Tag: Mick Wright

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Ballot Bombshell: Election Machine Issue Becomes Moot

Some drama was expected, but nothing like the more-than-audible gasp that exuded from the audience at Monday’s meeting of the Shelby County Commission, when Tami Sawyer articulated what was suddenly and shockingly becoming obvious:

“There will be no new machines in 2020,” said Sawyer, summarizing it all in an epiphany after an hour or so of intense debate and argument on both sides of the speakers’ dock regarding what sort of new voting machines the county should get in its long-planned buy in time for the August election cycle locally.

County Election Coordinator Linda Phillips had been making and repeating that promise of new machines for most of the last year, kindling up an ever-growing local controversy as to which type of machine. On Sunday she had published a viewpoint in The Commercial Appeal in which the following two sentences were the key ones: “Now that we are about to replace our outdated voting equipment, the controversy has reached the boiling point. I have spent my career conducting elections, and I’d like to share my viewpoint.”

Jackson Baker

House District 97 candidate Gabby Salinas (l), one of two Democrats running, enjoys an exotic Mideastern dance in her honor at a weekend fundraiser.

Phillips’ viewpoint, as spread out over two pages in the paper, was that ballot-marking devices (BMDs) are superior to voter-marked paper ballots (VMPBs) because, she argued, they are more secure from error, though she acknowledged they were somewhat more expensive as machinery. A contrary point of view is being argued by a determined group of local voter-reform activists, who stress that the hand-marked method is cheaper and more easily checked for accuracy and that the ballot-marking devices favored by Phillips are eminently hackable.

To underscore the latter point, one of the VMPB advocates, Bennie Smith, who doubles as a Democratic member of the Shelby County Commission and styles himself an expert on voting technology, had demonstrated to a previous meeting of the commission that he could insert a predetermined vote total into a result line of the BMD machine’s paper readout.

Both kinds of machine, Phillips has pointed out, possess a “paper trail” capability allowing voters to see and approve a printout of their ballot. (Critics of BMDs, the machines employing ballot-marked devices, complain that voters are asked to base their comparison ultimately on an unintelligible bar code.)

Anyway, the verbal battle was raging as usual on Monday, though Phillips herself was absent, when everything became moot.

Prompted by commission chairman Mark Billingsley, Marcy Ingram, deputy county attorney and de facto legal adviser to commission members, announced to the assembly at large that state law — to wit, TCA 29-111 — forbade any purchase of new voting technology without a prior voter referendum.

“Yes, Mr. Chairman earlier today, we determined that in the budget, the commission has a lot of leeway to use CIP funds, general obligation bonds, to pay for the voting machines. And there’s a statute on the books that’s about 15 years old that says that if you use general obligation bonds you do have to put it out to the voters to let them decide whether or not this is appropriate. So, with that being said, you would have to have a special election or have to put the item on the August ballot, if you intend to use CIP.”

Billingsley reinforced the point: “So in layman’s language for people in the audience and people listening at home … there would have to be a referendum.”

“That would be correct,” Ingram replied. And moments later, Commissioner Sawyer expressed the bottom line: “No new machines in 2020.”

Sawyer went on to argue — in the long run, successfully — that it would still be useful to vote on the resolution that had been in question before the bombshell.

That was Agenda Item #33: “Resolution of the Board of County Commissioners of Shelby County, Tennessee, urging the Shelby County Election Commission to pursue a voter-marked paper ballot approach when spending county funds for new voting equipment.” The primary sponsors of the resolution were Commissioners Van Turner, Willie Brooks, Sawyer, and Reginald Milton.

The background was the fact that the Shelby County Election Commission had, at Phillips’ request, issued an RFP (request for proposal) to potential bidders who would supply new voting machines for use by her promised date of August, and the controversy over which kind of machine had flared up there.

On the basis of the divided responsibilities built into Shelby County government — in this case, that, while the SCEC could decide on the machinery, the county commission could vote Yes or No on whether to fund the purchase — the advocates of hand-marked ballots, prevented from speaking at SCEC on grounds that the RFP was underway, had resolved to take their case to the commision.

