Archive for the ‘Local Elections’ Category

You’ve just come off a very heated campaign that you won by the narrowest margin you’ve ever had.  The main issues in the campaign were jobs, crime, and high taxes.  Your city has the second highest amount of violent crime in the state, property tax assessments are poorly done, and a number of major companies have left your city for a neighboring one because your administration wouldn’t help them.  With all of these factors in play, what would you be doing right now?

If you would have immediately begun the process of trying to bring more jobs to your city you would be a smart mayor.  That’s not what Steve Luecke (D-South Bend) is doing though.  After winning a third term as mayor, Luecke and the Democrat controlled Common Council are now preparing to focus their attention on trying to pass an ordinance that would require local employers (or what’s left of them), landlords, and businesspeople to not discriminate on the basis of sexual-orientation.  If a man walked into your restaurant but proceeded to use the women’s bathroom and you tried to stop him, and he informed you that he “felt” like a woman or had a sex-change operation, you could do nothing to prevent him from using the woman’s bathroom.  If one of your male employees showed up for work dressed as a woman you couldn’t fire them.

Word has it that the South Bend Common Council will be holding a first reading on the ordinance (which was defeated in 2006) as early as Monday afternoon.  Apparently supporters of the measure are trying to pass it while they still have a strong friend in Councilperson Charlotte Pfiefer (D).  Ms. Pfiefer was defeated in the ‘07 primary.  Stay tuned to Hoosier Access to learn more about this developing story.

For more information on this issue please visit: www.nospecialrights.net

Here is the article I mentioned earlier that ran in the Bethel College student newspaper, the Bethel Beacon, about efforts by Mishawaka Democrats to intimidate student voters.

Click here for the scan.

Several Bethel students learned a lesson about voting and politics when they went to the polls on Tuesday Nov. 6. For many it was their first voting experience. They were surprised to encounter challenges as they attempted to exercise their right to vote. Some claim they were intimidated during the process.

Many of the students had registered to vote using a Bethel College address. The college is located in Mishawaka’s sixth district, where Bethel professor Dave Schmidt was running for the common council seat against incumbent [Democrat] Ron Banicki.

“Somehow the Banicki campaign got a Bethel housing directory and had identified all of the students who lived in Logan Village and on Donaldson Street and were challenging their right to vote at John Young School,” said Mark Root, Schmidt’s campaign manager.

Rita Glenn of the Saint Joseph County election board said the board issued a challenger certificate to a Banicki representative named Dan Baltimore.

Students, however, felt intimidated by the process. They questioned some things they claim were said to them.

“A gentleman informed me that I had to sign an affidavit before I could vote. I questioned him on this and refused to sign it. He became very rude and told me that unless I signed this, I couldn’t vote because he was ‘opposing/going’ against my vote,” said junior Hope Grame.

Grame said he told her that if his appeal of her vote went through, her vote wouldn’t matter and she could be prosecuted for falsifying her address.

“There was also mention that I could lose my financial aid,” she said.

Glenn said the election board did receive complaints about what was going on at John Young and they sent representatives from both parties to the school to monitor the situation.

“On two occasions the St. Joseph County election board was called to John Young School, and on both occasions worked out a process for the students to vote and also told this man that he was not to speak to the voters,” Root said.

Root said that the man continued to cause problems.

Am I the only one that sees the dark irony?

Democrats want students to vote for them because they say their party will increase student aid.

But when those students might not be voting for the “right people”, the Democrats challenge their votes and threaten to take their student aid away.
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Even though the municipal election is not even two weeks behind us there’s already speculation about what Republican South Bend mayoral candidate Juan Manigault will do next.  GOP folks in Indianapolis were as impressed as people in South Bend were at the quality of the mayoral candidate.

Although some may think that the sound 62%-38% defeat suffered by Manigault is terrible, it is important to remember that South Bend is roughly 22% Republican and it was Manigault’s first time running and he was heavily outspent on TV advertising.

Two days after the election the South Bend Tribune ran an article that quoted St. Joseph County GOP Chairman Chris Riley as hinting at a possible congressional bid for Manigault.  So far two Republican candidates have jumped in and then quickly jumped out of the 2nd Congressional District race.  As it stands now, freshman Democrat Rep. Joe Donnelly is going to face little, if any, opposition to his re-election campaign in 2008.

Other suggestions have been that Manigault seek to run against State Rep. Pat Bauer (D-South Bend) in what could be a very volatile election year for statehouse incumbents that the public perceives to be part of the problem with high property taxes.

