that doing nothing, affecting no compromise as Lori indicated MARD supports, would not end the litigation mess that currently exists. I told Lori directly, if that happens, I would equate it as failure on my part and hers.

Reasonable people and groups may disagree. In the grand scheme of things, this is a mighty small issue that professionals in your organization ought to be able to resolve with the professionals in my organization. It does not warrant and we should not permit the type of emotion, false information and demagoguery that clouds the minds necessary to resolve this dispute. On behalf of the members of the MLTA, we would welcome your constructive efforts to fix this problem so we may proceed to mutually address others confronting the real estate industry. Thank you.

Sincerely,

Jerome E. Jelinek
President, Michigan Land Title Association

Update, March 10: I received this yesterday, from the president of MARD:

To MARD Members,

I would like to thank every Register who sent letters, made phone calls, met with their Representative asking them to oppose HB5124. With all your hard work we were successful, the committee hearing was canceled because they knew they didn't have the votes to get it out of committee. A few of us met with Lew in Lansing yesterday, the work isn't over, they are working on some kind of amendments and they will try and bring this up again. So at a moments notice I might be asking you all once again to come to Lansing. They know what they are doing, between MARD and MAC we had to many members that were going to be in Lansing opposing HB5124. The next time they might not give us as much notice so we can't have as many people there to oppose it. I would like everyone who has a Representative that sits on the Local Government and Urban Policy Committee to send out a letter to their Representative and thank them for their support and ask them if this is going to come up again for a vote to please contact you before the meeting.

As many of you know from all the emails that you have been getting it is an extremely emotional time. I have not and will not respond to Jerome Jelineks email, I do not feel that I need to defend myself or our Association to him. He knows full well were our Association stands on HB5124 and he doesn't like it that we are winning the battle and protecting our Counties that put us in Office.

I hope to see everyone in Clare on April 9 & 10. I will have an agenda for you soon.

Again I can't thank you all enough. Remember TEAM work is Together Everyone Accomplishes More.

Lori Wilson
President

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments

Wednesday, March 1, 2006, 2:32 pm

From the Clerk-Register. Yesterday's message to my staff.

Today is Election Day in Augusta Township, where they're voting on the recall of two officials, and in the parts of Ypsilanti and Salem townships which are in the Northville and Van Buren school districts.

Across the state, I think people are coming to know and appreciate the new schedule of (only) four elections per year: February, May, August, and November. I'm very disappointed that the Governor ignored this schedule when she set a special primary and special election to fill a state senate vacancy. Under the law, she has broad discretion to set special election dates, but she could have used that discretion to reinforce a consistent message about when voting takes place.

We have, in effect, a hierarchy of elections, with levels of participation such that we also have a hierarchy of voters.

If you vote in presidential elections in November every four years, you're a foot soldier in the great army of democracy. You have a voice in the final round of choosing the world's most important elected official. In Washtenaw County, there were 174,061 of you who voted in the last one.

If you also vote in the congressional and gubernatorial elections in November every two years, you've promoted yourself to corporal, a step more influential, helping decide who runs the state capitols, the U.S. House and Senate, the state House and Senate. In November 2002, this county had 108,382 "corporals" take part.

If you vote in the August primary elections every two years, you're like a sergeant, helping set up the choices that everyone else will have in November. In 2004, we had 36,794 "sergeants" making those critical selections.

If you vote in your local school elections, or in city or village elections for mayor or village president and city or village council, you're like a major, with a large voice in the world of education, or in the operation of your local government. The last round of city and village elections drew just 15,119 voters; the 2005 school board elections, only 17,778.

If you relate those last numbers back to the first one, that means that about 90% of the presidential election voters get no say in school and local elections.

Election consolidation is at least an attempt to change that ratio. Starting last year, school elections are no longer held in mid-June, after the school year is over, when many families are on vacation, but rather, in early May. They're now held on Tuesdays, like all other elections. For most people, school elections are now held in the same polling places as used in presidential elections.

In short, we have taken away some of the stumbling blocks which kept people away from taking part, and made it easier for a broader cross section of voters to participate.

But this year's school board elections (most of them will be on May 2nd) are not likely to draw many voters - because the candidates didn't show up. About half of the school board members whose terms are up this year are unopposed. That can't mean that everyone is happy about the state of the schools - a glance at any local newspaper in recent weeks would demonstrate otherwise. But few are willing to step up to the challenge of seeking election and serving on these boards.

The best chance of changing that is to expand the pool of people who participate in these local elections. When the whole community takes part, when knowledge is not confined to the few, better decisions result.

Let's have a great week!

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments

Thursday, February 16, 2006, 11:00 am

You're invited! It's time to get started on getting re-elected as County Clerk and Register of Deeds. My First Annual President's Day Fundraiser will be held on Monday, February 20, 2006, starting at 5:30 pm, at the home of Al and Mary Hegerich, 5195 Pontiac Trail, Ann Arbor (3 miles north of Dhu Varren Road, on the left).

Here's my letter:

Dear Friends,

It was just over a year ago that I took office as your Washtenaw County Clerk and Register of Deeds, the first Democrat to hold either position in seven decades.

I've had a great first year, with many accomplishments.

First, we had an orderly transition to the new management team, consisting of myself and my Chief Deputies Jim Dries (Deeds and Vital Records), Derrick Jackson (Elections and Administration), and Karen Edman (Court Services).

Starting on the first day, we worked with the townships and cities and schools to negotiate implementation of the "election consolidation" law, avoiding the lawsuits and recriminations which plagued nearby counties.

As a result of the new law, all elections are now on Tuesdays. Most voters no longer have different polling places for different types of elections. These changes helped boost voter turnout in school elections last year.

We improved the training of poll workers. Instead of dry lectures full of legalese, we provide hands-on experience with the equipment and forms they will use on Election Day. We also refocused the training toward the kinds of issues and problems that poll workers are likely to see in a real election.

I didn't get to choose the tabulators used in precincts for counting our optical scan paper ballots, but I advocated the use of hand counts of randomly selected precincts as a check on the equipment and programming. I'm happy to report that the Secretary of State is now supporting legislation to mandate this statewide.

My office was tasked with the job of reviewing and validating 20,000 petition signatures submitted in opposition to the jail bond issue. We accomplished this big job with fairness and efficiency, and received praise from both sides for our work.

During the past year, groups in three Washtenaw jurisdictions launched efforts to recall a total of seven local officials. To assist the press and public in tracking this complicated story, I made all the proposed versions of recall language and other material available online on the county's web site.

In the Register of Deeds office, we greatly reduced (from about 60 days to about 10 days) the lag time for processing deeds and mortgages and other documents. Delays tie up financing, so quicker processing helps reduce costs and make mortgage money more available to prospective homeowners in Washtenaw County.

In the Vital Records office, we improved the handling of marriage licenses by putting postage on the return envelopes. Ministers and other marriage officiants are required to send back the completed marriage licenses, but the search for the right amount of postage often led to greater delays, and not uncommonly the license would be put aside or even lost. That doesn't happen any more.

On behalf of the Jury Board, my office chooses and summons potential jurors for circuit, probate, and district court. Our new approach to managing these lists has eliminated weeks of tedious work purging duplicates by hand, and reduced by thousands the number of jury questionnaires we need to send out.

Formerly, circuit court jurors were paid in paper checks mailed four to six weeks after they served. We wrote over 600 checks a month to jurors, most of them around $20 each. Many of those checks would come back undeliverable from the post office; many more were never cashed; the funds had to be labor-intensively escheated to the state. No longer. Now, we pay jurors immediately in cash, using a special purpose ATM in the courthouse. Other courts around the state will soon follow our lead.

And we have many more things to work on. As I start my second year in this position, the honeymoon isn't over yet!

In addition to all the management tasks that the job entails, the County Clerk is one of a five-member board which draws county commission districts after each decennial census. Moreover, the County Clerk is one of a three-member committee which fills vacancies in county elected positions. That committee had a Republican majority until I took office.

Many thanks for your past support. It's now time to start preparing to win re-election in 2008. I hope to see you on President's Day!

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments

Thursday, January 26, 2006, 1:18 pm

From the Clerk-Register. Last Monday's message to my staff.

It has happened to all of us: an alarming message arrives in email. Often, it is forwarded by a friend or relative. Sometimes it warns of a dangerous new computer virus, or a scary new scam used by criminals. Other times, it brings news of a previously unknown threat to our health, or warns that the government is about to do something really nasty to us. Frequently, it calls upon the reader to pass along the message to others.

Experience with email and the Internet has taught most of us not to trust such messages, or to check it on an urban legends web site like snopes.com. But millions of people do take these messages seriously, and are motivated to forward them on to alert their friends and relatives, spreading false information and needless alarm.

As Mark Twain is supposed to have said, "A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes" — and that was long before the Internet was created.

But even without email, rumors — true or not — spread with astonishing speed among a population that is interested and willing to believe them. We would all, I think, be surprised if we could hear all the things others are saying about us. In the process of passing from person to person, the interesting or alarming aspects of any story become exaggerated little by little, and something which started out as a piece of factual news can become distorted almost beyond recognition.

We don't have a useful web site like Snopes to check out rumors about the county government or our co-workers. But a little common sense goes a long way. The more interesting a rumor is, the more important it is to ask the teller how he or she knows. Remember that your own personal credibility is hurt when you disseminate a rumor that turns out to be false.

The temptation to share news about our co-workers' lives can seem irresistible, but imagine the person who is the subject of the rumor listening in on the conversation. How would you feel if you were in his or her shoes? Even if it has a grain of truth, is it something you'd want people to be talking about?

Just as we are with email, let us be calm, sensible, and skeptical about unverified news we hear from our friends, co-workers, and customers.

The chief deputies and I are in East Lansing until Wednesday, meeting with other county officers from around the state.

Let's have a great week!

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum.

Monday, January 9, 2006, 5:11 pm

From the Clerk-Register. Today's message to my staff.

Happy 2006!

I know the holidays are really over now, because my daughter Sarah is back in school this morning.

Her current fascination is the Harry Potter series of books by J. K. Rowling, and the movies based on them.

The books are set in the present, but portray life in an insular "wizarding" subculture with little interest in new technology. The title character attends a boarding school for witches and wizards. Writing is by quill on parchment; chemistry is done in iron cauldrons instead of test tubes; messages are delivered by carrier owls rather than by the Postal Service; computers are not even mentioned. They have their own bank (run by goblins), their own sports champions (a game like soccer played on flying broomsticks), even their own brands of candy.

The wizards of the story are careful not to attract the attention of "Muggles" (non-wizards). But conflict in the magical world has a way of spilling over.

Almost the same could be said of almost any group or subculture in society, whether ethnic, religious, professional, fraternal, social, cultural, or even family. Each has its own jargon, its own peculiar rules and norms. Humans are social creatures, and in-groups satisfy innate needs for belonging. But more than that, the people who work together on a specific kind of specialized task tend to become an in-group as well.

And just as our physical infrastructure is invisible to most people until it breaks down, we don't even notice most of the in-groups around us until conflict breaks out. Even then, or perhaps especially then, the group is likely to be misunderstood.

One such subculture we all know well is the legal profession.

Like the fictional wizards, lawyers use archaic language and old-fashioned manners, make a sharp distinction between insiders and outsiders, spend hours in libraries in search of obscure knowledge, and share a value system founded on ritualized combat.

Most lawyers read the same specialized magazines and newspapers, and like to socialize and talk with other lawyers, all of which help propagate characteristics that distinguish lawyers as a group from other people.

These same differences foster widespread resentment toward lawyers, who are seen not only as cliquish but mysteriously powerful. In past centuries, people suspected of engaging in witchcraft (thought to be mysteriously powerful) were put to death; our culture is still full of murderous fantasies about lawyers. Shakespeare's famous line — "The first thing we do, we kill all the lawyers" — is echoed by innumerable lawyer jokes which deny the humanity of lawyers — like, "What's 10,000 lawyers at the bottom of the ocean? A good start."

Lawyers take an oath to abide by a fairly stringent standard of ethics. In practice, however, the public is dubious, because lawyers are nimble at taking advantage of exceptions and loopholes and interpretations. A lot of lawyer jokes take the dishonesty of lawyers for granted, such as this riddle: "How can you tell a lawyer is lying? His lips are moving."

Perhaps the most telling lawyer joke is the one about the wealthy man on his deathbed who wants to be buried with his money. He puts all his cash in three envelopes; before dying, he gives them to three trusted professionals, to drop into his casket during his funeral. Afterwards, the doctor and priest both admit that they found more important uses for the money (medical research, helping the poor of the parish), and dropped empty envelopes into the casket. The lawyer scolds them for breaking their promise and disregarding the man's last wish. So what did the lawyer do? "I wrote him a check," he says.

Most lawyers don't make as much money as most non-lawyers assume. The glamorous image of lawyers in the popular culture is belied by the surplus of people contending for jobs in the profession. Even lawyers who have plenty of work can find themselves very pinched: in every economic downturn, the first thing people do is to stop paying their lawyers. I think Border's has a whole rack of books about alternative careers for lawyers.

Many of the customers we see every day are lawyers, and not just in Circuit Court. Indeed, two of our leadership team (Chief Deputy Karen Edman and myself) are lawyers. We are all accustomed to their quirks, and know many of them as individuals. We uphold many of the values important to lawyers: the rule of law, due process, freedom of speech, preserving records, fair trials for persons accused of crimes, and so on.

Just a few weeks ago, I participated as Clerk in the swearing-in of a large group of new attorneys. I was impressed with their seriousness and dedication, and with the varied credentials and experience each bring. But all of them face the daunting task of getting established and making a living in the profession, starting out with hard work and very long hours.

I know that deputy clerks who work in this office often know a whole lot more about courts and civil procedure than some brusque young lawyer across the counter. Arrogance and ignorance can be a really irritating combination!

But it's our job to refrain from fighting fire with fire. A lawyer is not some species of cockroach, nor a pampered member of the elite. Think of the lawyer, instead, as being a harried working person trying to make a living. Like all customers, the key is to treat them with courtesy and respect. And, who knows, maybe next time, they'll reciprocate.

Let's have a great week!

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum.

Sunday, January 1, 2006, 11:50 pm

More on the 9/11 narrative. As mentioned in the postscript to my earlier posting about 9/11 (December 30), Adam de Angeli has posted a rebuttal.

My original posting was not a smackdown of any notion that there is more to the 9/11 story than was originally reported in the media. Rather, I'm saying that the advocates of alternate versions will have to come up with a story that makes sense if they want to be taken seriously.

I'm not looking to debate over this, but I do want to respond to some of his points. Where I don't respond, that means I have nothing further to add, not that I concede.

Adam writes:

A "contrarian" is one who disagrees with people for the sake of disagreement. People are not questioning the official explanation because they enjoy doing so...

No, I don't accept that characterization. I'm a bit of a contrarian myself. What contrarians really enjoy is being proven right.

[Kestenbaum] is assuming that I am being paranoid.

No clinical diagnosis of anyone was intended or implied. Rather, I'm saying that the critique of the mainstream narrative of 9/11 fits into the paranoid style in American politics, in seeing major historical events driven by secret acts by a single, huge, powerful, evil or amoral conspiracy.

People ... are questioning the official explanation because it is full of internal contradictions, factual errors, physical impossibilities, and countless other reasonsable doubts ... the arguments against the official explanation are not "emotional pulls," they are facts.

Life is untidy. History is a mess of contradictions, loose ends, and unexplained circumstances. A paranoid view has a simple answer which explains it all, and as such, is immensely appealing on an emotional level. That emotional appeal often overrides logic, so the logic claimed to support a paranoid view should always be scrutinized carefully.

Just because Serendipity has a more complex and sometimes speculative theory than other sites does not mean everyone in the 9/11 Truth Movement believes it.... it's assumed that Serendipity speaks for all 9-11 research.

I quoted two different critics with differing points of view — specifically the two who had been brought to my attention recently. Any assumption that either one "speaks for all 9-11 research" is Adam's, not mine.

The amount of hard evidence of government perpetration of the events makes it irrelevant as to whether or not the hijackings were faked.

Adam disclaims Serendipity's theory that military drones, rather than hijacked planes, hit the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. And certainly there are difficulties with that idea: the drones would be incriminating if discovered in the rubble, as would be personal effects or dental work of passengers from the other flights discovered among the wreckage of Flight 93.

Moreover, I know someone in the building trade who, that morning, was working on a swing stage, 60 floors up, on the exterior of the former Pan Am Building (above Grand Central Station in midtown Manhattan). Here's an excerpt of what he wrote a day or two later:

My friend is not part of any conspiracy, so that puts the drone theory to rest as far as I'm concerned.

But if it is conceded that the planes were hijacked by terrorists and crashed, then different problems arise.

Two fully loaded jumbo jets colliding with the World Trade Center surely did grievous damage even without any collapse. The towers would still have been gutted by fire, unsafe to enter or re-use, and seen as a total loss. The political effects would have been the same.

So, why would a hypothetical conspiracy have needed to run huge risks to plant explosives in the tower, and coordinate timing with the terrorists, in order to bring about a collapse that seemed to be caused by the plane crashes?