Before attorney Ingram’s bombshell announcement, the VMPB activists — law professor and former County Commissioner Steve Mulroy, teacher and recent city council candidate Erika Sugarmon, former legislator and school board member Mike Kernell, and veteran rights activist Dr. Suhkara A. Yahweh — had pleaded their case, with eloquence and examples.

It was all for naught, though there would indeed be a vote on the agenda item, expressing a preference for ultimate use of hand-marked ballots by a de facto party-line vote of 7-6, with yea votes coming from Democrats Brooks, Mickell Lowery, Eddie Jones, Milton, Sawyer, Michael Whaley, and Turner and no votes coming from Republicans Mick Wright, David Brandon, Amber Mills, Brandon Morrison, chairman Billingsley, and Democrat Edmund Ford.

Jackson Baker

Commissioner Wright cited the fundamental irony

In the fallout from the bombshell, there was general discontent from commissioners, whatever their ideology or point of view on the merits of particular machines, that word of the potential predicament had not been sounded long before, that, as Chairman Billingsley put it, “the people charged with the election would have made us aware of this by now.”

Commissioner Wright cited the ultimate irony of the situation: “It’s disappointing that the state has this rule in place, that the voters would have to vote using the system we want to replace in order to have the system that we want to replace be replaced.”

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Shelby County Commission Ponders Matters of Time

CREDIT: Reginald Milton

Toward the end of Monday’s meeting of the Shelby County Commission, second-term member Mark Billingsley, looking out from his seat on the stage of the Vasco Smith County Administration Building, swept an arm out toward the auditorium’s row of seats, all virtually empty, as Billingsley pointed out, save for a few isolated staff members.

Billingsley went on to suggest  to his colleagues that the commission’s recent decision to change the start time of its meetings from 3 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. — ostensibly, on the initiative of new member Mick Wright, to enable more members of the general public to attend meetings — had failed, and that maybe the commission ought to revert to its previous start time.

A couple of things struck at least one observer as unusual: 1) that the effective half-hour difference did not seem all that consequential; and 2) that it had been Billingsley himself, at the beginning of his first term, four years ago, who had moved for a change in the body’s start time, from 1:30 p.m. to 3 p.m. And his reasoning back then? That such a change would enable more members of the general public to attend meetings.

In one sense, given the number of reasonably significant matters that have occupied this commission in its first couple of months, the matter of starting time might have seemed relatively unimportant. But is it? Commissioner Wright, who represents Bartlett, had originally suggested an even later start time, 6 p.m., but that was shaved back during later consideration, on the grounds that, while the public might indeed be freer to attend in the evenings, staff members — whose presence on many matters is essential — would be inconvenienced by having to stick around.

There is no perfect time for a public body to meet, of course. The Memphis City Council’s start time for its Tuesday public meetings has, for several years, been 4:30 p.m., a time that strikes something of a mean between the needs of public and city government staffers, but seems mainly to be of advantage to the 10 o’clock newscasts of local television stations, by providing them with relatively fresh newsbreaks.

On Monday, Wright earned a bit of teasing from colleague Edmund Ford Jr., who noted that several of Wright’s initiatives involved clock time, including another matter up for discussion on Monday — that of Daylight Saving Time. Wright had suggested that the back-and-forth shifting — back an hour at one time of year and up again later on — creates unnecesary dislocation in people’s lives.

Wright first proposed including the state’s abandonment of Daylight Saving Time as an item in the commission’s recommended legislative package for the General Assembly but later said he’d be satisfied with the imposition of year-long Daylight Saving Time. The idea in either case, with or without DST, was to maintain a year-long consistency.

Ultimately, the commission approved an amended version of Wright’s resolution, one that would urge the General Assembly to reconsider the issue of Daylight Saving Time without recommending a particular course.

