Norma Lester – Memphis Flyer

The minds of most people concerned about essential threats to the country are still focused on the coronavirus outbreak and the harm it can bring, but there is a dedicated band of activists whose concerns are threats to the validity of our elections through the means we provide for voting.

Linda Phillips

This is a group that communicates and compares notes with some regularity — mainly these days through Zoom or some other form of virtual web seminars. No few of them are residents of the Memphis and Shelby County communities, and, joined by sympathizers across the nation, they are focusing on the coming round of elections here scheduled for August 6th and on whatever voting apparatus is chosen to count the ballots.

Almost universally, they are suspicious of those in charge, notably of Shelby County Election Administrator Linda Phillips, and of the voting-machine manufacturer, ES&S, that they fear she will steer the contract for Shelby County’s forthcoming voting devices to.

The group, including both local citizens and ballot activists from around the nation, convened again Tuesday night on a Zoom event billed as National Forum on Government Transparency & Election Security, with the subhead “Lifting the Veil of Secrecy on Shelby County Elections.”

Co-moderating the affair were Erika Sugarmon, locally, and Susan Pynchon of AUDIT Elections USA. Among the participants were, locally, Shelby County election commission member Bennie Smith, former EC members George Monger and Norma Lester, former Shelby County commissioner and University of Memphis law professor Steve Mulroy, and, tuning in nationally, Jennifer Cohn; San Francisco attorney, ballot-security writer, and election-integrity advocate Bev Harris of Black Box Voting; John Brakey, co-founder of AUDIT USA; and TV actress Mimi Kennedy.

Though all of the participants were proponents of hand-marked paper ballots as the safest and most effective election mode and a fair amount of commentary was turned in that direction, a good deal of the conversation concerned the background and presumed current attitudes of Administrator Phillips.

A point raised by several of the speakers was what they saw as potential conflicts of interest on Phillips’ part, citing her alleged affinity for products of the ES&S Co., manufacturers of the kind of ballot-marking devices she has expressed an open preference for, and noting, among other things, that the first major purchase she oversaw after being hired as Shelby County Election Administrator in 2016 was for voter-registration software manufactured by her then most recent employer, a company called Everyone Counts.

Everyone Counts, which Phillips left in the spring of 2016 to take the Shelby County job, was one of five companies bidding on a contract for voter-registration software, and Lester, a Democratic Election Commissioner at the time, remembers Phillips as having put a rush on for purchasing the software and making the selection without polling commission members for their preference. Nor did she disclose the fact of having an immediate past relationship with the company.

Harris characterized the Everyone Counts company as one without a reputation in the field at the time and which went out of business shortly thereafter, selling its assets to another buyer.

Philips was also taken to task by Mulroy and others for making unsubstantiated claims that fraud and voter error are both enhanced or even enabled by the use of hand-marked paper ballots

The Election Commission has a meeting scheduled for 5 p.m. Thursday of this week to hear Phillips’ recommendation for new voting devices for use in Shelby County elections, and participants in Tuesday’s Zoom seminar were encouraged to audit those proceedings and to participate in them to the degree permitted.

Commission chairman Justin Ford

Realistically, the battle for leadership on the Shelby County Commission is over for the time being — or at least in remission. By a vote on Monday of 11 for, 1 opposed, and 1 abstaining, the Commission formally sustained Chairman Justin Ford’s choices for committee chairs on the Commission and thereby ended any immediate prospect of a challenge to his leadership.

Monday’s vote was a reprise of a preliminary vote in Ford’s favor at last Wednesday’s committee meetings.

Given that last week’s vote had been similarly lopsided, there was very little fighting left to do at Monday’s regular Commission meeting, and Democrat Walter Bailey, who had been the chief Ford resister, was content on Monday to cast his no vote, the only one against the appointments, as quietly and uneventfully as possible. The only other break from unanimity was an abstaining vote from Democrat Van Turner, chairman of the general government committee which handled the appointments matter.

The lack of drama on Monday reflected the currently anti-climactic state of a controversy that had seen Ford’s appointments blocked and referred back to committee by a 7-6 vote — six Democrats and Republican Steve Basar — on a motion made by the disgruntled Bailey at the regular Commission meeting of September 22.
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And the relatively matter-of-fact denouement on Monday occurred despite some serious prodding from others, on both sides of the issue, who evidently thought the contest was still on.

Over the weekend, Norma Lester, a vocal Democratic representative on the Shelby County Election Commission, released the text of an “open letter” to fellow Democrats. The letter expressed Lester’s view that Ford, , who was elected chairman of the reconstituted commission last month on the strength of his own vote, plus those of six Republicans, had subsequently fulfilled GOP wishes in the manner of the committee chairmanships.

Lester echoed Bailey’s charge that a “deal” had been cut on the chairmanship appointments between Ford and the GOP members who supported his chairmanship bid. Particularly controversial was the naming, for the second year in a row, of Republican member Heidi Shafer as chair of the Commission’s budget committee.

Bailey had slammed what he called “political machinations” involved in both Ford’s election and his subsequent naming of committee chairs.

Lester’s weekend letter seconded Bailey’s accusations of deal-making and “getting in bed with Republicans” and made a charge of “blatant betrayal, which is what happened with young Ford and the basis for the contempt amongst fellow Democrats.”

A visibly subdued Bailey restricted his objections on Monday to asking that the two items involving appointments issue be pulled off the Commission’s consent agenda, which meant that they were potentially subject to debate.

But all Bailey had to say was “I again voice my objection.”

That was enough, however, to galvanize a group of Tea Party audience members, who had come prepared, just in case, and, one by one, came to the dock to make statements in favor of Ford’s appointments.

Donna Bohannon made the case for Shafer’s budget-committee chairmanship and said she wanted “to see that glass ceiling lowered.” Yvonne Burton said she had never seen a chairman’s appointees resisted before and wondered, “Why are we taking so much time with this?” Brenda Taylor agreed expressing impatience with “all this to-do.” .She urged, “Let’s move on.”

Frequent Commission attendee Charles Nelson concurred. “We’re too old for this kindergarten,” he said.

Prodded to respond to the chorus, Bailey said merely, “I don’t choose to elaborate.”

The only audience response at variance with all this concord had come from Linda Nettles Harris, who made what amounted to a stand-alone accusation that GOP Commissioner Terry Roland, who had not figured in the dialogue on Monday, was a “bully” and had made improper use of the term “racist” to describe his political opponents. Roland chose not to reply.

Then came the vote, and that was that. Commissioner Mark Billingsley, a Germantown Republican, would offer kudos for the inaugural “coffee and conversation” event sponsored by Ford last Friday, which he termed the kind of “positive” news often overlooked by the media.