Adam answers as follows:

Because the frame-up couldn't have worked any other way.

But if Islamic terrorists really did hijack the planes — even if they were put up to it by the CIA — then it wasn't a "frame-up".

Adam continues:

There is no easy way to blow up the World Trade Centers. If they had demolished the buildings without crashing the planes, nobody would be gullible enough to think the terrorists had the ability to coordinate such a complex task on such high-security buildings. Even since 9/11 it's become abundantly clear that the terrorists do not have large bombs sufficient to demolish the Twin Towers. All of the Al Qaeda attacks have used much smaller bombs.

Using the plane crashes, they've gotten the public to believe and accept the myth that plane crashes could have knocked down those skyscrapers. It's a much easier myth to swallow than Al Qaeda having access to the necessary demolition points for weeks on end.

The traumatic event was the deliberate crashing of planes; collapse of the damaged structure was ancillary. Most of the tens of thousands of people who worked in the WTC complex had evacuated before that happened.

Referring specifically to Serendipity's theory about faked hijackings, I wrote: "Yow. If true, that would be the crime of the century." Adam responds:

The illegal invasion of Iraq was the crime of the century. But, the 9/11 attacks were an essential component of the pretext for it (and so much else). More importantly though, 9/11 was a crime of historical proportions whether or not the Serendipity theory about it is correct or not.

No, military invasions, even if horrible and wrong, are not "crimes". Even at Nuremburg, Nazi leaders were not charged with the invasions of Poland or Czechoslovakia or France as such. In general, national leaders who send their troops into another country to kill and be killed, even if in defiance of national or international laws or treaties, do so openly and with the support of their constituents.

By contrast, if George W. Bush were ever to be shown convincingly to have had explicit foreknowledge of 9/11, let alone to have brought it about, he would instantly become the most reviled man in all of American history. "Criminal" would be one of the milder words used for him. Everyone in his campaign, Administration, and party would be disgraced, whether they were complicit or not.

That kind of downside risk, for a temporary political gain, would be pretty daunting to even the most amoral White House. And the risk is multiplied as the number of people involved rises.

It's a necessary article of faith for theories of vast conspiracies that large organizations (such as governments) are capable of keeping big secrets. Sometimes they can for a short time, especially in a crisis. But people change over time. If dozens or hundreds or thousands of people know some terrible secret, pretty soon word of it is going to leak out.

And because this is such a predictable result of a conspiracy to secretly do some monstrous evil deed, it's pretty unlikely that any rational president would get involved in one.

Adam takes me to task for not personally examining evidence, but that's not my department. There are lots of experts who examine blast shards and metal fragments under microscopes and understand what they mean, thousands of others who match burnt pieces of teeth with dental records, still more thousands who know all the ins and outs of aircraft and transponders and radio frequencies and flight trajectories and many, many other things.

No one has enough money to buy silence from all of those experts, or enough force to intimidate every one without anyone noticing.

A thousand different "loose ends" or claimed contradictions don't add up to very much, if few of them are taken seriously by experts. On the other hand, a dozen clues raised by amateurs could be the key to a hidden truth — if they point to a consistent, plausible theory of what happened and why.

A revisionist theory of events with no coherent story line and little expert support isn't going to convince many people.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments

Saturday, December 31, 2005, 6:00 am

In yesterday's post (scroll down to read it), I discussed theories about an American conspiracy to bring about 9/11. A friend asks:

So how do you read the Kennedy Assassination? Was it other than Oswald alone? Oswald for CIA, for Rich Texans, for Castro? Was there another gunman? Or more than two?

For years I maintained a position of spiteful skepticism, based on the refusal of certain agencies to release their files on the assassination.

Perhaps emblematic of my feelings was the passage in the 1987 sf novel Replay, by Ken Grimwood, where the protagonist (having been put back in time through no fault of his own) is determined to prevent the assassination. He goes to Dallas, finds a typewriter shop with demos sitting out front, and types a letter from Oswald to JFK, concluding with the friendly warning "I will murder you."

He mails the letter; Oswald is arrested; and our hero returns in a leisurely way to his hometown, feeling pretty good about changing the course of history. Unfortunately, when he arrives, he is greeted by the news that the president has been shot in his motorcade in Dallas by a lone gunman named Nelson Bennett, who in turn is shot to death by Jack Ruby. I suppose history was not amenable to being messed with.

But I also got pretty tired of the over-the-top claims of the conspiracy theorists who couldn't seem to get over it. Oliver Stone in particular.

My account of the death of John F. Kennedy, which appears in his Political Graveyard entry, went through a series of versions as I debated with many correspondents as to how definite it should be. The original was larded with equivocating weasel words, but I ended up with the following:

Shot by a sniper, Lee Harvey Oswald, while riding in a motorcade, and died in Parkland Hospital, Dallas, Dallas County, Tex., November 22, 1963. Oswald was shot and killed two days later by Jack Ruby.

For a while, I received a lot of email sneers about this, along the lines that "everybody knows" there was a second gunman, but nothing that changed my mind about it.

I shared some of these letters with the Political Graveyard email list (which has over 300 members, including current and past politicos, historians from Left to Right, librarians, etc.) and the points raised by the critics were rejected by almost everyone.

Interesting to relate, the hubbub has died out. I don't think I have received any complaints about JFK's entry in at least a year. I still get plenty of email commenting on the site -- just not about that detail.

My friend continues:

Just curious. I've always been dubious of it being Oswald alone with that weapon, distance, lack of skills, trees, moving target, etc. However, I've also never seen anything else that I've found convincing.

I'm definite that Oswald did it. His reasons, or who was behind him, are still open to debate.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments

Friday, December 30, 2005, 4:30 pm

Notes from the world of conspiracy theorists. In the course of a contentious comment thread at the Ann Arbor Is Overrated web site, local lefty infoshop founder Adam de Angeli writes as follows:

I have no patience for people who dismiss hard factual evidence of deep corruption as "conspiracy theories" (especially since the official explanation of the events of September 11th is the most retarded conspiracy theory ever concocted — the whole American defense apparatus being totally blindsided and the Towers falling straight down at the speed of gravity.how stupid are you?!?!)

Yes, there are now some contrarians out there who dispute the accepted narrative that Al Qaeda destroyed the World Trade Center.

The problem with paranoia is that paranoid explanations of events are both logically tidy and emotionally appealing. In the paranoid worldview, there are no coincidences, no loose ends, a reason for everything.

Occasionally the paranoid view turns out to be correct, but not often. The emotional pull of the paranoid view should always be resisted.

It is tempting, for example, to look back at catastrophic events which turned out to advantage a specific group and find some reason to believe that the advantaged group deliberately caused the catastrophe.

The terrorist attacks on 9/11 obviously rescued GWB's popularity and increased the power of his administration. There was the suspicion among some (parallel to claims about about FDR and the 1941 Pearl Harbor attack) that the president and his advisors knew in advance about the attacks and did nothing to stop them, rather, they sat back, let them happen, and reaped the political rewards.

Morgan Reynolds, a retired academic economist, takes this a long step further. The planes weren't enough, he says, to knock down the towers. Rather, he concludes, it was a professional demolition job with explosives carefully installed in critical places to bring all three buildings (including WTC 7) down very neatly into their footprints.

He marshals a lot of plausible-sounding engineering evidence for this, and points to what he describes as FEMA's tight control over the debris to prevent it from being examined.

Another web site, Serendipity, has a more complex theory. Not only were the WTC towers brought down in a controlled explosive demolition, in this view, but there weren't any Arab terrorists.

Instead, says Serendipity, the planes which crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were remote-control drones, and the near-death cell phone conversations with passengers on those planes were faked. The real flights were diverted to a military base in West Virginia; all the innocent passengers were transfered into Flight 93, which was deliberately crashed in Pennsylvania.

Yow. If true, that would be the crime of the century.

Even for those of us with a very low opinion of the current adminstration's moral compass, that is very hard to swallow.

But if it was really an evil conspiracy involving agents of the U.S. government in the deaths of almost 3,000 people, it has to make sense going forward as well as backward. And this is where it breaks down.

In advance of 9/11, it certainly wouldn't be obvious that a devastating terrorist attack would redound to the benefit of the president and party in power. In fact it did, but it didn't have to. Moreover, the administration was at the time downplaying and shrugging off the risk of just such an attack, openly rejecting the advice from its predecessors to take this threat seriously and make it a priority.

That didn't end up being much of an issue, but it could easily have been.

I would have thought that even a paranoid view would have to take account of Al Qaeda as a real organization with real terrorists, and that the hijackings were a genuine terrorist act, but that was before I saw Serendipity's web site.

Still, whoever was in charge of crashing those planes into the WTC, it is also plainly the fact that the plans and preparations for the attack started during the Clinton Administration, long before a hypothetically super-evil stop-at-nothing Bush junta could have anticipated the political benefits to be gained from such an attack.

Moreover, these theories posit that the plotters needed the Twin Towers to be destroyed in order to create the desired political effect and/or to cover up the conspiracy. Somehow, they knew in advance (without any precedents) that the fires caused by the planes would burn out without causing a collapse.

So, rather than simply choosing a different type of attack that might have destroyed the complex by itself, they secretly supplemented the coordinated crashing of two aircraft with a commerical style controlled demolition — thus making the whole job immeasurably more complicated to pull off.

To do this, they found demolition experts who were willing to be mass murderers. Amidst the hubbub of the World Trade Center, a team of surely at least twenty engineers and technicians, who had to know what they were doing, somehow quietly set up the buildings to implode neatly, without anyone noticing the weeks of extensive work that is usually required to accomplish this, including drilling and notching beams and installing lots of explosive charges.

Such a demolition job would have left behind lots of evidence in the rubble, scattered unpredictably all over the site. Even a major government would have trouble securing and covering up, what, millions of tons of debris in the middle of a big city. Still, presumably they would have plenty of time to put a plan in place to take total control of the site, a control that would probably have raised few questions at the time.

But that did not happen. If you read the accounts of what really happened at Ground Zero in the days and weeks after 9/11, the chaos and confusion and ad hoc organization bears no resemblance at all to what a hypothetical evil conspiracy would have arranged to cover up its crimes.

I'm all for examining evidence, but this whole theory makes no sense to me at all.

Update 1/1/06: Adam de Angeli has posted a point-by-point rebuttal to this. Of course, I don't agree, and I will have more to say about this soon.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments

Monday, November 28, 2005, 12:38 pm

From the Clerk-Register. Today's message to my staff.

I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving.

But this past week has been a bad time for elected officials in Washtenaw County.

Our Probate Judge, John Kirkendall, has announced his resignation. Local media coverage of this event has been unjustly negative toward him, with the clear implication that he was somehow under fire. He has been an outstanding judge during sometimes difficult circumstances, and I keenly regret his decision to leave the bench. We will all miss his wisdom.

Three other officials have been affected by charges of drinking and driving, including U.S. Senator Debbie Stabenow, whose son Todd was recently arrested in Ypsilanti; Webster Township Supervisor Dean Fisher, who resigned his position after a second drunken driving arrest; and our Drain Commissioner, Janis Bobrin, who was arrested following an automobile accident earlier this month.

The last two were highlighted on the front page of the Ann Arbor News on Thanksgiving Day.

Janis Bobrin, it need hardly be mentioned, is the state's best and most environmentally sensitive drain commissioner, who has put together an outstanding office. I am glad to report that she has confronted this issue directly. In an email sent over the weekend to all county department heads, she invited questions and comments, writing that she didn't want any "elephants sitting in the living room." The reference is to a situation where family members and co-workers dare not bring up a problem that everyone knows about.

My own history led me to be somewhat Puritanical about substance abuse. Growing up in a university town in the 1960s and 1970s, I saw the impact of the rampant use of illegal drugs during that period. I knew people who were damaged or destroyed by drugs or alcohol — some of them brilliant folks who might otherwise have made significant contributions to society. Moreover, my mother, a very heavy smoker, died at age 57 from lung cancer. Appalled by heavy drinking among local politicos in the 1970s, I was part of the informal "Teetotaler's Caucus" of the Democratic Party.

Driving under the influence of alcohol is not only self-destructive, it is community-destructive. I can only add my voice to so many others, to warn against getting into the driver's seat when your faculties are impaired in any way. We in county government should be acutely aware of the consequences: we handle those felony case files and dramshop lawsuits; we see the anguish of the defendants and victims and families in our courtrooms; we file the death certificates for accident casualties.

But I do have compassion for those who struggle with addiction. It must be horribly difficult.

For county employees and family members who have a problem with any sort of substance abuse, there is an Employee Assistance Program which can provide confidential help; you can find contact information in the Employee Zone of the county's web site. Indeed, most larger employers have such a program available. Making that contact can be the first step in taking back control of your own life.

Let us extend our good wishes and prayers to those who are having difficulty in their lives, and let us serve our customers with a renewed sense of purpose.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum.

Wednesday, November 23, 2005, 1:18 pm

In his column in Monday's Ann Arbor News, Geoff Larcom urges a change to nonpartisan elections for city council.

Now that all eleven members of the council are Democrats, such calls are only to be expected. And indeed, maybe this is a time to think about how we elect our city officials. But first, we should consider how we got here.

Fifteen years ago, when I moved to Ann Arbor, it was a veritable museum of archaic political structures. It wasn't just the old-style lever-handle mechanical voting machines, fascinating but scarily unreliable. This was just about the only city in the state still holding annual elections on the traditional Monday in early April; most cities had moved to biennial elections in odd-year Novembers. Ann Arbor's ward system, with two members elected per ward and none at large, was typical in the 19th century, but increasingly rare since the 1950s, at least in Michigan. And Ann Arbor was and remains one of the last cities in the state with partisan city elections.

Because the city elections were annual, partisan, always contested, and not held at the same time of year as other elections, both parties had active organizations in the city which were generally regarded as more important than (and totally independent of) the county political parties. In most parts of Michigan, the county party is where the action is, but among Ann Arbor Democrats in 1990, involvement in the Washtenaw County Democratic Party was considered a kind of offbeat interest. The city Democratic Party had a lot more going on. Each ward had an active Democratic Party organization, too, and the ward chairs had positions of considerable influence.

Those internal party dynamics are all changed now, perhaps because the city elections were moved from April to November, and because a number of key local party activists now live outside the city. The Ann Arbor Democratic Party is just a shadow of the organizational powerhouse it used to be; the energy which used to animate it has been transferred to the county level.

Larcom writes:

local moderate Republicans wear the Scarlet "R,'' the perception they subscribe entirely to the state and national GOP view on social issues. That's now a ticket to oblivion in this town.

Changes at the national level have consolidated and sharpened the concept of what it means to be a Democrat, and what it means to be a Republican. Ann Arbor's political establishment was long accustomed to treating state and national parties as irrelevant, but our voters have embraced what might be called The New Partisanship. Which is to say, given the scant appeal of national Republicans in Ann Arbor, they have embraced the Democratic Party.

Larcom asks:

Why not make these local elections non-partisan? What do the basic municipal questions of water rates, leaf pickup, police patrols and tree taxes have to do with being a Republican or Democrat?

The short answer is that all these issues, not to mention questions of development, transportation, law enforcement and city resource allocation, implicate the values of the decisionmakers, and one of the rules of the New Partisanship (on both sides) is that you can't trust the other party's values.

It may not be literally true that a Republican council member would invariably vote to widen major streets, regardless of trees and neighborhoods, whereas a Democrat will invariably vote against, regardless of traffic congestion, but it's not a bad first approximation for the priorities a "typical" Republican or Democrat might bring to the table.

We ask a lot of our voters. For example, my personal vote, in southwest Ann Arbor, helps choose almost a hundred elected officials: five federal (president, vice president, two U.S. Senators, one U.S. Representative), six state (Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Secretary of State, Attorney General, state senator, state representative), 32 members of state education boards (eight each for U-M, MSU, Wayne State, and the state board of education), 24 judges (seven Supreme Court justices, seven Court of Appeals judges in our district, five circuit judges, two probate judges, three district judges), six county officials (sheriff, prosecuting attorney, clerk-register, treasurer, drain commissioner, and county commissioner in my district), three city officials (mayor and two ward council members), and 21 others (seven school board members, seven community college board members, and seven district library board members). If you're keeping score, that adds up to 97 officials theoretically answerable directly to me as a voter.

When it comes to election time, it's not easy even for an activist to cast an informed vote on every single one of those races. Hence, party labels are a labor saving device for voters. Straight ticket voting is often criticized, but it is very much on the upswing. With the new polarization, growing numbers of Democratic and Republican voters see the other party's values as being fundamentally wrong, so ticket splitting has little appeal.

Larcom points to other nonpartisan boards as an example of what the city council could become:

Reid, who served two terms on council and became the lone remaining Republican, points to local nonprofit organizations and school boards, which draw a broad segment of capable people from the town's university and business communities.

Those people can make decisions without the business or personal risk of tying themselves to one party. Asks Reid: "Are we operating under a system that substantially reduces our available pool of talent when we need it?"