• As befits a local legislative body, perhaps, the incidence of partisan disagreements is not large, but it does exist. It showed itself on a few matters Monday.

One instance concerned the meaning of a resolution asking the General Assembly to amend the state’s Basic Education Program (BEP) “to fund additional school Resource Officers, Social Workers, and Counselors.”

A debate of sorts erupted over the meaning of the term “Resource Officers.” Amber Mills, the resolution’s original sponsor and a Republican, wanted the term construed to denote security officers. Or, at least, she accepted commission Chairman Van Turner‘s paraphrase of her intent to mean something such-like.

Other commissioners, including the body’s Democrats, wanted a looser definition, and they prevailed in a party-line vote, in which Wright, Billingsley, and Brandon Morrison, all Republicans, sided with Mills on the losing side. The final  resolution, with the looser definition intact, then passed 12-0.

Another Mills resolution asked the General Assembly “to avoid the adoption of Legislation, Policies, Rules of Regulations requiring the implementation of unfunded mandates.” This one, arguably reflecting a traditional Republican concern, was approved unanimously once it was reworded to specificy “unfunded education mandates” — which Mills accepted as expressing her basic intent.

A third matter reflected this commision’s apparent inclination to skirt possible divides in the interests of unity. This was regarding an ordinance, up for the second of three required readings, to amend the requirements of the Shelby County Minority and Women Business Enterprise Program (MWBE).

As outlined by Shep Wilbun, chief county diversity officer, the ordinance went into minute detail defining the terms, numerical and otherwise, that either permitted or encouraged the awarding of contracts in greater numbers to firms owned by women and/or African Americans. In the end, there appeared to be general agreement on the commission that the accretion of new detail was such as to make an already abstruse process even more “cumbersome” — an adjective supplied by Commissioner Morrison.

And thus the ordinance was routed back to committee to undergo a process of simplifcation.

• Last weekend saw a visit here by Tennessee Democratic Party chair Mary Mancini, one of several planned for statewide under the head, “Analyze, Organize, Mobilize,” to discuss party affairs and strategy. A group of 30 to 50 local Democrats met with Mancini at the headquarters building of U.S. Pipefitters Local 614 in Arlington.

On hand to assist in the process, in the wake of what has been a highly successful year or two for the party, was Shelby County Democratic Party chair Corey Strong, who confided that he intends to focus on his job as special project director at Shelby County Schools and does not plan to seek reelection in March, when local Democrats meet in convention.

The forthcoming convention will re-inaugurate a cycle that was interrupted when the Shelby County party, having fallen into disunity and ineffectiveness, was dissolved by Mancini in 2016.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Defining the Divide on the Shelby County Commission

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

In the month and a half that the current version of the Shelby County Commission — the one in office as of the August 2nd county general election — has been meeting, it has become clear that serious division of opinion exists on the body, more or less along party lines.

But, so far, no open antagonism has manifested itself. That fact would distinguish this commission from its two immediate predecessors — the commission of 2010-2014, which saw animosities flare between members, and the one of 2014-2018, which saw open warfare between a bipartisan contingent on the commission and the county mayor’s office.

Two key votes at the commission’s Monday meeting indicated the divides of this commission. One vote was to approve a vote of no confidence in the recent decision by the U.S. Department of Justice to terminate a Memorandum of Agreement with Shelby County providing continued DOJ oversight of problems with Juvenile Court.

Jackson Baker

As Democrat Tami Sawyer (right) speaks to a no-confidence resolution on end of DOJ oversight of Juvenile Court, Republican Brandon Morrison looks on disapprovingly.

Both a commission majority and County Mayor Lee Harris have publicly disapproved of the decision to end oversight, and on Monday the vote on the no-confidence resolution, co-sponsored by Commissioner Tami Sawyer and Commission Chair Van Turner, both Democrats, passed by a 7-4-1 vote, with the four opponents being four of the commission’s five Republicans — Brandon Morrison, Amber Mills, David Bradford, and Mark Billingsley — while the fifth GOP member, Mick Wright, abstained.

