Polygon, the Dancing Bear

Occasional notes on politics, history, technology, architecture,
and the life of a county clerk

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Current entries

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!