Non-elected boards of directors are not a fair comparison; school boards are very narrowly focused compared to city council, and are elected by a very small constituency of school board voters.

The problem with the talent pool for city council is that few people are really interested in serving. City council, partisan or not, is rightly seen as being Real Life Politics, under the hot lights of media scrutiny and the pressures of interest group lobbying. It is a myth that a change to nonpartisan elections would suddenly unleash a flood of highly qualified candidates. If political parties no longer had the incentive or responsibility to recruit candidates, we might well end up with fewer candidates instead of more.

The funniest part of Larcom's piece is his slam on the ward system and student voters:

A geographic strike against the GOP is Ann Arbor's pie-shaped ward system. Wards emanate from the city's center, so each holds a section of students who vote Democratic and often go straight-ticket.

First of all, the "pie-shaped" wards are mandated by the City Charter, which provides as follows:

SECTION 1.3 (a) (2): The five wards should each have the general character of a pieshaped segment of the City with the point of such segment lying near the center of the city so as to make each ward a very rough cross section of the community population from the center outward.

As far as I know, that language is original to the 1956 city charter. In other words, it was written at a time when Republicans were the majority party, and they chose this arrangement.

Further, until the 1970s redistricting, there was indeed a ward (the old 2nd) which was dominated by student voters. Around 1975, the wards were extensively redrawn, by Republicans over Democratic opposition, to eliminate the student ward and concentrate nonstudent Democratic areas in the 1st Ward. At the time, this was seen as a gerrymander to cement Republican dominance of the city council. And with very slight changes, those are the ward boundaries we still have today.

Perhaps UM students and today's city Republicans could make common cause to amend the charter and create a mostly-student ward in the center of town, removing student areas from the other four wards. But that wouldn't actually elect any Republicans. Student votes are not what made Ann Arbor overwhelmingly Democratic.

It's a surprisingly common misconception. Whenever I mention that Ann Arbor and Washtenaw County have become gradually more and more Democratic over the last thirty years or so, many otherwise intelligent people immediately say, "Oh, you mean because of the student vote."

Um, no. If anything, students as a group are more conservative and Republican today than they were, say, in 1972. And they make up only a small portion of the city's vote, and a tiny portion of the county's vote.

You'd think someone would have learned from Joan Lowenstein's election to the (formerly safe Republican) 2nd Ward city council seat over Jeff Hauptman in 2002. Republican poll watchers were all over the student precincts, obviously fearing that a wave of student voters would overwhelm their candidate. But the Democrat won every precinct, including all the completely nonstudent ones.

All that being said, I do recognize disadvantages to partisan election of the city council. In a one-party town, it means the "real" race happens during the August primary. That's not such a problem in even years, when there are many other partisan primaries going on. But in odd-numbered years, city council primaries are alone on the ballot, and draw few voters. If every ward has a primary, that single purpose election costs some $50,000.

The even-year and odd-year council seats are already somewhat different because of the lower turnout and greater focus on individual candidates in the odd year election. We could accentuate this difference, perhaps giving voice to a wider variety of interests and perspectives, while saving the cost of the August primary, by using nonpartisan "Instant Runoff Voting" (IRV) for the odd-year November seats.

IRV — already enacted in Ferndale and in San Francisco, and used to choose science fiction's Hugo Awards and the president of the American Psychological Association — is the system where voters indicate fallback choices if their first choice candidate is eliminated. If one candidate gets a majority of first choice votes, he or she is elected. However, if no candidate gets a majority among first choices, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated, and his or her votes are redistributed to the other candidates based on second choice votes. Repeat until one candidate has a majority.

IRV has its critics and drawbacks, as does every possible voting method including the one we commonly use. Many of IRV's backers see it as a way to get rid of the two-party system, which it most certainly is not.

But the most cogent objection is that Ann Arbor's Accuvote ballot tabulators do not have enough memory to accumulate all the possible combinations needed for IRV, or for any other ranked-vote system.

That's why I'm suggesting IRV only for the five city council seats elected in the lower turnout odd-year elections. The electronic tabulators would sum up the first-choice votes, which probably would yield a majority winner in most races. If no candidate had a majority, then the city board of canvassers would supervise a hand count of that ward's ballots to determine the IRV winner. Given typical turnout per ward in an odd year city council race, this would not be a very big job.

By contrast, Condorcet, which is arguably a superior voting method, would always require a hand count to determine the winner. And a hand count for city council among the tens of thousands of ballots cast in an even-year or presidential election would be a nightmare. IRV in odd-year races is very limited and practical by comparison.

Back in the 1970s, Ann Arbor briefly had partisan IRV for mayor only. The goal was to allow voters to support the Human Rights Party candidate without electing the Republican. Ballots were counted by hand; the HRP candidate was eliminated, and almost all of her votes went to the Democrat, who won a majority by a tiny margin. The process was orderly and fair, but the then-city-clerk was strongly opposed, and portrayed it as a mess; soon after, Republicans successfully sponsored a charter amendment to repeal it.

Many things have changed since then. The rationale for using IRV for the odd-year council seats would not be to guarantee any particular result. Rather, the goal is to get rid of the August odd-year primary. That would save money and broaden effective participation in choosing city leaders and policies.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments

Monday, November 14, 2005, 12:29 pm

From the Clerk-Register. Today's letter to my staff:

During the last week of October, I visited Florida for the first time in my life. Yes, we took Sarah (age 7) to Disney World and Epcot Center. We arrived just hours after Hurricane Wilma left the state, but we saw no damage in the Orlando/Daytona area. The weather during our stay was mostly in the 60s Fahrenheit, which is to say, bitterly cold by Florida standards, but comfortable for us Michiganders.

The hallmark of the Disney operation is customer service and attention to detail. I was awed at how well everything was put together, from the transportation to the architecture to the lighting to the landscaping to the crowd handling. In one area normally reserved for "cast members only" (but opened temporarily to accommodate the flow of people bypassing a crowded parade route), I saw a sign which laid out seven customer service standards, each one based humorously on one of the Seven Dwarfs. All were plainly calculated to keep the staff cheerful and help park visitors to have an enjoyable time. Disney calls its personnel "cast members," because each puts on a kind of performance, from the joke-telling tram drivers to the popcorn sellers.

While I was in Florida, I had the opportunity to see early voting taking place for the November 8 election in Volusia County. For the two weeks preceding the election (up to Friday before the election), they had polling places set up in the county library and several other places in various parts of the county. It was set up just like a regular voting precinct, but each one had all 21 ballot styles available for the various municipal elections going on in various parts of the county.

After voting, each voter's ballot was fed through an Accuvote tabulator, which would signal if there were any problems with the ballot such as overvote or undervote, but not count it. The voter would have the opportunity to correct any such problem. Then the completed ballot would be sealed in an envelope; it would end up in the precinct to be processed the same way absentee ballots normally are.

I had heard about food buffets at early voting polling places, but I didn't see any. Of course, the one I visited was in a library where food wouldn't be allowed anyway.

Outside the building, 100 feet from the door, there was the usual cluster of campaign signs, just as we see on Election Day. The difference is that these signs were for candidates running in different cities all over Volusia County. And instead of being up for a day, presumably, these signs lingered for the entire two week voting period.

I also did some historical research for Political Graveyard, and encountered a very odd customer service situation. I was looking for some election returns for early 20th century mayoral elections, and the Volusia County elections office confirmed that they had those records.

Could I come to the office to see them?

She replied very sternly: "Sir, you need an appointment to see those records!"

How could I make such an appointment?

Long pause. "Um — er — we don't know. No one has ever asked to see those records before."

In the end, I gave up on seeing them in the short time I had. But I sure hope nobody has this kind of experience with our office!

On Saturday morning, October 22, the Washtenaw County Election Commission (Judge Kirkendall, County Treasurer McClary, and myself) held a clarity hearing on the text proposed as reasons for recall of three Pittsfield Township officials. We unanimously decided that the reasons proposed did not meet the legal standard for clarity. New language has been submitted, and the Election Commission will meet tomorrow morning, Tuesday, November 15, at 11:00 am in the Board of Commissioners room, 220 N. Main, to consider and rule on it.

This is the time of year for many meetings and conferences, and I have been called upon to attend or speak at several of them over the last few weeks. Often, preparing something to say to a group, to explain aspects of county government or elections or the court system is an opportunity to think about those issues in a new way, to find new insights, and I'll be sharing some of those with you in coming weeks.

I am continuing individual meetings with staff members. If you haven't heard from me yet, you will soon — I'd like to have seen everybody once before the end of the year, so I can start the second round in January. When the workload permits, please arrange a half-hour with your supervisor and my schedule (perhaps via Outlook) for a meeting in my office.

Let.s have a great week!

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum.

Sunday, October 23, 2005, 1:48 pm

From the Clerk-Register. Two recent letters to my staff:

Tuesday, October 11:

The County spends $30,000/year on a filter to keep unwanted spam out of our email system, but it has slipped up a little. I personally have received several "phishing" scams in the last couple of weeks. Probably you have, too.

For those not familiar with the term, "phishing" refers to emails which pretend to be from your bank or from Ebay or PayPal. The corporate logos are all in place, and the message can look highly authentic.

The approach varies, but one way or another, the email tells you that there has been some kind of problem, and you need to "update" your personal information. Just "click here," it says, on a link which looks totally legitimate — as does the web site it takes you to. But it's a fake site controlled by the crooks! As soon as you enter your social security number, credit card, bank account, whatever, they'll use your identity for nefarious purposes, making purchases, withdrawing money from your bank, applying for loans, and so on.

When you have a phishing message staring you in the face, you know it came from somewhere — so why can't the crooks be caught and punished? The problem is that they are very good at covering their tracks. Very likely the message to you was sent through some innocent person's home or office Windows computer, made vulnerable by a computer virus and taken over remotely by the crooks. (If you're not running adequate security software, and keeping up with all the required security and virus updates, it could be YOUR machine which is silently pumping out thousands of spam/scam messages.)

Alternately, the originating mail server and the fake web site could be somewhere overseas, perhaps in Russia or Malaysia — even if the crooks themselves are Americans.

Another type of fraud email has been around so long, and seen so often, that it has become a bit of a joke: the letters from Nigeria asking for your help to transfer millions of dollars of ill-gotten loot to your bank account. The real goal, of course, is to get you to come up with money for various "expenses" required to get the big money out of Nigeria. Or, failing that, armed with account information you provide, they'll drain your bank account. Sometimes, they lure the victims to Nigeria and hold them for ransom. Sometimes, the writers claim to be from Sierra Leone or South Africa or Russia or Taiwan, but the style is instantly recognizable as the product of a group of Nigerian criminal gangs that have been nicknamed "the Lads from Lagos".

My personal email account has been public for years, and therefore gets lots of spam, including these Nigerian scam letters. Back in 2002, some of my friends had still never seen one, and were curious about them. So, I put up a web page cataloging a bunch of scam letters that I had collected (wallpapered with FRAUD in big green letters). I called it the Nigerian Fraud Email Gallery — and I included informational links as well as a bunch of examples.

After a while, the incoming flood of Nigerian mail became just too overwhelming. I had posted some 500, but had more than 40,000 more examples waiting. I gave up on cataloging them all, and mostly neglected the site, posting only a few more every now and then.

I'm sure the web page helped alert a few people to the fraud (some wrote to thank me). But now, suddenly, it's flooded with visitors.

Last Thursday, October 6, the 15th Annual IgNobel Prize ceremony was held at Harvard University. The IgNobels are a silly parody of the Nobel prizes, but the awards are presented by actual Nobel laureates under the auspices of a major university, and received some national media coverage.

This year's awards included the IgNobel Prize in Literature to:

The Internet entrepreneurs of Nigeria, for creating and then using e-mail to distribute a bold series of short stories, thus introducing millions of readers to a cast of rich characters — General Sani Abacha, Mrs. Mariam Sanni Abacha, Barrister Jon A Mbeki Esq., and others — each of whom requires just a small amount of expense money so as to obtain access to the great wealth to which they are entitled and which they would like to share with the kind person who assists them.

And on the official IgNobel web site, the link is to my low-tech little compilation of Nigerian fraud email.

I think whole world has now been saturated by these fraud letters. A naïve person might be taken in by the first one he ever got, but how likely is anyone to fall for the fifteenth or the eighty-third? There is one report that the scam is no longer making much money for the perpetrators. Perhaps enough people worldwide have learned to be cautious about the authenticity of stuff that arrives by email. I hope that my fraud gallery site will soon become just a historical curiosity.

As a general rule, if you receive a spam message of any kind at a County email address, forward it to SPAM@MAIL-FILTERS.COM so that our filters can be updated.

Validation of jail bond referendum petition signatures is ongoing, even on Columbus Day. Over 9,000 signatures have been typed in and checked against the Qualified Voter File, and 74% matched. We should be finished before the 35 day deadline we set. Many thanks to everyone who is helping with this important task.

This Thursday is Yom Kippur, and I will be out of the office. For those who asked: Yom Kippur is a solemn day which involves atonement and a 24 hour fast — no food or water. Chief deputies Jim, Derrick, and Karen can handle anything that comes up while I'm out.

Let's have a great week!

Monday, October 17:

Here's a couple of nice recent comments from customers of our Deeds and Vital Records offices:

The following was posted anonymously in the comments section of the local weblog Ann Arbor Is Overrated, in regard to researching the history of houses:

Your best bet is to go to the county deed office on Main and search it all the way back. There are some records available electronically but they go back only a few years. The folks there are freakishly helpful and patient, but they won't do the work for you. You'll need the address and possibly the parcel id (you can get that by doing a Property/Parcel Lookup). From there, you'll have to look through the giant deed books (called "libers") back to when the subject house isn't listed anymore. It's time consuming but kind of cool, in a geeky sort of way.

"Freakishly" helpful and patient — "cool in a geeky sort of way" — who could ask for higher praise? Apparently our office is NOT overrated!

A visitor from Illinois wrote to me as follows:

Dear Mr. Kestenbaum,

Last Thursday, Oct 6th, I ventured into the Vital Records department to gather genealogical information. I had not done such searches before, so I did not know exactly what to do or how to do it.

All of your staff in Vital records were extremely helpful and very happy to assist me. They made my time there not only productive but very enjoyable. Please commend them all for their knowledge and the service they provided.

After almost all day in Vital records, I had about two hours left downstairs searching through old deeds. Again, your staff excelled in their friendliness and service.

Please extend my thanks to each of them.

Kind regards,

Kudos to the staff in both divisions. Keep up the good work!

We now have two Hurricane Katrina evacuees from New Orleans working as temps in our Elections office, validating signatures on the jail bond issue referendum petitions. The work of typing in all the names to compare with the Qualified Voter File is nearly complete.

Next Saturday morning, October 22, at 9:00 am, the county Election Commission (myself, County Treasurer Catherine McClary, and Judge John Kirkendall) will convene a clarity hearing on the proposed language for the recall of three Pittsfield Township officials. We are to decide only whether or not the language is "clear", not whether it is true or false. Though it's unusual to hold a public meeting over the weekend, all three of us wanted to be there in person, and it wasn't possible to schedule it during the week. The meeting will be held in the lower level meeting room at 200 N. Main.

Previously, on August 11, the Election Commission approved (simply as being "clear") recall language against two Augusta Township officials.

Meanwhile, we and the local clerks expect to be ready for the upcoming election on November 8, 2005, which will involve the cities of Ann Arbor, Chelsea, Milan, and Saline, the village of Dexter, the Dexter library district (same territory as the Dexter school district), Northfield Township, and the South Lyon and Northville school districts.

Preparations are also underway for the Clerk-Register's annual holiday breakfast for the entire staff, in mid-December. More details will be announced soon.

Let's have a great week!

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum.

Thursday, October 6, 2005, 11:53 am

From the Clerk-Register. The latest installment, from Monday, October 3:

Last Monday, as expected, the Elections office received a filing of petition signatures in opposition to the proposed bond issue for jail expansion and court renovation at the Service Center. Under the law, 15,000 valid signatures would force a countywide vote on the bond issue; about 23,000 were filed. Validation of these petitions started immediately and is progressing. Many thanks to those of you who are helping with this task!

If the petitions are validated, the Board of Commissioners can either schedule an election, probably in February, or perhaps cancel the bond issue.

Preparations are also well underway for the November 8th election in the cities of Ann Arbor, Chelsea, Milan, and Saline, the village of Dexter, the Northville and South Lyon school districts, and the Dexter library district (same boundaries as the Dexter school district).

Congratulations again to the Deeds staff for their achievement in reducing the time from filing to recording of a deed from more than 60 days to just 7 days over the past few months. I am very proud of your dedication and teamwork!

Since a long lag time ties up mortgage money and raises costs for lenders and realtors, quick work in our office helps make home loans more available and housing more affordable in Washtenaw County.

Also last week, several of us, including Chief Deputies Karen Edman and Jim Dries, and Jury Clerk Yvonne Boyd, met with Judge Don Shelton, who is our Jury Judge, to finalize new ways of handling the jury list for circuit and district courts in Washtenaw County.