A second resolution, this one co-sponsored by Sawyer and Edmund Ford Jr., requested that the Memorandum of Understanding between four major law-enforcement branches — the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office, the Memphis Police Department, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, and the Shelby County District Attorney General — be amended “to include TBI’s investigation of critical injuries” resulting from law enforcement shootings.

The resolution’s essential point was to enlarge TBI oversight of such incidents. The vote was similar, another 7-4-1 vote, with Wright joining the dissenters this time and Bradford abstaining.

This basic divide, along party lines, is likely to continue, especially on issues of social significance.

• Tom Perez, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, made a stop in Memphis on Saturday at the National Civil Rights Museum for an installment of the DNC’s “Seat at the Table” tour, designed to galvanize the involvement of African-American women in the party.

In his farewell message to attendees, Perez took note of one of the major issues on the November 6th ballot — the referendum for Memphis voters on repeal of Ranked Choice Voting, a method for determining winners, sans runoffs, in multi-candidate races in which no candidate has a majority.

“I’ve spent a lot of time on that issue,” said Perez, after giving a hat-tip to Steve Mulroy, the University of Memphis law professor and former county commissioner who has been a major proponent of RCV (aka Instant Runoff Voting), scheduled to be employed in the 2019 city election, unless repealed.

Perez suggested that “the Republicans” were “trying to take it away,” though in fact it was incumbents of the nonpartisan Memphis City Council who implanted the repeal referendum on the ballot.

“If I were living here, I’d vote no on that referendum, because you’ve already voted for it,” said Perez, who referred to a previous referendum, in 2008, when Memphis voters approved the process by a 70 percent majority. “It forces candidates to talk to everyone, instead of just that one base. It fosters civility because you can’t ignore 70 percent of the people.”

Perez went on: “Talk to them! What a radical concept. That’s why y’all voted for it, and that’s why they don’t want it.”

• Three weeks after Mike Stewart of Nashville, the Democrats’ caucus chairman in the Tennessee House of Representatives, came to Memphis to investigate Republican House candidate Scott McCormick, Stewart returned to reveal his findings.

What he’d been looking for was the absentee record from Shelby County Schools board meetings of McCormick, who is trying to unseat Democrat Dwayne Thompson, the upset winner in 2016 of the District 96 House seat.

Back on October 10th, Stewart and fellow Democrat Marjorie Pomeroy-Wallace spent an afternoon in the county Board of Education building waiting in vain for McCormick’s attendance records.

That was then. On Monday, Stewart and Wallace were back in front of the Board of Education building — but this time with a large standing chart showing, line by line, the apparent actual record of McCormick’s attendance on the board committees he has belonged to.

The chart purported to show that McCormick had missed “at least 72 of 94 committee meetings,” which translates into an absentee rate of 76 percent. “It is a record of chronic absenteeism,” said Stewart. “He consistently missed critical meetings on critical subjects.” Stewart gave as an example the issue of academic performance, which has been the focus of much concern in regard to Shelby County Schools.

“Of 25 meetings on academic performance, Scott McCormick attended just five. What can we expect when he gets into the legislature and nobody’s watching? He was AWOL and obviously should not be promoted to a new assignment. What are you going to do in Nashville when nobody’s supervising you?”

Stewart said the SCS office had not furnished him with written attendance records, but only with recordings, from which he and others had determined McCormick’s attendance record from listening to roll calls. “We had to listen laboriously to every one of them,” he said.

Asked for a reaction, McCormick said Stewart’s figures were misleading. “First of all, committee meetings on the school board aren’t like those in the legislature, which conform to a fixed, predictable schedule.” The School Board meetings were arranged around members’ convenience and availability according to ad hoc questionnaires, he said.

Moreover, said McCormick, “no action is taken at the committee meetings, nothing is voted on,” and any material developed in them is made available to board members in the monthly work sessions that precede by a week the board’s public business sessions. McCormick claimed an attendance rate of 22 out of 23 public business meetings at which votes were taken. And, he said, his attendance record at the evaluations committee, which he heads, was 100 percent.