So far Manigault has not made mention of any near-term political plans.  On election night he did say that the public was not seeing the last of him and if necessary he may run again for South Bend mayor.  The best advice is to stay tuned to see what this rising star will turn to next.

And here I thought that it was the Republicans, with their evil voter ID law, that were trying to suppress voters and keep people from the polls.

I guess not.

Doing whatever it takes to win–and I mean whatever it takes–is par for the course for Democrats up in St. Joe County.

From WNDU:

The winning Mishawaka councilman still wants to challenge whether or not some voters should have been able to vote in his district.

Democratic incumbent Ron Banicki says a number of Bethel College students should not be able to vote in the 6th district, because they live in the 5th District.

He wants students to vote with provisional ballots until they can prove they live in his district.

“We are not necessarily challenging students from Bethel College but anybody that lives in the wrong district faculty staff commuter students that live in the different districts,” says 6th District Incumbent Ron Banicki.

Banicki’s challenger was a Bethel College professor.

The election board also says workers were reprimanded today after students were harassed and intimidated while trying to vote in the district.

For those of you not familiar with Bethel College, it is (as described on its website) “an evangelical Christian college affiliated with the Missionary Church.”

An HP reader has sent me a PDF scan of an article about this in the Bethel Beacon, the college’s student paper, and I’ll post that as soon as I can convert it over to an image.
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Greg Ballard was featured on Fox News yesterday. I am thrilled that he got the attention, but I didn’t care for the story that much. They got some details wrong (which always frustrates me). They talk about Peterson going negative and attacking Ballard “months” before the election while it was hardly more than a week. While this seems minor, getting the detail wrong leads to getting the interpretation wrong. The interpretation is that this was a major anti-incumbency election and that Peterson made a mistake by giving Ballard name recognition (which is probably correct) and casting him as “inexperienced” which voters actually want (which is not correct).

This was not an election saying we are tired of “professional politicians.” That issue never came up at all. The reality was that no one believed anything that was coming out of the Peterson campaign, so the “inexperienced” argument did not hold up at all. We actually believed that he does have the necessary experience. This was simply an election on taxes, crime and ethics. Fox News does mention the tax issue, but they do not point out how profound that issue was.

The “lesson learned” according to the “experts” is that incumbents should be wary of the next election and that voters are angry about incumbents.

The “lesson learned” according to me is that government should not overtax, under perform and lie like a dog to its citizens.

The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette and Indy Star both printed stories over the past two days about the uncanny elections of both Tom Henry in Fort Wayne and Greg Ballard in Indianapolis with precinct by precinct analysis.  I recommend reading both stories here and here.

Interesting that both Matt Kelty and Bart Peterson lost their home precincts.

As the effects of the collapse of the Peterson machine in Indianapolis are still reverberating across Indiana, it occurred to me that Jonathan Weinzapfel, the mayor of Evansville, won a very easy election for which he raised a large campaign war chest.

Mayor Whiny still has most of that money (around half a million bucks, by most estimates).

With Schellinger likely damaged by the fall of Peterson and the body blow suffered by the Marion County Democratic Party, might the ambitious mayor of Evansville seek to try his hand in the Democratic field?

He’ll never be able to run for Congress so long as Brad Ellsworth holds the 8th District seat.

Besides, even if Mayor Whiny is plotting a Senate bid in five years (presumably against Lugar or Lugar’s former seat), it will be hard to roll that state campaign money over into a federal campaign.

The intricacies of campaign finance law would tend toward the money going for a state election.

He could be considering a run for Attorney General or another lesser statewide office, but his ego might be too large for him to consider running for such down-ticket positions.

What’s that leave?

As a young politician (Weinzapfel is in his early forties), he might be more tolerant of being lieutenant governor (in expectation of running for the top job soon after) than being one of the state’s lesser elected functionaries.

In that case, he might be shopping around to see which of the top two candidates will make him the best offer to be their number two.

But if his ego won’t let him wait, half a million is a lot of money.

It would be a nice nest egg to start a gubernatorial bid.
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Joel Harris first mentioned it in the comments, but it looks like Bruce Schumacher in District 2 just lost his seat before he even got a chance to enjoy it. Democrat Angela Mansfield retained possession when, according to the Star:

The results were based on votes that had gone uncounted Election Day after voting machine memory cards were inadvertently left untabulated.