Since the law was changed in the 1980s, jurors are selected from the list of licensed drivers in the county. That creates some problems, because the driver's list is not managed and updated the same way that the voter list is. For example, the state apparently does not consider death a reason to cancel an individual's driver license. Therefore, those names are still included on the jury list they send us. That means we get unhappy calls from widows and widowers, asking why we're sending jury mail to someone who has been dead for years. Using the Social Security Death Index, we have removed more than 600 names of deceased individuals from the list; that will reduce the number of anguished phone calls, and save on postage and mailing costs for jury questionnaires.

Also, the driver's list doesn't include any code for which court district the person lives in, so we have assigned that information based on their address. From now on, we will have four separate jury pools — one for each court — so that mailings of jury questionnaires can be precisely targeted to the territory and juror needs of the particular court. That will also reduce postage and mailing costs. Since everyone on the list will be assigned at random either to the circuit or district pool, there will no longer be any duplicates to purge — saving three weeks of tedious hand work.

Some scheduling notes. This morning, I will be attending the funeral in Chelsea of Herman Koenn — I sent a note about his passing last week. Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, starts this evening and continues tomorrow, so I will not be in the office tomorrow.

My individual meetings with staff members will resume starting on Wednesday.

Let's have a great week!

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum.

Thursday, October 6, 2005, 9:27 am

From the Clerk-Register. A couple of recent messages to my staff.

September 12:

On Saturday, there was startling news about our county in the Japanese media.

A report on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in Japan Today noted the following:

But in a largely-deserted uptown neighborhood in Washtenaw county, where county sheriffs wearing flak jackets and carrying assault rifles were knocking on doors, officials said a forced evacuation was yet to begin.

No, it's not another place with the same name: we live in the only Washtenaw County on earth. Louisiana doesn't even have counties.

What obviously happened is that the Japanese reporter came across our Washtenaw County sheriff deputies, helping to protect New Orleans, and assumed the geography from the badges, equipment, and uniforms.

Despite Gov. Granholm's generous offer, it doesn't look like Michigan will be hosting 10,000 evacuees from the Gulf Coast. I suppose the hurricane survivors from Louisiana and Mississippi really don't need to be put through one of our winters. But it is still a point of pride that some of our people are providing needed help, and working so smoothly and efficiently with the other authorities on the scene that they were mistaken for locals.

Individual meetings with staff members continue. I will send notices to the people who I'd like to meet with this week. When the workload permits, please arrange a half-hour with your supervisor and my schedule (perhaps via Outlook) for a meeting in my office.

Let's have a great week!

September 19:

Twelve years ago, in July 1993, the Mississippi River valley was hit by devastating floods. Levees were overtopped or broken, and even some areas which had never flooded before were hard hit.

Almost three months later, in late September 1993, I flew into St. Louis, Missouri, for a conference, and from the plane, I was stunned to see that some neighborhoods in the St. Louis metro area were still under water. Dewatering and recovery from a flood situation can take a long time.

Just as we hear that some residents are returning to parts of the New Orleans area, Hurricane Katrina evacuees are arriving here in Washtenaw County. Let us be mindful that this crisis is far from over, especially for those who have lost everything in the disaster.

We in the Clerk-Register's office will be providing some tangible help for evacuees who need Louisiana birth certificates. Last Friday, just before 5pm, I received a call from Richard Wheat, manager of Vital Records for the State of Michigan. He asked us to assist Louisiana by accepting applications for birth certificates from evacuees in this area. The applications will be funneled through our state office to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and the certificates will be issued and sent to us by the same route.

These applications can only be accepted in person — not by mail. Evacuees who were born in Louisiana can come to our vital records office to apply, or potentially, we could send a staff person to any shelters or gathering places for hurricane survivors in this area.

But the victims of Hurricane Katrina are not the only people who need our help. The United Way fund drive is now underway. It's a broad based community effort to raise funds to sustain a wide range of organizations and services. I realize the form is a bit confusing; if you need help with it (I did), ask Karen Edman or Jim Dries. Even one dollar per paycheck would be a very small sacrifice, and a big help to our community.

This Thursday afternoon, September 22, Chief Deputy Derrick Jackson and I will be "arrested" for the Muscular Dystrophy Association "lock-up". We each need to raise $1,000 for "bail" — all of which goes to support muscular dystrophy research and programs. If you can help with even a small donation, bring a check to the Elections/Admin office by Thursday noon.

And speaking of the Elections office, we are expecting to get the job of validating thousands of petition signatures in coming days: the referendum petitions on the jail and courts bond issue, and the Augusta Township recall. We may need to bring people in from other divisions of the Clerk-Register's office to help with this work.

Let's have a great week!

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum.

Sunday, September 25, 2005, 1:30 am

Expelled. A friend writes:

Hi Larry,

Do you have time to post something about that forum you just left? It would be nice to have a little spot on your blog for others to mourn the loss of your participation.

Clearly, the gods are fickle over there. I have wanted to phone the powers that be many times over the years, but they live in some sort of impenetrable bubble. If you find a penetration, send it to me--you have my email.

I will miss your wit and wisdom over there. I hope we can still get together for the occasional luncheon -- you make me laugh, and I've seen you laugh at me, too.

Warm Regards,

Horatio.

The reference is to the MLIVE Ann Arbor Town Talk forum (sponsored by the Ann Arbor News), from which I have apparently been expelled.

This is pretty baffling. I don't believe I ever did anything to violate the Forum rules.

Many users of that forum evade explusion by creating another ID and wading back in until being expelled again. I did create a second ID (Ephraim2), but just to let others know what had happened and to say goodbye. I'm not interested in getting zapped again and again.

As I think about this, a perfectly reasonable explanation occurs to me.

Most people outside politics probably don't realize that the Ann Arbor News has a policy against publishing any letters-to-the-editor from elected officials. (Under rare circumstances they will publish an "Other Voices" piece to allow a politician to respond to something negative.)

Perhaps this same policy also restricts the participation of known political figures in the MLIVE forums.

In any case, I have plenty of other places to express myself online, notably Arbor Update, Ann Arbor Is Overrated, and Grex.

Update. The goodbye message I posted on Mlive was deleted, so I reposted it, and it was deleted again; I don't think I'll bother to try any further.

Further Update. I received the following message:

From: Eric Braun
Subject: MLive.com forum

Hello Larry,

I saw the posting on annarborisoverrated.com that you had been booted from our forums. I checked into this for you and it appears there was a system-wide screw-up that booted, many, many people the other day ... as my e-mail can attest to.

Anyway, they have no record of any block or hold on your account so it should be free and clear now.

Our forums are actually moderated out of our New Jersey offices, so I don't deal with them on a day to day basis.

I hope you continue to post on the forum and let me know if anything else like this happens to your account.

Thanks,

Eric Braun
Editor-in-Chief
mlive.com

It's odd that the "system-wide screw-up" lasted for days, and didn't affect any of the other regular users of the Ann Arbor forum that I know of. Nor have my deleted postings been restored — not that they need to be at this point.

All snarkiness aside, I did sincerely thank Mr. Braun; and now that my account has been restored, I will return to my semi-occasional participation there.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments

Friday, September 9, 2005, 10:33 pm

Mandatory evacuation &mdash here? Japan Today reports on the aftermath of hurricane Katrina, and makes a startling reference to local geography:

But in a largely-deserted uptown neighborhood in Washtenaw county, where county sheriffs wearing flak jackets and carrying assault rifles were knocking on doors, officials said a forced evacuation was yet to begin.

I wonder what kind of translation error would substitute the name of our Michigan county for some place a thousand miles south of here. Especially given that Louisiana doesn't have counties or "county sheriffs" as such.

Or maybe the Japanese reporter got on the wrong plane and ended up in Ann Arbor instead of New Orleans? (Certainly I could have made the same kind of error trying to find my way in Japan.) No wonder he didn't see forced evacuations!

Update: Undoubtedly the Japanese reporter encountered the ten Washtenaw County sheriff deputies who volunteered for Katrina work, and assumed the geography from the agency name on their uniforms and equipment!

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments

Tuesday, September 6, 2005, 11:15 am

From the Clerk-Register. Today's message to my staff.

More hurricane aftermath. Help is starting to arrive in flooded New Orleans, but southern Mississippi, which received the brunt of the hurricane force winds, is still desperate, with houses flattened, roads blocked by debris and fallen trees, emergency vehicles destroyed, food and water running out, gasoline scarce.

A friend of mine in Jackson, Mississippi (she's a retired professor from Mississippi State University in Starkville) was asked whether it was the case that devastated areas in Mississippi are not attracting attention and help. She replied:

IT HAS BEEN VERY MUCH THE CASE. The people in Mississippi don't care about being on tv. The point isn't about the media. Naturally the media would pay more attention to the drama of New Orleans. But what people in Mississippi care about is that indeed it very much has extended to the government. Not only did Pass Christian and Gulfport get slower responses, not to mention the now-almost-non-existent Hancock County, where at least as recently as yesterday somebody who made it there and then back out to report said that the submerged police station at Waveland had no communication equipment at all and was BEGGING for at least one satellite phone, but people in the inland towns in south Mississippi have been TOTALLY IGNORED. You ought to hear some of the things the mayor of Hattiesburg has had to say on the subject. And Hattiesburg now has a FEMA representative available -- after a mere week of hunger and thirst. People in smaller towns are still without ANYTHING. And people in rural areas are, well -- who cares -- there aren't enough of them for it to matter. If any of them are still alive, they won't be much longer, so what's the point in worrying about them.

Here in Michigan, Gov. Jennifer Granholm has offered to accept as many as 10,000 refugees from the South. That sounds like a lot, but it's only 1% of the estimated one million made homeless by Katrina. And I heard this morning that the Ingham County Board of Commissioners is considering a small millage on November's ballot to help pay for support services for the expected influx of refugees.

We will be hearing about this hurricane and its impact for a long time.

Our customers may be under stress as well. Though we haven't seen actual refugees arrive here yet, people at our counters and in our offices and courtrooms may have family or close friends who were directly affected by the hurricane. Moreover, we will always have customers whose lives have just been disrupted by more local, personal catastrophes, such as house fires or automobile accidents. The key is to treat everyone with courtesy and respect, even if (especially if) they seem distracted or irritable.

Individual meetings with staff members continue. I will send notices to the people who I'd like to meet with this week. When the workload permits, please arrange a half-hour with your supervisor and my schedule (perhaps via Outlook) for a meeting in my office.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum.

Monday, August 29, 2005, 10:56 am

From the Clerk-Register. Today's message to my staff.

This morning, we are apparently on the verge of the worst natural disaster ever to hit this country: the total destruction of an important city; as many as one million homeless; damage measured in the trillions of dollars.

Sustained winds of over 100 miles per hour can demolish a lot of buildings. Worse yet for New Orleans is the "storm surge" of waters which are likely to overtop levees and flood the low-lying city to depths of 20 feet or more. Still worse are the many poorly secured chemical plants and oil storage tanks there, which will release their contents and foul this water with toxic and flammable substances; anything still above water is likely to burn.

Louisiana is a distinctive place, but unfortunately the very things that make it unique make it harder to prepare for this kind of disaster. The state's tax system and legal system are radically different from any other state. Local and state governments, police forces, schools, all suffer from graft and entrenched corruption. Meanwhile, the state has tremendous social problems: Louisiana has the highest poverty rate of any state, the highest percentage of single parent families, and it has among the highest rates of sexually transmitted disease and homicide.

No doubt the failure of New Orleans and Louisiana to come up with the political will and resources to build higher and stronger protective levees (especially on the Lake Pontchartrain side) will be criticized in the wake of this disaster. But before we look down our noses at Louisiana, consider that we here in Ann Arbor have been equally reluctant to address the likelihood of a catastrophic flood along Allen Creek downtown.

Moreover, we as a nation have also failed to come up with the political will to address global warming, which causes more severe hurricanes and storms.

Closer to home, the big homicide trials are ongoing this week in the Courthouse, and security has been stepped up. Our new juror-pay ATM is working, and has received some friendly press coverage. The Deeds office is on track to reduce the document filing backlog to 14 days by the end of August. Chief Deputy Jim Dries is on vacation this week.

Individual meetings continue: I'm looking to schedule meetings this week or next with [list of names redacted]. When the workload permits, please arrange a half-hour with your supervisor and my schedule (perhaps via Outlook) for a meeting in my office.

Our friends, family, and fellow citizens in New Orleans are in our thoughts and prayers.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum.

Friday, August 26, 2005, 3:03 pm

MARD v. MLTA. Since I am Register of Deeds as well as County Clerk, I'm a member of the Michigan Association of Registers of Deeds (MARD).

("County Clerk" and "Register of Deeds" are separate elected positions in 50 Michigan counties; the remaining 33, including Washtenaw County, have combined them as "County Clerk and Register of Deeds".)

Title companies make up most of the business at a Register of Deeds office, and the title companies also have a trade group, the Michigan Land Title Association (MLTA).

In the past few months, the relationship between MLTA and the Registers has become strained. Some of the Registers are baffled by the actions of the MLTA, and wonder whether the members know what their association is doing. Today, the president of MARD sent a remarkable letter to each of the members of MLTA, as follows:

Dear MLTA Member:

You know us, you work with us regularly, and we recommend your services to the people of Michigan. We are the Registers of Deeds in the State of Michigan. Our service is to all of the people of Michigan, and yet for some reason Michigan Land Title Association has decided to single us out and challenge what we do for the people.

In the past year, MLTA has filed a multitude of lawsuits against various county Registers of Deeds. MLTA has attempted to defame our names with our State Legislators by claiming we are monopolizing records and using unfair pricing. MLTA has sent press releases to local newspapers attempting to influence the people of Michigan and inflict Registers in a negative light.

Some of your larger members whose main offices are not even located in the state of Michigan have filed lawsuits against Registers in the United States District Court stating Registers are in violation of federal anti-trust laws, monopolization, due process, and unauthorized establishment and maintenance of abstracts of title. This was decided in favor of the county Registers, and yet your association continues to spend money to appeal the Court's decision.

Title companies have filed suit against some counties who have requested if a customer is purchasing consecutive, contiguous copies of records in a bulk format for a reduced fee, that the customer sign a "no resale" clause. Although this practice has been upheld in the Michigan Court of Appeals, MLTA continues to call this unlawful and is appealing to a higher court.

Some members of MLTA want to purchase the images at a discounted rate and resell them regardless of the cost to the County and smaller MLTA members. Your own members may be driving the smaller MLTA members out of business. They want to purchase the images for next to nothing and resell at a huge profit, at the expense of the local taxpayer, County government, and you.

MLTA has become a very litigious organization. Rather than working in cooperation with Registers, Treasurers and other local officials, your association has decided to challenge all we do. MLTA has demanded FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] requests from Clerks (five years of logs, records, and reports), Treasurers, and Registers ("received" instrument and "entry book" information). This action ties up our offices with busy work when we should be placing more instruments on public record; we are then chastised if we are behind.

It seems the bottom line is that the larger title companies and batch plants are nervous and vindictive of the Register of Deeds becoming more user-friendly. With county records on the Internet where all have access to the images at the statutory one dollar per page copy fee, they are concerned with their profit margin, regardless of cost to the county or to smaller title operations.

Perhaps you may want to evaluate if this is what you want of your organization. Is this where you want your membership dollars invested — in more lawsuits? A few members are using your association.s good name to their interest, not for the interest of all MLTA members. In the past, the Registers and MLTA members have had an amicable and friendly relationship. That relationship is in crisis. This continued animosity is only harmful to your industry and to the people of Michigan.

Sincerely,

Lori A. Wilson, President
Michigan Association of
Register of Deeds

I won't argue with the strategy here, but I should say that I'm accustomed to receiving Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests; making sure they're quickly and appropriately fulfilled is part of my job, not "busy work".

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments

Friday, August 26, 2005, 10:32 am

From the Clerk-Register: A few more letters to my staff:

Thursday, July 28:

I returned last night from the 97th annual meeting of the Michigan Association of County Clerks.

At the conference, we discussed many issues affecting county clerks' offices.

In particular, he drive for greater security of identity records is going to affect all of us directly. Quite soon, the state will require people to provide a recently issued birth certificate for renewal of a driver's license. And there will be a process, similar to checking a credit card, for verifying that a driver's license or birth certificate is valid, or at least, corresponds to one on file. Of course, anyone applying for a driver's license renewal (presenting a birth certificate) or a copy of a birth certificate (presenting a driver's license) would be subject to this.

What about people, like my late father, who have lived their lives under a name different from the one on their birth certificate? Glenn Copeland, the state registrar of vital statistics, said that under these new rules, if my father were living today, he would not be allowed to obtain a copy of his own birth certificate!

So, what do we tell someone like that who shows up at our Vital Records counter? "Good question," he said. That was all.

Karen Edman made a brief presentation to the Clerks about our county ATM, soon to be installed in the Courthouse lobby, which will dispense cash payments to jurors, eliminating the need to write thousands of small checks. The cost savings is very significant (not to mention the greater convenience for jurors), and I expect that many other counties and courts will follow our lead on this.