McCormick said, in effect, that the focus on his attendance record was a red herring and that the main issue of the House race should be the matter of who best could benefit Shelby County in pushing for advances in education and economic development. He said that, as a member of the legislature’s majority party, he was better poised than Thompson to be effective in those regards.

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

Unite Against Trump!

CREDIT: Rogerothornhill | Dreamstime.com

The election of Donald Trump presents an unique opportunity for conservatives and progressives to find common cause, if we’re willing to recognize it.

The conservative opposition to President Trump is difficult to find. Several of his once-vociferous critics are now members of his cabinet or candidates who interviewed for positions therein. Others are rushing to the front of the parade, eyeing a place of influence within a solidly Republican federal government.

But those Republicans who still refuse to don that red MAGA cap have something important to offer our progressive counterparts: experience. We are about six months ahead of Democrats in advancing through the stages of grief, having lost both our party and our ideological movement to that gold-haired tycoon. If progressives feel like they’ve lost something important, we understand.

Rogerothornhill | Dreamstime.com

For anyone hesitant to believe us, remember that President Barack Obama agreed. Reflecting on Trump’s nomination acceptance speech, Obama said, “What we heard in Cleveland last week wasn’t particularly Republican — and it sure wasn’t conservative.”

Maintaining a set of principles has cost the “Never Trumpers” their reputations and their positions of influence among the party faithful. But we refuse to follow along, because we meant it when we said character mattered, and we have yet to find evidence of it in this president.

We also choose to believe the line from President Ronald Reagan, “America is great because America is good.” We are not made great by installing any one individual in the White House, and certainly not one who behaves as this one does.

Outnumbered on the right, it’s time for such conservatives to extend a hand of friendship to our brothers and sisters on the left. Neither side must abandon its policy preferences, its priorities, or its political persuasions, but we ought to be willing to open our ears, put the interests of each other ahead of our own, and acknowledge our common humanity. If we do that, we will find strength in our diversity.

The success of any form of resistance to the Trump administration depends upon its fidelity to the motto claimed by First Lady Michelle Obama at the Democratic National Convention: “When they go low, we go high.”

If that statement is true, it must be true now. Our country needs it to be true.

It will not serve for us to become little Trumps ourselves. “Going high” means becoming as unlike Trump as possible, following the opposite course, and behaving in the most divergent manner.

If Trump spreads insults to inflate his own ego, we will sacrifice our own honor to protect each other from shame. If he attacks, we will support. If he seeks personal gain, we will renounce it. If he oppresses, we will stoop down and raise each other up. If he speaks lies, we will bear witness to the truth.

When Trump says, “America first,” we will stop to ask, “what for?” Instead of his nationalism, we will adhere to the creed of our Declaration of Independence, the promise of our Constitution, and the hope of that beacon of liberty in New York Harbor.

As the anti-Trumps, we will not be distracted by every controversy that crosses the newswire. We will not feel compelled to comment on every instance of political intrigue. No slime or vitriol will emanate from our social media accounts. Instead we will focus on the issues of greater importance, and we will add maturity, positivity, and levity to the national dialogue.

We un-Trump Americans will not dismiss news reports because they fail to adhere to our preconceived notions, and we will not seek refuge or find entertainment in fake news of any kind.

While he divides us by race or gender and attempts to exclude certain groups, we will band together under one flag, in a cause that singles out none.

We will match his exploitation with our charity, his braggadocio with our humility, and his superficiality with our authenticity.

We can do all of these things as conservatives and progressives without denying any of our core convictions, and we should.

Together, we will live up to our calling as Americans.

Mick Wright was an elected delegate to the 2016 Republican National Convention from Tennessee’s 8th Congressional District. He is a former vice chairman of the Republican Party of Shelby County and a past president of the Northeast Shelby Republican Club.