“I got a call today, and apparently it (the vote memory card) had been left in the machine,” she said. “I was kind of getting used to the idea I would have more time.”

I’m not going to don the tin foil hat, but that seems like an awfully fortunate coincidence for Mansfield.

So the majority is down to 16-13 and things just got a little tighter for Ballard before he even steps foot in the Mayor’s office.

I’m really just a numbers guy who likes politics.

I have been looking at the amazing Indianapolis election to start understanding what happened. Clearly this was a protest vote, but it is still amazing that Ballard was able to pull this out. So here is what the numbers tell me:

One of the contentions in the recent Indianapolis Star poll was that the Star should have used 2004 turnout information rather than 2003.

2003: 150,440 votes cast (26.8%)
2004: 323,673 votes cast (53.7%)
2007: 160,857 votes cast (25.8%)

I guess 2007 looked like….a municipal election! Though a bit down on turnout which I find VERY interesting. It was assumed that the turnout would be high, even during election day, but it did not turn out that way. There was a lot of talk about what the turnout numbers would mean. Predominantly what I heard was that high turnout favored Ballard (large protest) and low turnout favored Peterson (the “base” voting). What we had was a low turnout and Ballard winning–so much for conventional wisdom.

So what happened (below the fold)
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I’ve had my disagreements with Republican Marion County Chairman, Tom John, but I have to give the guy credit. Matt Tully is reporting that John and Marion County Clerk Beth White had a chilly exchange this morning. Not so shocking there. But unlike the way that former Democrat County Chairman Ed Treacy used to treat former Clerk Doris Anne Sadler, with hate, vitriol and lies spewing from his mouth, Tom John uses sarcasm. As a fan of sarcasm, I can appreciate that.

Here’s the exchange that Tully witnessed:

The polls had been open for an hour when Marion County Clerk Beth White bumped into Marion County GOP Chairman Tom John at the City-County Building this morning.

The two aren’t the best of friends; part of John’s job is to toss sharp criticism at the Democratic clerk. It’s a part of the job at which John is particularly adept. So as the two crossed paths, they shared a greeting that was as chilly as this election morning’s air.

“Things are going a little better than last time,” John said to White, referring to this spring’s Primary Day meltdown.

“A lot better,” White said, walking away.

“It couldn’t be worse,” John said, taking an early morning dig at the clerk.

Yep, that pretty much sums up the day so far as compared White’s work in the primary; “It couldn’t be worse.”

Update: I guess we shouldn’t get our hopes up on this election running smoothly. Thanks to a comment by Joel Harris, I’m copying and pasting an update from Indy Undercover.

LEOs and CCs, Indyu just got an e-mail from inside the Clerk’s Office and part of the problem with voting machines is that Beth forgot to charge the batteries in the part of the voting machines that record the results operates on batteries and they have to be charged in order to work. Can you believe it? Your vote may not count because Beth White of all people forgetting to charge her batteries?!

Maybe Tom John should hold on his “It couldn’t be worse” line.

Update: So far the problems seem to be few except if you live in Vernon Brown’s district where he seems be making the rounds in and out of several voting precincts (not allowed). But so far, the problems have been nuisances rather than catastrophic like in the primary. The list includes:

– Paper ballots could not be scanned after they were filled out because the machines that scan them were not working. Thus, ballots will be kept locked inside the machines until the scanning issue is fixed.

– The precinct’s touch-screen machine was not working because of the battery issue.

– Election judges wore credentials provided by White’s office. The credentials declared they are valid for “Nov. 8, 2007.”

Wow, she couldn’t even get the date right! Your Marion County Clerk everyone! And this person is allowed to run elections?  Sheesh.

Here’s a little ditty for you to sing on your way to the polls with lyrics courtesy of Indy Undercover and put to music by Sir Hailstone of the Digital Farmers Blog.

 

 Monroe Mash: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Looks like you can vote early and often…legally.

From WANE TV
LAFAYETTE - AP) — In a quirk of Indiana election law, absentee voters who have second thoughts about the ballots they’ve cast can have a do-over and vote again.

Debbie Ingersoll, the Republican co-director of the Tippecanoe County Board of Election and Registration, says the law allows those who have voted absentee to vote as many times as they want through the afternoon of Election Day on Tuesday.  Only the last ballot cast will be counted.

So if you know anybody who has already cast their vote for Bart Peterson and is regretting it, let them know there is still time to change it!

Hat Tip - Fort Wayne News