The Deeds world has also been turbulent lately. The president of the Michigan Association of Registers of Deeds has resigned, and there has been a lot of conflict within the organization. At the same time, the Land Title Association has sent Freedom of Information Act requests to every county in Michigan, asking for detailed information on Deeds office finances, cost allocation studies, the technology fund, and the documents which were filed in each office last May 9 and 10. Many Registers expect the information obtained will be used to attack the $1/page image fees charged by Deeds offices.

Here in Washtenaw County, our Deeds office, while adapting to a new computer system and various problems encountered along the way, fell behind on filing deeds, to as much as 35 days. Yesterday, the office met its July goal of reducing that backlog to 21 days. In August, the goal will be 14 days. Congratulations to all the Deeds staff!

Our new 2005-06 county directories are back from the printer, and are available at the Elections office. We're already thinking ahead to the 2007 directory, so your comments or ideas for content or design would be very welcome.

My individual meetings with staff members continue. Currently up: [list of names redacted]. When the workload permits, please arrange a half-hour with your supervisor and my schedule (perhaps via Outlook) for a meeting in my office.

Monday, August 1:

Welcome to the new month!

Tomorrow, Tuesday, is Election Day, for Webster Township and the even numbered wards of the City of Ann Arbor, as well as many jurisdictions in surrounding counties.

On Friday, Deeds Chief Deputy Jim Dries and I met in Detroit with the Registers of Deeds of Wayne and Oakland counties (Carmella Sabaugh of Macomb County would have been there but wasn't feeling well), and their chief deputies, to discuss pending legislation and the recent requests from the Land Title Association.

Today, our Elections office received proposed recall ballot language for two officials in Augusta Township. We have scheduled the Election Commission's clarity hearing for Friday, August 12th at 10:30 am. The three members of the Election Commission are Judge Archie Brown, County Treasurer Catherine McClary, and myself.

I'm hearing many positive comments about the look of the new county directory, as well as suggestions for things we should include next time. Among other things, we should definitely include detailed pages for school districts (including a countywide map showing school district boundaries), and perhaps special units such as downtown development authorities and YCUA. I'd also like to provide some concise but readable tables of population and SEV by jurisdiction. If you have further comments or suggestions, please let me know.

The new county ATM is scheduled to be installed in the Courthouse lobby this week, perhaps on Thursday. This will make it possible to pay our circuit court jurors in cash, rather than writing thousands of paper checks.

My individual meetings with staff members continue. Currently up: [list of names redacted]. When the workload permits, please arrange a half-hour with your supervisor and my schedule (perhaps via Outlook) for a meeting in my office.

Many, many thanks to everyone in the office, for striving to treat every customer with courtesy and respect, even when the weather is unbearably hot.

Let's have a great week!

Monday, August 15:

(1) The ATM is working! I'm very pleased to announce that the demonstration of our new Courthouse ATM for paying jurors went well this morning, and there should be something about it in the Ann Arbor News shortly.

Karen Edman gets full credit for her persistence over more than a year and a half in bringing this effort to fruition.

The big test will be next Monday, when we have a number of jury trials starting. These will be the first jurors to be paid with a plastic card instead of a check. The ATM will dispense the appropriate amount of money to the juror the first time the card is used. Jurors will have cash to pay for lunch or parking, rather than having to wait 4-6 weeks for a paper check in the mail.

Of course, that will also save the county from writing and processing more than 600 juror pay checks per month.

Very likely our new system will get statewide and national attention from other courts interested in more customer-friendly and economical ways of doing business.

You can also use the ATM to get cash from your checking account. The fee per withdrawal is $1.50.

(2) New Work Rules. Following several months of consideration and rewrites, I am also pleased to announce new work rules for the Clerk-Register's office. A copy will be provided in a separate email. The new work rules resemble the old 2003 work rules, but there are some important changes.

First, the new rules state that "Professional development is encouraged." You may attend up to four training classes per year, not including mandatory classes, if it would add to your ability to do any job in county government — it's no longer limited to just your present job.

Second, the dress code of August 12, 2002, which lists dozens of specific clothing items and details as acceptable or unacceptable, is superseded by a simple statement in the new rules:

You should dress every day in a manner that shows your respect for the people we serve. Your choice of clothing should reflect your professional status, and should never distract or distress any visitor. "Blue jeans" may only be worn on Friday, and must never be worn in court.

The interpretation of this standard will differ from setting to setting, where work needs and customer interactions are different. Consult your supervisor if you are in doubt about any clothing item.

Third, we have clarified the gift section with the following:

Seasonal gifts from the people and firms we regularly serve shall be shared by all office staff.

One section of the Work Rules has not changed at all, but bears repeating here.

The Clerk/Register's Office is comprised of various divisions but we are one office. All staff members are expected to work together in a friendly, positive, cooperative and professional manner. We are all part of the Washtenaw County Team and we are here to serve the public in the most prompt, courteous and effective manner possible.

(3) Individual meetings. I'm looking to schedule meetings this week or next with [list of names redacted]. When the workload permits, please arrange a half-hour with your supervisor and my schedule (perhaps via Outlook) for a meeting in my office.

Let's have a great week!

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum.

Wednesday, July 13, 2005, 11:34 pm

From the Clerk-Register: More letters to my staff, one of which I missed posting in the last batch:

Monday, June 6:

A storm passed through the area last night, leaving many residents without electric power. Our neighborhood, on the west side of Ann Arbor, still has no power. In this heat, the food in our refrigerator is spoiling, and we are not looking forward to the task of throwing it all away. Sarah's elementary school, like many others, is without electricity and closed today; my wife and I have to scramble to find child care.

A power outage is a very selective kind of catastrophe. On our block, there are no lights, no hot water, no television, no fans or air conditioning, no refrigeration. The nearby traffic light is dead, and temporary four-way stop signs have been posted by police. But a few blocks away everything is completely normal.

Just last month, I wrote about how dependent we are on the people who maintain the intricate systems that sustain our daily activities, from the water supply to the telephone network to the Internet. These systems have become so reliable that we take them for granted, and rarely think about the complicated and hard work required to keep them going. That is, until something goes wrong.

Today, the electric utilities in southeast Michigan are faced with the urgent and colossal task of restoring service to more than a hundred thousand households. Under the scrutiny of unhappy customers, impatient reporters, and probably panic-stricken executives, they are calmly and methodically trying to set things back to rights.

It's easy to be angry about the disruption. But we should have some empathy for these hard working folks who maintain our electric system.

Let's have a great week!

Monday, June 27:

Now that election consolidation, the February and May elections, the county directory, and some other urgent issues are over with, and the budget is on hold for the time being, I'd like to get started on something I promised to do when I was a candidate: to sit down and have regular individual meetings with each of the 57 people (besides myself) who work in this office.

I'm looking to hear your honest assessment of how we're doing as an organization, and how you think it could be improved. I'd like to hear about your own job and how we can help you do it better. If there are problems, hazards, or opportunities affecting your workplace, I want to know about them.

I know that many of the staff were very apprehensive about what would happen in January. I hope the chief deputies and I have been able to calm those fears and gain your confidence. My sense is that things are going pretty well right now, but we may have to weather some storms together in the future. It's critical that we establish open communication now.

Additionally, we're putting together a wall display with pictures of everyone in the Clerk-Register's office. When you come in for your meeting, or perhaps another time as arranged, Stephanie from the Deeds office will take a quick photograph.

I'm starting with the nonsupervisory staff. Some time this week, I'd like to meet with [list of names redacted]. Please arrange a half-hour with your supervisor and my schedule (perhaps via Outlook).

A management analyst once wrote that "The hallmark of a great organization is how quickly bad news travels upward." To help make the Clerk-Register's office a great organization, I hope you will be willing to share your complaints and criticisms with me.

Enjoy the hot weather, and have a great week!

Tuesday, July 5:

I hope everyone had a pleasant holiday weekend. I walked in the Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti parades yesterday.

Tomorrow, I leave for Kentucky, to attend (and speak at) a memorial service for a friend of mine in Lexington. I will visit some relatives and do some research along the way, and will return on Saturday.

Copies of the new county directory will be available soon, perhaps this week. The cover photograph shows the old Washtenaw County Courthouse, which used to stand on the middle of the block occupied by the current courthouse. In the 1950s, they built the new courthouse around three sides of the old one, and then demolished the old one to make room for a parking lot.

Probably most county seats in America have a courthouse in a courthouse square in the middle of town; the courthouse is typically an older classically styled building with tall columns and a tower. Our old courthouse fit that pattern.

The tradition of a courthouse square is thought to symbolize American democracy, and the aspiration for local self-government. But the concept is not as obvious as it seems at first glance. For example, there is no comparable tradition of a city hall or a township hall being placed on a block by itself, though some city halls are sited that way.

The tradition is thought to have started with Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, which was planned in the 1700s with a central square for the courthouse. Even now, a courthouse square is sometimes called a "Lancaster Square".

So how did Lancaster come up with this? Some of the settlers there had come from Ireland, and remembered a similar arrangement. Indeed, many Irish cities and towns have a government building in the middle of the town square. Why? Well, when the English conquered Ireland hundreds of years ago, they needed places to put their military garrisons, and town squares were obvious sites. Those garrisons eventually became government offices.

It's ironic that something built for a military occupation in Europe became a symbol of democracy in America.

Here in Washtenaw County, we don't have the courthouse square any longer, but we still carry on the tradition of service to the people in our county. We maintain the records, we manage the systems, and we strive to treat every customer with courtesy and respect.

Individual meetings with staff members continue. Since I'm going to be away tomorrow through Friday, these are the people I'd like to meet with during the next two weeks: [list of names redacted].

Let's have a great week!

Monday, July 11:

I just received word that Bob Harris died yesterday.

Bob was a law professor and lawyer; he was once one of [County Administrator] Bob Guenzel's law partners. He was best known for being mayor of Ann Arbor in 1969-73, but he didn't like being introduced as a "former mayor". He'd rather describe himself as a guy who made model airplanes.

Bob was originally from Boston. His family was Lithuanian Jewish, but he had the easygoing charm of a Boston Irish politician - a charm that probably served him well in Ann Arbor's contentious politics thirty years ago. When he spoke to you, it was impossible not to like him.

He was articulate and strongly opinionated - you've probably seen some of his many letters to the editor - but he was also a practical fellow who believed in compromise and democracy and getting things done. Even in the heat of argument, he would be gentle and self-deprecating.

I know he was happier in recent years, helping care for his grandchildren and working for Food Gatherers, than he had been at any time in his earlier career. Being happy in retirement came as a surprise to him. He was an inspiration to those who might have seen it as a dismal stage of life.

And he was a great friend and mentor and supporter of mine. When I last spoke with him a few weeks ago, he was eager to hear all about how my now job was going, and solicited my ideas for new projects he could work on.

The funeral will be on Wednesday, July 13, at 4:00 pm at Temple Beth Emeth, 2309 Packard Road, in Ann Arbor.

May his memory be for a blessing.

Back here in the Clerk-Register's office, individual meetings with staff members continue. This week, I'd like to meet with [list of names redacted].

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum.

Monday, June 20, 2005, 3:52 pm

From the Clerk-Register: I keep thinking of things I ought to blog about, and I keep not getting around to it. In the meantime, here are a couple more letters to the County Clerk/Register of Deeds staff.

Tuesday, May 31:

Last week, I received a note from a customer:

I Love Washtenaw County.

I Love the clerks who are always helpful & friendly.

I'll never go back to Wayne County.

Over the weekend, I also heard from some folks who appreciated the service they'd gotten from the office.

"I'm sure you most of what you hear are complaints," one of them said, "So I thought I'd let you know how impressed I was."

Of course complainers tend to be more motivated communicators than satisfied customers. But in truth I have heard few complaints and many favorable comments from our constituents.

I can take very little credit for this. Rather, it reflects the wonderful job that all of you are doing, which I appreciate beyond words.

Washtenaw County received another boost recently with a high bond rating from Fitch Ratings.

According to the report, "Washtenaw County's strong tax base and prudent budget practices have produced consistent financial operations and solid reserve levels over the past eight years. . . . The county's debt burden is low."

Credit for the sound management of our finances goes to county treasurer Catherine McClary, county administrator Bob Guenzel, and the county commissioners.

Let's have a great week!

Monday, June 20:

I hope you had a good Father's Day yesterday.

Father's Day is one of those "minor" holidays, along with Halloween, Valentine's Day, Ground Hog Day, St. Patrick's Day, April Fool's Day, and of course Mother's Day, which are observed by tradition, but are never listed in labor contracts or official work schedules.

When I started working at the University of Michigan in 1998, I was startled to see decorations for each of these holidays, and others, appear in turn in the workplace, including around doors and mirrors of the men's room. Apparently many University bathrooms were done up this way, as staff members looked to remember and enjoy each of these small occasions, as well as staff birthdays and so on.

There are many such special days, but each one comes but once a year. Whether it's your birthday, or Halloween, or the (soon to arrive) Summer Solstice - we come to work as usual, but we anticipate a nicer day; ordinary work becomes a sharing of a pleasant occasion with our co-workers.

What if EVERY DAY was a small holiday?

The French revolutionary calendar, used in France and its colonies from 1793 to 1806, seems far-fetched to us now, but the folks who invented this also gave us the metric system which is still in use.

Each month in the French calendar was 30 days long (they had pretty names based on the seasons and weather) and consisted of three 10-day weeks. At the end of the year there were a varying number of extra festival days depending on whether it was a leap year.

But the most intriguing aspect of the calendar is that each day of the year had its own name. The days were named for plants, foods, flowers, crops, animals, minerals, farm tools, among other things.

Imagine what life would be like under such a calendar! Every day would automatically have a "theme".

Surely we would have dessert potlucks on Strawberry Day, or Orange Day, or Cherry Day. One day in the autumn (around the same time as Thanksgiving) was literally called Turkey Day. People would say "I don't smoke any more, except on Tobacco Day."

I'm not as sure what kind of observance would occur on Iron Day, or Salt Day, or Plaster of Paris Day, or Broccoli Day, or Dandelion Day, but I bet somebody would be ready.

There's a web site which claims to calculate the French calendar date for any day since 1792 (though obviously any dates since 1806 are pretty much moot). According to their calculations, today is the 1st day of the month of Messidor, which is "Seigle", or Rye Day.

Did you have a rye bread sandwich at lunch?

Tomorrow, the 2nd day of Messidor, is "Avoine" (Oats Day), perhaps a good morning to have oatmeal for breakfast.

Every day is an occasion to celebrate. But it's easier when the sun is shining.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum.

Thursday, May 26, 2005, 3:14 pm

From the Clerk-Register: More letters to my staff.

Monday, May 9:

On Friday, April 29, just over a week ago, Washtenaw County held its annual Employee Recognition Breakfast. Among those honored were Sherry Deeds of Court Services for 25 years of service, and Linda Clark, of the Deeds office, for 20 years of service. Congratulations to both!

During the event, [Deputy County Administrator] Frank Cambria spoke for all of us when he praised the many honorees for their dedication, for the institutional memory they make possible, and for the positive organizational culture each of them has helped to create in our county government.

This dedication and longevity make Washtenaw County very different from most other workplaces.

Fifteen years ago, I came out of graduate school into the 1990 recession. I ended up working for several months on the loading dock at the Lord & Taylor department store in Briarwood Mall. When I wasn't unloading trucks, I did a lot of cleaning and vacuuming and emptying trash bins around the store.

I think Lord & Taylor is one of the more enlightened retail operations around, and working there taught me a lot about customer service. But one incident from my time working there came to mind during that recognition breakfast.

It was a small retirement party for a woman who had worked at Lord & Taylor for years — in the dress department, I think. The store had been there for ten years, and thousands of people had worked there, but remarkably, it was the very first time anyone had retired. No one else had ever kept working there long enough.

I think that kind of turnover is a lot more typical of American workplaces than the long dedication we have seen in the County. And it's not because our jobs here are easy. We work with the public every day. We face and overcome challenges day after day.

The difference, perhaps, is that what we do here is critically important for this community and for every individual whose life touches Washtenaw County. Lord & Taylor's Briarwood store is gone now, and its space has been gutted and completely redone twice since I worked there. But Washtenaw County is here to stay.

We had our first consolidated school board election last Tuesday, and all things considered, it went well. The voter turnout was well above the average of turnout that school board elections have drawn for the last several years. Many thanks to everyone who went beyond their ordinary work (and workload) to make the election a success. The Board of Canvassers is working right now on certifying the results.

Our Court Services office is coping this morning with the changeover from the old Fulcrum computer system to the new eNACT system. The new system will be more intuitive for our customers and occasional users, but it may take some getting used to for those who were accustomed to Fulcrum. The people who use this system are likely to be even more stressed than usual, so please be especially kind and tolerant with them.

Let's have a great week!

Monday, May 23:

The Onion (which gleefully dubs itself "America's Finest News Source") reported recently that, as a follow-up to the successful 50 State Quarters program, the U.S. Mint will now issue a commemorative penny for each of the more than 3,000 counties in the United States. The plan is to issue five new county pennies every year for the next 629 years, starting with the penny for Kent County, Delaware.

Washtenaw County is singled out for special mention:

"I hope they get the old stone water tower just right," Ypsilanti, MI resident Gina Dalton said. "It's the most well-known landmark in Washtenaw County, so it's definitely what they should use."

While Fore [U.S. Mint director] agreed that Ypsilanti's historic water tower-completed in 1890, boasting an 85-foot-tall base made of Joliet limestone, and standing at the important intersection of Route 17 and West Cross Street-is a good suggestion, she cautioned Washtenaw County residents that their penny is scheduled for release in 2315.

"We're encouraging counties, especially those beyond the first 50 or so, to think creatively to find a truly unique representative icon for their penny," Fore said. "Water towers-along with mountains, covered bridges, and lighthouses-will be among the first images to get snapped up. We'll need to see some shoe factories and cell-phone towers, too."

It's all a joke, of course, but it raises the question of what could possibly serve as an image or symbol of our diverse and many-faceted county. We don't have an instantly recognizable county courthouse any longer to serve as a unifying piece of architecture. No doubt people in various parts of the county would dispute whether the Ypsilanti water tower, UM's Burton Tower, or the Chelsea clock tower would be the best symbol of the entire county. Maybe the artistic zigzag cell phone tower on US-23 at Domino's Farms?

About thirty years ago in another county, the commissioners decided to create a new county seal. A committee was appointed, and did what committees usually do. One member wanted the seal to reflect manufacturing and industry. Another wanted the seal to recognize farmers and agriculture. Still another wanted the seal to symbolize higher education. A fourth member thought the seal should reference state government.

So, they divided the seal into quadrants, and each member picked a symbol: a mortar board for education, a corn plant for agriculture, some cogs for industry, and the capitol dome for state government, each poorly drawn and sealed up in a separate part of the circle. It looks awful.

Here in Washtenaw County, the designer of our county seal was considerably more clever. The oil lamp in the center symbolizes education, and the two flames stand for UM and EMU. The border around the lamp represents industry (the cog teeth on the upper half) and agriculture (sheaves of wheat on the lower half). It's one composition instead of four - but it's still a collection of nods to economic interests rather than a unified symbol.

Perhaps this is inevitable given the geography. Counties in the Midwest encompass arbitrary rectangles of territory, with no concern for whether all the people living in each rectangle would have anything in common - let alone the land and farms and rivers and economic activity.

Cities and villages incorporate, annex territory, and structure themselves by the vote of their people. But communities don't get to choose which county to belong to, or which county offices to elect: those decisions were made a century and a half ago, with only a few details left to local choice.

We have much to be proud of in Washtenaw County; our people and landscape and resources and economy are the envy of the whole state. But the only clearly unifying element within our rectangle of geography is the county government. Few people outside county government and politics think of our county, or any county, as a unified whole that "belongs" together. That realization should make us humble in our service to our neighbors and constituents.

Let's have a great week!

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum.

Monday, May 2, 2005, 9:22 pm

Legalize Busking! Local musicians report that busking (performing, usually music, on city sidewalks) has been interpreted as illegal panhandling by Ann Arbor police. Local accordionist Shaun Williams spoke at city council this evening to urge that this policy be changed.

Among the links in that item, I was startled to see, was a strongly worded 1981 East Lansing City Council resolution which resulted from my own efforts to legalize street musicians almost a quarter century ago.

WHEREAS, it is the intent of the East Lansing City Council to encourage within the central business district and other public places a free exchange of social, cultural and entertainment opportunities between members of the public,

NOW, THEREFOR [sic] it is resolved as follows:

1. Street musicians, mimes, dancers and theater groups shall be permitted to perform for the public upon the public streets and within the public places of the City of East Lansing, and shall be permitted to solicit and accept voluntary contributions from members of the public who wish to reward such activity.

2. For purposes of this Resolution street musicians are defined as follows: a composer, conductor, or performer of vocal, instrumental, or mechanical sounds having rhythm, melody, or harmony.

3. The above permitted activities shall not be considered "begging" in connection with the City enforcement of its Disorderly Conduct Code being section 9.102(5), nor shall they be considered a "trade or business" for which a license might be required under Chapter 71 of the City Code.

4. Street musicians and other performers shall at all times comply with all other provisions of the East Lansing City Code, specifically including the City Noise Ordinance and Code provisions prohibiting the obstruction of sidewalks and public passage.

Oddly enough, part of the argument in East Lansing at that time was that street musicians were legal in Ann Arbor. Now the shoe appears to be on the other foot. Contact your city council members to urge adoption of something like the above.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments

Monday, May 2, 2005, 8:35 pm

From the Clerk-Register: Latest letters to my staff.

Tuesday, April 26:

Last Friday and Saturday, I met with many of the county clerks from around the state, to discuss election consolidation and other issues. Apparently implementation of the new election law (changing dates and responsibilities for school board elections) is being actively resisted by some school districts around the state; a lawsuit in Calhoun County led to a restraining order on election preparations. Fortunately, that was overruled by the Court of Appeals.

More controversy is expected when the local and county clerks submit bills to the school districts for the school board elections. Faced with charges of thousands of tangible dollars for election costs, some school administrators may forget the considerable savings in staff time and legal fees, and focus on the added cost of bringing school elections into line with all other elections. Moreover, almost every school district opted to continue annual elections, declining to cut their election expenses in half or more by shifting to odd year elections.

The amounts of money at issue, however, are not large in the context of school or county budgets. You wouldn't think that this would inspire a storm of litigation. But some schools don't like losing control over the election process, or fear what larger voter turnouts might bring to school elections. And the savings in legal fees mean that the law firms which advise school districts are losing revenue.

I am hopeful that we in this county can overcome these challenges, and continue to have a very positive and constructive relationship with our local schools. Once the new election system has been in place for a while, people will wonder why we did it any other way.

Enjoy the last of the snow, and have a great week!

Monday, May 2:

Tomorrow is Election Day for school boards throughout the county (except South Lyon). This will be the first May school election under the new election consolidation law.

From an election administration standpoint, this is a far more demanding election situation than the one we faced in February. For one thing, we have many more ballot styles to provide, listing the candidates who are running in each school district. Because the election is nonpartisan, the order of names must be rotated from one precinct to the next. Voters accustomed to school precincts must be notified that this election will be held in regular city and township precincts. Many of those precincts are split by school district boundaries, and so have to provide more than one different kind of ballot for voters in the different areas.

And given that some of the local clerks declined to take on full responsibility for the school election, we in the County Clerk's election office are obliged to step into the township clerk's role on the front lines of the election: to hire and pay election inspectors, to arrange polling locations, to transport voting equipment, to process absentee ballots, and so on.

Perhaps it was inevitable that something would go wrong. You may have read in Tuesday's paper that a polling place change notice intended for about 600 voters in one Pittsfield Township precinct was mailed instead to 21,000 other Pittsfield voters. Fortunately, there was time to send a correcting postcard, and (since it wasn't our mistake) we will not have to pay for the erroneous mailing. I hope and expect it will turn out to be one small ripple in an otherwise smooth election.

The media and most of the public pays little attention to the Clerk-Register's office when things are going well. But we are not alone in being taken for granted.

Consider the fabulous network of wells and reservoirs and pipes which provide abundant clean, clear, soft water to our communities, and carry away and treat our wastewater. We only read about it in the newspaper when dioxane contamination forced the city to close the Montgomery Street well. But the careful and dedicated work necessary to develop and maintain this system must be enormous; hundreds of people in Washtenaw County alone must spend their entire working lives devoted to it. We rely on them without ever thinking of them.

And that's just one of many such vital and under-appreciated functions. My father-in-law was a telephone engineer; he worked all his days on an even more complex system. Fire fighters, mail carriers, computer operators, farmers, and on and on, are all in the same boat. And these folks are not just our friends and relatives: they are also our customers, the same people we serve at our counters, our courtrooms, and our polling places.

They may not take much notice of what we do, but each and every one of them has some important role in our community, state, and country. To treat each customer with courtesy and respect goes at least a little way to express our appreciation.

Let's have an uneventful election, and a great week!

An excerpt from the Ann Arbor News story mentioned above (since it will disappear shortly from their web site):

Notices misinform voters

Thousands of registered voters in Pittsfield Township erroneously received notices over the weekend that their polling place for the May 3 school elections had changed, Washtenaw County Clerk and Register of Deeds Larry Kestenbaum said Monday....

The error, reported to Kestenbaum's office by several citizens Monday morning, could further confuse voters who are adjusting to a new voting system being implemented for the first time statewide with just a week left before the election, he said.

"We've got a lot of damage control to do in terms of letting people know where to go in a situation where there is already some confusion because of the changes in election law," Kestenbaum said....

Kestenbaum said he ultimately takes responsibility for the error, but indicated the county will contest the costs of the initial mailing because the printer assured county staff that it had the correct lists of whom to notify...

Liz Margolis, spokeswoman for the Ann Arbor Public Schools, said the district was not aware of the problem Monday afternoon, yet was confident the county would fix it in time to minimize any impact on the election.

She said she anticipated some problems implementing the new system.

"An amazing amount of coordination went into this between the schools and the county, and I don't think it would be realistic to think there were not going to be glitches the first time around," Margolis said.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum.

Thursday, April 21, 2005, 7:58 pm

From a webmaster's inbox. Those of you who don't own web sites probably don't get spam like this:

Farm equipment?

Hi,

I took a look at your site a couple of hours ago...
and I want to tell you that I'd really love to trade links with you. I
think
your site has some really good stuff related to my site's topic of farm
equipment
and would be a great resource for my visitors as it deals with some great
aspects of farm equipment that I'd like to give my visitors more
information
about.

In fact, I went ahead and added your site to my Farm Equipment HQ Resource
Directory at...

Marble?

Hi,

I took a look at your site a couple of hours ago...
and I want to tell you that I'd really love to trade links with you. I
think
your site has some really good stuff related to my site's topic of marble
and would be a great resource for my visitors as it deals with some great
aspects of marble that I'd like to give my visitors more information
about.

In fact, I went ahead and added your site to my Marble HQ Resource
Directory at...

Fire fighters?

Hi,

I took a look at your site a couple of hours ago...
and I want to tell you that I'd really love to trade links with you. I
think
your site has some really good stuff related to my site's topic of fire
fighters
and would be a great resource for my visitors as it deals with some great
aspects of fire fighters that I'd like to give my visitors more
information
about.

In fact, I went ahead and added your site to my Fire Fighters HQ Resource
Directory at...

And thousands more, but you get the idea.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments

Wednesday, April 20, 2005, 10:08 am

Letter to David Harris: Fugitives and the county jail.

Professor David A. Harris
College of Law
University of Toledo
Toledo, OH 43606-3390

Dear Professor Harris:

I stopped in Toledo on the way to Cincinnati last weekend, and picked up a copy of last Friday's edition of the Toledo Blade.

One front page story, titled "Dragnet snares 10,000 fugitives," quoted you as follows:

"The dirty little secret is that there usually is not enough effort and manpower put into apprehension of fugitives," said David Harris, a law professor at the University of Toledo who studies criminal justice issues. .Most fugitives are aware of this, and it makes the system a joke ... It's never been a top priority."

I'm not sure if you were quoted accurately, but if so, I'm startled that you don't seem to be aware of the reason why outstanding warrants are not a priority: there is no place to put the people who are arrested.

Here in Washtenaw County, Michigan, the shortage of jail and prison space is so severe that the kind of roundup of fugitives described in the story would be inconceivable. Our sheriff is forced regularly to release many inmates early to relieve the pressure on the facility. Moreover, sentencing alternatives to jail are meaningless without any effective sanction: defendants know to choose jail time (from which they will be quickly released) rather than treatment they may badly need.

Last February 22, we went to the voters to ask a small tax increase to fund additional space at the jail. Despite practically unanimous support from local officials, the judiciary, and the newspaper (one headline: "Criminals Love Overcrowded Jail"), the proposal was rejected by a margin of 62% to 38%.

But the county does not have the option to decline to provide an adequate jail. Indeed, state officials are redefinining the parameters of the state prison system to force thousands of inmates into local jails, tremendously increasing the pressure on our cells. Hence, we are preparing to make deep cuts in other county services in order to fund the jail expansion. In particular, a great many sheriff's deputies are likely to be dismissed; the county may even cease to provide any police services — by far the largest discretionary item in our budget.

We're very disappointed by the decision of the voters, but the questions raised by our critics are valid ones. We as a state and as a society have spent billions on jail and prison construction in the last two decades. The incarcerated population has risen to levels never before known, either in absolute terms or per capita, and continues to grow explosively. Yet this rapid growth does not seem to be driven by crime rates. Indeed, yesterday's front-page headline in the Ann Arbor News, summarizing 2004 statistics, was "Crime in city falls sharply".

My own explanation is that crime, at least as measured in homicide death rates, roughly tripled between 1960 and 1975, fluctuated within a narrow range from then until the 1990s, and then declined. But the shock of that enormous increase in 1960-75 left a permanent mark, with new laws and ballot initiatives requiring much greater imprisonment per offender. Ultimately, the culture of the criminal justice system changed permanently in the direction of much greater incarceration. It is hard to conceive of any path back to the level of sentencing per crime that was typical in the U.S. in the 1950s, or in the rest of the world today. No one would dare propose a reduction in sentences across the board.

But all this has a cost which is very palpable at the local level. Many of the services people are accustomed to receiving from state and local governments are being sacrificed to pay for the ongoing expansion and operation of prisons and jails. And some of these cuts feed the problem: our state mental health system was gutted in the 1990s, and now at least 25% of our jail inmates have documented mental illness.

I'm curious as to where you think we could come up with "enough" effort and manpower to pursue fugitives, when the only solution to the shortage of jail cells to hold those fugitives appears to be severe cutbacks in police personnel to apprehend them.

Sincerely,

Lawrence Kestenbaum
County Clerk-Register

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments

Monday, April 18, 2005, 7:19 pm

From the Clerk-Register

Monday, April 18:

A friend of mine who grew up in Duluth, Minnesota, once described to me the impact of taking a southward trip with her high school band in April. It was like seeing spring in fast motion: going from bleak scenes of dirty snow to flowering tulips and leafy trees in a matter of a few hours on a school bus. The return trip re-ran those same scenes in reverse, like going back in time from May to February.

My weekend wasn't as dramatic as that — I returned last night from three days in northern Kentucky — but certainly that area is farther along in the spring process than we are. And I did get the disorienting sense of coming back to a somewhat earlier time of year.

It's commonplace now to equate time and distance. All of us have heard places being located by the time it takes to get there — "It's an hour north of Lansing," say. And the distance to stars is measured in light-years, the distance you'd travel in a year at the speed of light.

American county government was conceived precisely in these terms of time and distance. The concept was that almost everybody could get from their home to the county seat within a day, and perhaps even return home that same day, and the geographic boundaries were designed accordingly. A person accustomed to getting places on foot could arise at dawn in Manchester [i.e., in the farthest corner of Washtenaw County], walk to the county courthouse in Ann Arbor, and transact business there before it closed. In the 1820s, when our county boundaries were planned, this was indeed a relevant consideration. This was the way that each state put its courts and recordkeeping functions within easy reach of its citizens.

Many things have changed since those days, especially the speed of transportation and communication. Nonetheless, our accessibility and service to our constituents and customers continues to be our most solemn obligation.

Let's have a great week!

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum.

Thursday, April 14, 2005, 7:25 pm

From the Clerk-Register. More letters to my staff.

Wednesday, February 23:

Good afternoon!

We had a smooth, almost trouble-free election yesterday. Congratulations and abundant thanks are due to the elections staff, to our township and city clerks and their staffs, and to the hundreds of election workers.

Of course, I'm very disappointed in the election result. The downside of being the least visible level of government is the difficulty of establishing and implementing a community consensus for any kind of project or action. Most voters have little contact with the justice system. And apparently thousands are still angry at the county's decision, four years ago, to require townships to pay part of the cost of police services.

The loss sets the stage for some very difficult budget decisions for the county.

As a member of the Criminal Justice Collaborative Council, I am sure I will not be alone in striving to find a way to meet the urgent needs of the criminal justice system with the least possible impact on other county services.

Our vital records office deals with the deaths of individuals on a day to day basis, but recently it seems that death has struck down a number of people who have been part of the scene in county government and the court system.

Former assistant prosecutor Lynwood Noah and local attorney Jack Garris are two who will be missed, though I did not know them well personally.

I also recently attended the funeral, in Mason, of Frank Guerriero, once my colleague on the Ingham County Board of Commissioners. He owned an insurance agency and many businesses, including a bowling alley, yet found time for many service groups and every community project. He never hesitated to speak his mind (at length), to ask difficult questions, to force us to think about what we were doing. He was a royal pain — but he was also highly admired and respected.

Frank was 85 and had suffered from Alzheimer's in recent years.

May their memory be for a blessing.

Monday, February 28:

The process for creation of the 2006-07 county budget is now under way. Our office has been grouped with the Equalization department and the County Treasurer's office as one "community of interest" for budget purposes. We are preparing a joint presentation for the Board of Commissioners and will be working together on budget issues.

Chief deputy Clerk-Register Jim Dries is working with chief deputies from the other two offices to shape our presentation and strategy.

One aspect of this year's budget process, for every county department, is to identify and work with constituency groups whose interests are most directly affected by the work of the office or department. Those groups may have valuable ideas, and presumably are in a position to know about and articulate an agency's strengths and unmet needs.

Our Deeds office has been holding meetings with the title companies for some time, and our Elections office works closely with all the township and city clerks. We would like to broaden our outreach to other groups of customers, to organize meetings with their leadership, to hear their concerns and receive their advice. And each such line of communication that we open and maintain will strengthen our case during the coming budget discussions.

Among those suggested so far: funeral directors, clergy, physicians, realtors, genealogists, news media, judges, and attorneys.

If you have any thoughts about how best to engage (or not?) the leadership of these various groups, or perhaps others we should be thinking about, please pass those ideas along to Jim Dries or myself.

Of course, in addition to identifiable groups whose job it is to interact with us on a regular basis, we see almost every citizen in our offices at some time or other. It's not possible to bring the public at large into the budget process, but it is our job to serve them well, and to treat every customer with courtesy and respect - whether or not they fit into an interest group.

I deeply and personally appreciate the work that each and every one of you does to meet those goals.

Monday, March 21:

The buildings left by the ancient Greeks and Romans serve as architectural models for every generation since then. In their attention to detail and proportion, they give us what is called the classical language of architecture, a set of rules as detailed a cookbook for making a building as a computer programming language is for making software.

Over the last few centuries, classical architecture has come to be seen as symbolic of democracy and law, so it was a natural choice for many public buildings until Modern architecture displaced it in the 1950s. Moreover, majestic classical buildings are thought to inspire — or perhaps intimidate — visitors into their best behavior.

One of my first assignments in graduate school was to select a classical style building, draw a picture of one representative corner of it, from top to bottom, and "label ALL the parts." Every one of those moldings and surfaces and angles and indentations in stone has a particular name. Those three basic types of columns (Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian) are only the beginning.

Classical style buildings can be as grand as Angell Hall on State Street, with its huge columns, or as relatively humble as our own county administration building (former post office) at 220 North Main. For the assignment, I selected the New York Public Library, at the corner of 42nd Street and 5th Avenue in Manhattan, New York City. It was an ambitious choice, because the Library is a fully elaborated, absolutely top-of-the-line classical building, and its entabulatures are enormously complex. With all the parts labeled, my drawing was covered in fine print. But that didn't mean the building was fussy or overdone. If the details are like instruments in an orchestra, the classical language is the music.

I remembered that assignment last week, when I visited the National Archives in Washington DC, a building which strongly reminded me of the New York Public Library.

On a larger scale, the staff of the National Archives has the same job that we do in this office: that of storing and indexing and protecting and making available a whole lot of public records. Undoubtedly they deal with a lot of the same problems that we have, from rude visitors to budget cuts to water leaks in the basement. And they, too, are urged through mission statements and memos and emails to treat all customers with courtesy and respect.

Here in the Washtenaw County clerk-register's office, we don't have Corinthian columns or twenty foot ceilings to impress our visitors with the majesty of law. We don't have world-famous historical documents on the premises. But in recording documents and serving customers, we can choose to work together as harmoniously as the instruments in an orchestra, or the details of classical architecture — an accomplishment which can be just as impressive.

A personal announcement. Yesterday, I completed the first complete update since September 2003 of my personal web site, PoliticalGraveyard.com. The site has listings and brief biographical information for U.S. political figures, living and dead, from Colonial times to the present.

Thursday, March 29:

Yesterday morning, my wife mentioned an old saying, but her version sounded wrong to me.

No, I insisted, it actually goes like this:

Libraries can get you through times of no money
better than money can get you through times of no libraries.

I saw it many years ago in the Whole Earth Catalog. And that slogan has been picked up and used in campaigns for libraries ever since.

But when I did a Google web search, I found just how adaptable this phrase has been. There were thousands of search results.

I found some which seemed paraphrases of the library saying:

Books can get you through times of no money
better than money can get you through times of no books.

Knowledge will get you through times of no money
better than money will get you through times of no knowledge.
(attributed on that page to Lewis Carroll)

There were some which seemed pretty universal — I think we could all agree on these:

Hope will get you through times of no money
better than money will get you through times of no hope. (pdf)

Laughter will get you through times of no money
better than money will get you through times of no laughter.

Self-control will get you through times of no money
better than money will get you through times of no self-control.

Love will get you through times of no money
better than money will get you through times of no love.

Music will get you through times of no money
better than money will get you through times of no music.

And then there were a whole lot of others — here are just a few (leaving aside many drug references):

Whistles will get you through times of no money
better than money will get you through times of no whistles.

Bikes get you through times of no money
better than money gets you through times of no bikes.

Bull Terriers will get you through times of no money, better than money will get you through times of no Bull Terriers.

Skiing gets you through times of no money
better than money gets you through times of no skiing.

Trucks will get you through times of no money
better than money will get you through times of no trucks.

Guns will get you through times of no money
better than money will get you through times of no guns.

Nutmeg will get you through times of no money
better than money will get you through times of no nutmeg.

Fiddlin' will get you through times of no money
better than money will get you through times of no fiddlin'.

A laptop computer will get you through times of no money
better than money will get you through time of no laptop computer.

Environment will get you through times of no money
better than money will get you through times of no environment.

Games will get you through times of no money
better than money will get you through times of no games.

Banjo will get you through times of no money
better than money will get you through times of no banjo.

But somebody did see the humor in this:

Money will get you through times of no money
better than no money will get you through times of no money.

That's something we will surely be mindful of during the impending budget negotiations.

Have a great week!

(Web update. Of course I now know this saying (as to "dope") was popularized by the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, but that wasn't something to discuss in an official Washtenaw County communication.)

Monday, April 11:

Elections. Our preparations continue for the Tuesday, May 3 school elections. School board members will be chosen in every Washtenaw County school district except South Lyon. This will be the first school election under the new election consolidation law. In most areas, voters will be casting their ballots at their regular city or township precinct locations instead of the old school district precincts.

Long meetings and negotiations, led by our elections director, Derrick Jackson, have settled the polling locations and assigned responsibility for each of the myriad tasks of holding an election. We owe a lot to our township and city clerks for working with us on these critical tasks.

Meanwhile, we have been able to replace all of the voting equipment countywide under a Help America Vote Act (HAVA) grant. Some areas will be able to use the new equipment in the May election.

This morning (Monday) at 9:00 am, at Salem Township Hall, we will be training municipal clerks to conduct the Public Accuracy Test of the tabulating equipment.

I think holding school elections on a Tuesday in early May is likely to draw more participation than the traditional Monday in mid-June. However, several of the school districts don't have contested races this year, so it will take some time for the difference, if any, to be apparent.

Directory. Our biennial county directory will soon be published in an initial run of 10,000 copies. We are still accepting advertisements for the directory — the ads pay for the printing cost. The price this year is $500 for a full page ad, $250 for a half page ad. The directory is very popular around the county, and thousands hold on to it for reference. If you know of business which would like to take out an ad in the directory, please have them call our office at 734-222-6730 as soon as possible.

ATM. After years of determined effort by Karen Edman, it looks like Court Services will soon have an automatic teller machine in the County Courthouse first floor hallway. The main purpose will be to pay our jurors in cash rather than with paper checks (a win for everyone involved). However, the machine will also be available for anyone to use as a cash machine, like any bank ATM. The fee for withdrawals has not been set, but it may be the same or a little less than the $2 charged by commercial ATMs in our vicinity.

Computer Stress. Some of our offices have been plagued by computer and network problems recently. In particular, the Vital Records office had a tough week but, as Bonnie Smith wrote, "because we all worked together to help each other we got through it with laughter and fun."

That reminds me of the old parable about someone who was permitted to visit Heaven and Hell. Of course, he found that the people in Hell were unhappy, and that the people in Heaven were happy. But, strangely enough, Heaven and Hell had exactly the same facilities and amenities. The only difference was the way the inhabitants treated one another.

It's up to each of us to decide whether our workplace will be heavenly or hellish.

Let's have a great week!

Also on April 11:

Today, April 11, marks my one hundredth day in office as Clerk-Register.

Looking back on these 100 days, I am struck once again by how helpful, friendly, and welcoming everyone in the office has been.

Your hard and careful work, your dedication to courteous and respectful customer service, are appreciated and highly regarded in the various communities we serve. I hear this all the time from constituents.

We have overcome some challenges in this brief time so far, and I'm sure we will be confronted with many others in the years ahead, as we strive to uphold and improve on the high standards we have set for ourselves.

For all of this, I am very, very grateful to each of you. Thank you.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments

Thursday, March 31, 2005, 8:22 am

The jail millage. This is extremely belated, but should be noted here.

On February 22, Washtenaw County held an election to vote on a proposed property tax increase ("millage" is the Michigan term) to fund jail renovation and expansion, renovation of space to relocate the 14A District Court, and mental health services for the 25% of jail inmates who are mentally ill.

The proposal was voted down 62% to 38%.

I strongly supported the millage, and I'm very disappointed (though not surprised) that it failed. I apologize to my readers for not expounding on this here before the election. I did write a lot of post-election commentary in the jail millage item at ArborUpdate.

The county is required to provide an adequate jail. The current, overcrowded jail fails that test, both because of the lack of facilities (prisoners sleeping in the gym, hence, no exercise space, and many other problems) and its small size. Indeed, due partly to population growth, we have the smallest jail per capita of the 83 counties in Michigan.

Since the millage failed, the county will now be forced by the state and/or the courts to cut deeply into other programs to build a new jail anyway. The current jail, built in 1978, was also forced on the county, because the old downtown jail was ruled to be inadequate. That history is about to be repeated.

In retrospect, the ballot proposal had no chance of success because of the confluence of three factors.

First, voters in general are not interested in voting increased taxes to fund jails and courtrooms that most of them never see. Even in this highly educated county, many people have the notion that incarceration should be cheap and brutal, and that any money spent to build or maintain jail facilities, or to do anything whatever with the jail population, is "coddling criminals." And in any case, property taxes are already high here.

Second, liberal voters in Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti are skeptical of any increase in jail capacity. For some, this is linked to frustration that the medical marijuana decriminizalization passed by Ann Arbor is not being taken seriously by law enforcement authorities. Others, perhaps, are concerned about the growth of the incarcerated population and the "prison industrial complex" that serves it. (More about my own perspective on this another time.)

Finally and perhaps most important, voters in the rural western townships of the county are still angry about the county's decision, four years ago, to force townships to pay for sheriff's department services. Those townships have high voter turnouts, and voted "no" by margins ranging from 3:1 to 11:1.

Ironically, the most direct result of the vote is that the county's remaining subsidy for sheriff's road patrol will be deleted from the budget to pay for the required jail capacity. Possibly some townships will get together to create police departments, but the cost of funding those services will undoubtedly be much more than the 0.75 mill asked for jail expansion.

Since there is zero funding and zero political salience, the crisis of thousands of mentally ill caught up in the criminal justice system will not be addressed. The state has closed its mental hospitals and has pretty much abandoned funding mental health services. I don't think it's a good thing to house the mentally ill in county jails, but that's the course our electorate has chosen, and it certainly is cheaper than treatment.

However, jail overcrowding is a pressing reality, and the county's legal obligation to provide capacity creates an imperative which overrides other policies. Meanwhile, to relieve pressure on state prisons, many prisoners are being shifted to county jails, and counties do not have the option to refuse them.

I expect construction to begin on the new cells next spring at the latest.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments

Monday, Febuary 14, 2005, 10:30 am

From the Clerk-Register. Two more weekly letters to the staff:

Monday, February 7 (fifth letter):

Fifteen years ago last month, on January 15, 1990 — a date etched in computer history — most of the AT&T long-distance telephone network suddenly stopped working. The crash lasted nine hours and inconvenienced millions of people. It cost the company at least $60 million in lost revenue, and did incalculable damage to its touted reputation for reliability.

At first, corporate and law enforcement officials were convinced that computer "hackers" had maliciously crashed the system. But what really happened was even more scary.

A small error, perhaps a typo, deep inside a computer program, led to a cascading failure which took out 114 switching centers nationwide. And this was just the first in a series of similar catastrophes to befall the phone system.

The software that controls each telephone switching center consists of some ten million lines of program code. Even the systems we use in this office every day are very big. When new programs are written, or old ones modified, extensive testing takes place to make sure it works right — and it is absolutely essential that this be done. But it isn't possible, much less feasible, to test every combination of events, to ferret out every single bug in millions of lines of code. Software, at the level of complexity needed for many common tasks, simply cannot be perfect.

As a system is used by more people and exposed to more different situations — more complicated transactions, or even different speeds of mouse clicks — new bugs may show up. And attempts to modify the system to fix old bugs often create new ones.

Our Deeds office is running on new software, which is to say, a system with many bugs and problems still not fully worked out. Last Tuesday morning, after a software upgrade provided by our vendor, the system stopped working properly. Customers brought deeds and mortgages to our counter, but we couldn't process them or issue machine receipts. For two full days, unprocessed documents stacked up.

The staff responded to this crisis with characteristic energy and resourcefulness. Time that would have been spent processing and receipting new deeds was devoted to reducing other backlogs. Sonia Castleman and Karen Evanski stepped up to the complicated job of testing new versions of software provided by the vendor. Once we got the right software identified, configured, and installed, the whole staff pitched in and got rid of the incoming backlog in a little over a day.

I'm grateful to Jim Dries and Susan Bracken, to Karen Evanski and Sonia Castleman, to all the Deeds staff, for their great work in handling what could have been a very disruptive problem, both for us and for our citizens. If you happen to visit the Deeds office this week, be sure to say thank you.

Have a great week!

[employee names retained in public version with their permission]

Monday, February 14 (sixth letter):

Happy Valentine's Day!

Last night, I helped my daughter prepare valentines for all of her first-grade classmates.

This is only her second classroom Valentine's Day — before kindergarten, she went to a Jewish preschool where Valentine's Day and Halloween are shunned as "Christian" holidays — but she didn't need to be reminded that she had to make one for everybody. Even the kids she doesn't get along with.

She had chosen Scooby-Do valentines, with messages along the lines of "I like you even more than a Scooby Snack!"

I insisted that she had to write all the names of the recipients herself, so she assigned me the job of writing "Sarah K" in the "From:" panel on each one. I tried to imitate her writing, but my adult habits showed through: "Don't put a period after the K," she said.

I wouldn't have objected if she had personalized them, but she didn't. Rather, she went systematically through the list of first names provided by the teacher. Some of the valentines from the package were larger than the others; she used those for kids with longer names.

No doubt this scene was repeated in the home of every one of her classmates, indeed, in millions of homes around the country. Some time today, every child in every participating classroom will receive a pile of mass-produced and dutifully addressed valentines. Obviously this is better than to have the popular kids getting many handmade love notes, while others get nothing. But why do it at all?

What Sarah is learning is that you need to appreciate, and acknowledge, all of the people you work with. Just because that kid in the back of the classroom doesn't talk to you doesn't mean he isn't there. Your ongoing feud with the red-headed girl doesn't relieve you of the obligation of making her a valentine. Once a year isn't often enough to pay attention to each one of the people you spend your day with, but it's a start.

Beyond elementary school, we tend to see Valentine's Day as a celebration of romantic love, which indeed was the original point: "Be My Valentine" used to mean "Marry me!"

But childhood experiences leave a big impression. Addressing valentines in grade school may have been like taking a census — but it's a census we need to take every now and then. Most days, we spend half our waking hours in the workplace, and our relationship with co-workers affects the quality of our own lives.

We don't send valentines any more, but we should not forget to show our regard and respect for each of the people we work with.

Let's have a great week!

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments

Saturday, Febuary 12, 2005, 10:12 pm

Catching up. Several notable things which I had meant to write about at the time:

• On January 22, I participated in a panel about blogging at ConFusion (Ann Arbor's science fiction convention, despite the fact that it has been held for years many miles from here).

  The session, "Blogging: News, Opinions, People, Life", was described as follows:

  Blogging as a replacement for actually seeing people. Blogging to tell people your opinions and ideas. Blogging to get the news. Blogging is here, but what does it accomplish?

  The official panelists included John Scalzi, Kathryn Cramer, and myself. Patrick Nielsen Hayden was invited up from the audience to replace the then-ill Jeri Smith-Ready.

  An interesting discussion ensued. Pseudonymous blogging, argumentative or hateful responses from readers, the relationship between blogging and professional writing, political blogging, and other topics came up.

  In the course of writing this, I was very startled to discover that a page of the ConFusion web site lists me among the "Big-Name Fans" expected to participate in the convention.

• On February 5, I attended a concert titled "Festival of Psalms", featuring the choirs of Temple Beth Emeth and St. Clare of Assisi Episcopal Church.

  If you clicked through on those links, you'd notice that both web sites feature a drawing of the same building, and that both congregations are at 2309 Packard Road in Ann Arbor. The property is shared between the two, through a joint corporation called Genesis, and an intricately worked out arrangement of who gets to use what when. The specially designed sanctuary can be easily converted between church and synagogue use.

  The time-sharing agreement is so well put together that most TBE members rarely see Episcopalians on the premises. It's very easy to think of the place as just being our synagogue, and forget about its parallel life as a church.

  The few joint events, including the annual Erev Thanksgiving service, naturally tend to focus on what we have in common, which is to say, the Jewish scriptures. In this case, the Psalms.

  Ths concert featured a wide variety of settings and interpretations of various particular Psalms, most done by one choir or the other, with just a few numbers done by the choirs together. Janice was a soloist on a setting of the 23rd Psalm.

• On February 6th, I attended the last contra dance at Lovett Hall.

  Contra dancing is a New England tradition; though it nearly died out in the first half of the 20th century, it has been repopularized since then. Most large cities and college towns across the country have regular dances. Contra dancing resembles square dancing in form, but the social environment is much more informal, and the music is always live.

  Lovett Hall, adjoining the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan, was built by Henry Ford in 1937 as a venue for contra dancing, and named for his dancing master Benjamin Lovett. It has a large, elegant ballroom with chandeliers and a teak dance floor supported by carriage springs.

  The dances at Lovett Hall, held on eight Sunday afternoons per year, with calling by Glen Morningstar and music by The Old Michigan Ruffwater Stringband have been a staple of the contra dance community in the region.

  Recently, the Henry Ford Museum announced an abrupt and unexpected end to the series. Apparently this is part of a larger refocus of the museum toward money making activities, such as renting out Lovett Hall for wedding receptions.

  It seems ludicrous that a lovely hall built specifically for contra dancing, and owned by an institution with a mission of promoting American history, would no longer be used for the purpose. The decision plainly flies in the face of what Henry Ford intended.

  And yet, and yet — I don't want to get too close to Henry Ford's original intent. Yes, we owe him a lot for helping revive traditional dance. But his motivation for that is hard to separate that from his virulent anti-Semitism and racism, and specifically, his hatred of "Jewish Jazz".

  Since those days, Ford's grandson, Henry Ford II (also known as "Hank the Deuce") made outreach to the Jewish community an urgent priority. And Jews in Michigan, who used to shun Ford products, have long forgiven Ford Motor Company for the sins of its founder. Many Jews even work for the company now; a former president of our synagogue was a Ford exec.

  As a Jewish contradancer — one of a great many! — I suppose I'm qualified to celebrate Henry Ford's personal contribution to the world of traditional dance while putting aside his open hatred for my kind. And, indeed, I have been doing this without hesitation for 25 years now.

  But when my six-year-old daughter asked me about the painting, in the Lovett Hall stairwell, of Henry and Clara Ford (a well-wisher had placed a rose at their feet), I had to sit down with her and explain that the story was complicated.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments

Monday, January 31, 2005, 7:00 pm

From the Clerk-Register. I've been in the habit of sending a weekly email message to the more than 50 Clerk-Register staff in five locations. Here's the first four letters:

Monday, January 10 (first letter):

Good morning!

Thanks to everyone for the nice welcome I have received as your new Clerk-Register. It's been a lot of fun already, and I'm very much looking forward to the year.

But thanks most especially for all the great work you do! I know that sometimes the people who come through our office may seem indifferent, but believe me, there is a lot of appreciation among citizens throughout the county for your hard and careful work.

Of course, as you know, it's never enough just to complete all our tasks accurately and quickly. We must always remember to treat everyone who comes into the office with courtesy and respect. That means focusing on the customer, paying attention and listening. People can tell when you're preoccupied, when your mind is wandering. To gain their confidence, you have to put other concerns aside while you're helping them. Sometimes that's not easy, I know. But it should be our goal.

In the coming weeks, after the election consolidation brouhaha is settled, I will meet with each of you individually.

I think there has been just a bit of confusion about my name. The following should clear that up:

1. In person, or informal notes, everyone here is welcome to call me Larry, or Lawrence.
2. In formal documents, of course, use Lawrence Kestenbaum.
3. I don't have a middle name. I thought I had one (Carl) when I was growing up, but it doesn't appear on my birth certificate, and I stopped using it at age 18. So "Lawrence Kestenbaum" is my full, legal name.
4. It's not necessary to use my name in the greeting when answering the phone.

Let's have another great week!

Tuesday, January 18 (second letter):

Good morning!

Within living memory of our oldest citizens, Washtenaw County had about a hundred and fifty school districts. Most consisted of four sections of land, with a few dozen farm families, a three-member school board, a teacher, and a one-room schoolhouse. Each district had an annual June meeting at the schoolhouse to choose the school board members.

Rural students who wished to attend high school had to travel to the nearest city which had one. As demand grew for education beyond eighth grade, more cities and villages began to build high schools. Rural districts were annexed to bolster the tax base. When all the one-room districts were absorbed, each community with a high school was at the center of a consolidated school district, roughly circular in shape, superimposed on our checkerboard of square townships.

As the school districts grew fewer and larger, the June annual meeting became the June school board election. And that grew into a whole school election infrastructure, duplicating the one organized by cities and townships for holding federal, state, and local government elections. School districts have been maintaining a duplicate set of registration cards for authenticating voters at the polls. They have a duplicate set of election precincts, and a duplicate structure for hiring and training and paying election workers.

No one says that school districts were doing a bad job at holding elections. But they were doing the exact same job as our township and city clerks, and often repeating the exact same clerical tasks, like updating a voter's address.

The Legislature has now declared an end to this untidy dual system. No longer will school districts maintain voter registrations and hold elections. No longer will any elections be held on Mondays. No longer will there be two completely incompatible kinds of elections. No longer can elections take place just about any day of the year.

There is a lot of controversy about the new election consolidation law. I think the Legislature made some big mistakes, and we are in for some administrative headaches. But it is our duty to follow the law.

Probably the biggest problem is that the responsibility for school board elections (which will now be in May) is left hanging.

It makes the most sense for city and township clerks to run these elections within their jurisdiction, just as they do all other elections. The local clerks are already equipped to do every required task. And each voter would have a single polling place for all elections.

But the local clerks are not required to participate (to "opt in" for school board elections), and some don't want to. It means holding elections regularly every year instead of every other year. It means two or more different ballots in the many precincts split by school district lines. It may mean hiring additional staff — though the cost would be covered by the schools.

If a city or township clerk declines to hold school board elections, the responsibility falls to the county clerk. We can do it. And the school districts will pay our expenses. But it's not a good idea.

First of all, we would have to re-create the election infrastructure that already exists in every township and city. We'd have to rent polling places, hire election workers, process absentee ballot requests, etc., etc. And we'd have to hire many more county clerk staff to accomplish it all. This can't possibly be the most economical way to hold a school election.

Second, if any non-school ballot issue or office vacancy is on the ballot, then the affected cities and townships have to hold the May election anyway, in their regular precincts. That means our preparation goes to waste, and our costs won't be covered by the school districts. Voters will also be confused if the May polling place is subject to change depending on what's on the ballot.

Third, once the county clerk's office has worked out how to hold a regular local election, bypassing the cities and townships, the Legislature is going to notice that we are back to a dual election system, with different government agencies duplicating efforts. It will seem very logical to take election authority away from the cities and townships, and let counties run the entire process.

This may not be a disadvantage, if you'd rather that Michigan be like most other states, where all election matters are handled at the county level. But it would seriously erode the powers and reason for being of township governments. That's why the Michigan Townships Association has recommended that all townships "opt-in" to take responsibility for school board elections. I hope our townships are listening.

All this will be decided by the end of January — so stay tuned!

This is an admittedly longwinded message at the beginning of a short — but very busy — week. Undoubtedly a lot of business which accumulated on Monday will show up at our counters today, perhaps as much as doubling the normal load. Meanwhile, the extreme cold weather, slippery driving conditions, and short daylight hours add to the stress.

It takes extra effort to be kind and patient with customers — and one another — on days like today. I am grateful to each and every one of you for making that effort.

Monday, January 24 (third letter):

Good morning!

(1) Last Wednesday, as part of the election consolidation process, we brought together the city and township clerks and school district representatives at Pittsfield Township Hall, in order to convene meetings of the Election Coordination Committee of each school district within the county.

None of us is entirely happy with the election consolidation law, and all of us (myself included) had gaps in our knowledge of the process. New duties are being imposed, new arrangements have to be made, and deadlines are very tight. I have heard about "ugly" confrontations over consolidation among officials in other counties. But Washtenaw's meetings proceeded in a calm and constructive spirit that is a credit to our community.

Not everything was resolved, but I think everyone came away with the sense that we'll be able to conquer this problem.

(2) The United County Officers Association (UCOA) is meeting in Lansing this week; the chief deputies and I will each be attending at least part of the sessions. I'll be there (and out of the office) on Tuesday.

(3) My daughter has been learning in school about Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks and the civil rights movement. When she and I talked about this, I remembered an experience related by a friend of mine, who attended high school in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, an affluent Detroit suburb.

In March 1968, a few months after the Detroit riots, and three weeks before he was assassinated, Dr. King came to Grosse Pointe High School to give a speech. Apparently he was not well received at first; some of the high school students yelled insults and curses to shout him down. It must have been a very tense scene, in a crowded gymnasium. Rather than ignore the disruption or respond in kind, he invited the hecklers to stand with him at the podium.

I don't know if they accepted the invitation, but this act transformed the crowd's mood and the moment, and it made a deep impression on my friend. It was a dramatic demonstration of the power of listening and paying attention.

In any interaction, is human nature to mirror the attitude and behavior of the person you're dealing with. Rudeness is reflected with rudeness. It takes inner strength and will to overcome the vicious circle, to respond to difficult people with courtesy and respect. It doesn't always work, but it is wonderful when it does.

Have a great week, and keep warm!

Monday, January 31 (fourth letter):

This morning brings news of the opening of Michael Jackson's trial on child molestation charges in California. Undoubtedly we will be hearing much more about this through the media in the coming months, whether we want to or not.

In the legal system, which includes each of us in the Clerk-Register's office, we strive every day to conduct fair trials and impose just punishments. In theory, the system is the same for the rich and the poor, the friendless and the well-connected. But highly publicized celebrity trials challenge this theory, and sow cynicism, division, and misconception among the public about the courts.

We involve our citizens in the process as jurors, as witnesses, as constituents, as taxpayers. It can be maddening when saturation media coverage of a far-away criminal case changes their attitude toward us, and affects their behavior in our courthouse.

But consider how much harder it is to play host to such a trial, to live for months under intense national and international media scrutiny.

When it happened in the county where I used to live, the picture of our circuit court which splashed onto television sets all over the world (including through a made-for-TV movie about the case) was almost unrecognizable. The whole outside world came to conclusions about our judges and procedures which were the opposite of the ordinary truth. Locals called it "the reality inversion."

Keep this in mind as you hear cable TV "experts" dissect the courts and judges and prosecutors and procedures in Santa Barbara County in the next few weeks.

Washtenaw County may not be home to figures like O. J. Simpson, Martha Stewart, or Michael Jackson. But we do have a much higher profile in the world than other counties our size. And of course we deal with local and Detroit news media all the time. It's only a matter of time before CNN finds some reason to bestow attention on us.

It's not enough just to strive for justice and fairness. We also need to strive for grace under pressure.

Have a great week!

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments

Sunday, January 16, 2005, 3:43 pm

Post-Transition Notes. In the end, the transition went smoothly, the new chief deputies have been well received, and everything seems to be going well.

Despite adverse weather, the swearing-in ceremony had an overflow crowd. Many thanks to all who attended, or wanted to.

The Ann Arbor News has run a couple of articles about the Clerk's office recently:

• Haines, her way: 'The flag lady' concludes 44 years of public service (Jan. 3): Even as Washtenaw County's clerk and register of deeds sat far from home in the Amsterdam airport, her red, white and blue scarf gave her away. "Are you Peggy Haines?" a woman asked.
• Candidates often fund bids for county office (Jan. 16): Democrat Larry Kestenbaum and Republican incumbent Peggy Haines' battle for the Washtenaw County clerk/register of deeds office in the November election ended up costing each of them thousands of dollars of their own money. (Also noted and quoted at Arbor Update.)

The biggest Clerk-Register issue so far is election consolidation, of which more later.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments

Monday, December 20, 2004, 1:05 pm

Transition Notes. I take office as Washtenaw County Clerk and Register of Deeds on January 1st, and start work on Monday the 3rd. However, according to tradition, the public swearing-in ceremony and reception for all the countywide officials (prosecutor, sheriff, clerk-register, treasurer and drain commissioner) is held a few days later.

The Clerk-Register has three chief deputies who are each "at-will" political appointees.

• Chief deputy for deeds and vital records will be Jim Dries (rhymes with "trees") of Scio Township, formerly with Polk & Company, and a current township trustee.
• Chief deputy for elections and administration will be Derrick Jackson of Ypsilanti Township, currently education and outreach director for Ozone House, and candidate in this year's primary for township trustee.
• Karen Edman will continue as chief deputy for court services.

All other staff of the office will continue, as far as I know.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments

Tuesday, December 14, 2004, 9:50 am

Presidential Electors Meet. For the third election in a row, I went to the state capitol in Lansing yesterday to watch Michigan's presidential electors cast their votes. I also had lunch with the electors and assorted hangers-on, including Gov. Jennifer Granholm, Lt.Gov. John Cherry, and state Democratic chair Mark Brewer.

Much has changed in Lansing since my last visit. The Michigan National Tower, the tallest building on the Lansing skyline, built by auto magnate R. E. Olds for (what became) the Michigan National Bank, has been taken over by the state and renamed. The "Senate Hearing Room" where the electors lunch was held (very fancy, with walnut paneling and high coffered ceiling) is the former banking room.

Apparently Michigan National Bank no longer exists. It used to be the state's banking behemoth, at least geographically. In the 1930s, they persuaded the Legislature to grant them an exception to the regulations that limited the branching of all other banks.

The meeting of the electors was held in the state senate chamber at 2:00 pm. Lt.Gov. Cherry presided. A rabbi and a minister gave invocations. One elector was absent, and a replacement was elected. Gov. Granholm gave a short speech. The electors voted by ballot for president: 17 votes for John Kerry. Then they voted for vice president: 17 votes for John Edwards. Then U.S.Sen. Debbie Stabenow gave a short speech. An imam (Islamic) and a priest (Episcopal) gave closing invocations. The meeting was adjourned.

In theory, Michigan cannot have "faithless" electors who vote in unexpected ways, because state law provides that "refusal or failure to vote for the candidates for president and vice president appearing on the Michigan ballot of the political party which nominated the elector constitutes a resignation from the office of elector; his/her vote shall not be recorded, and the remaining electors shall forthwith fill the vacancy." This law is probably unconstitutional, but it has never been challenged.

Update: An Outrage in Minnesota. Minnesota did have a "faithless elector" on Monday, who failed to vote as expected. However, since the state allowed the electors to vote secretly, we will never know who it was!

I strongly agree with Timothy Noah's argument that presidential electors should NOT be allowed to hide their choices.

I call upon the Congress to reject Minnesota's electoral votes unless and until the votes of each elector are identified.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments

Friday, November 19, 2004, 7:37 am

Northern Neighbor. I was up in Clare, Michigan, Wednesday and Thursday for a meeting and training sponsored by the Michigan Association of Registers of Deeds. This morning, I found the following in the comments section, signed "Northern Neighbor":

Larry,

Your tone is ridiculous. Ms. Haines has been nothing but 100% professional to everyone. I wouldn't let you in to my office either before I was required to. First of all you're an Ann Arbor Democrat and secondly an Attorney, oh boy, it is clear that trust would be a HUGE issue. Just because you want to take office before your term begins and Ms. Haines has a responsibility to continue to operate her office through the end of the year, you attack her. She offered you the opportunity to transition once you take office. Then, your comments about Northfield Township are ridiculous as well, you weren't at the meeting, where transition was discussed and you have no idea what was said unless you operate on word of mouth. If this is the way you plan to communicate, the people of Washtenaw County are going to be gravely disappointed in your lack of ability to deliver even half of the services that were provided by Ms. Haines and ethics obviously are not a concern of yours. Just be aware, we will all be watching your budget and your actions. Let's see if you can amaze us all and perform your duties ethically when you are sworn in, thus far with your actions, I have little hope that you will live up to the level of professionalism that Ms. Hanes has operated at for a number of years. Who knows, maybe I'm wrong and you might learn from your mistakes. I doubt it. What a shame.

Okay, I should admit right away that I haven't been directly involved in Northfield Township's transition. What I know about that situation comes from the newspaper and as reported to me by trustworthy folks on the scene. I also noticed the bitterness between the factions when I campaigned door to door in Northfield Township. If the initial hard line taken by the outgoing supervisor has been softened since the election, I applaud him for that.

Of course, Peggy has the responsibility to o