Tag: Shelby County Election Commission

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Politics Politics Feature

No Rubber Stamp: County Commission Flexes Against Election Commission, Harris

One bottom-line message emerged from Monday’s public meeting of the Shelby County Commission: The commission does not intend to function as a rubber stamp — not for the Election Commission and not for County Mayor Lee Harris.

In a much-anticipated vote on a request for a $5,815,405 purchase of voting machinery from the ES&S Company, the momentum of a tense, drama-filled debate tilted against the buy when county commission Chairman Eddie Jones pointedly reminded Election Commissioner Brent Taylor, who was making the pitch, that the county commission had put itself on record, not for ballot-marking machines of the sort marketed by ES&S but for hand-marked voting devices.

Jones was immediately backed up by Commissioner Tami Sawyer, and the commission’s vote, in short order, was 6 ayes, 5 nays, and 2 abstentions — leaving the measure one vote short of the necessary seven. During the debate, Commissioner Willie Brooks had reminded Taylor of his intriguing statement he had made to the Flyer last March: “The process is backwards,” Taylor said then. “The Election Commission should not have initiated the RFP and passed the decision about funding on to the county commission. What we [the Election Commission members] should have done is come to some broad general decision about the kind of machines we wanted and then let the county commission issue an RFP [request for proposal], make the choice, and then vote on the funding.”

Soon came another demonstration point, led by Edmund Ford, who wanted to establish commission authority over what he deemed a mayoral overreach: a $1 million expenditure to two local PR agencies to produce an ad promoting face masks as a prophylactic against COVID-19. The ad was commissioned by Harris in August under statutory emergency powers assumed to be his under the federal Cares Act. But Ford insisted that the statute did not give the county mayor authority without commission consent to contract for a sum larger than $50,000. Commissioner Van Turner, who had wanted to withdraw the resolution, said unhappily after a vote of 7 nays and 3 abstentions against it, that the matter had been a “political show,” a case of “wanting to stick it to the mayor.”

Early voting for the November 3rd election begins October 14th and runs through October 29th at the following 26 locations; 9 a.m. to 8 p.m., Monday through Friday; 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., Saturday.

• Abundant Grace Fellowship Church, 1574 E. Shelby Dr., Memphis, 38116

• Agricenter International, 7777 Walnut Grove Rd., Memphis, 38120

• Mississippi Blvd. Church Family Life Center, 70 N. Bellevue Blvd., Memphis, 38104

• New Bethel Missionary Baptist Church, 7786 Poplar Pike, Germantown, 38138 

• Arlington Safe Room, 11842 Otto Ln.,  Arlington, 38002

• Anointed Temple of Praise, 3939 Riverdale Rd., Memphis, 38115

• Baker Community Center, 7942 Church Rd., Millington, 38053

• Berclair Church of Christ, 4536 Summer Ave., Memphis, 38122

• Briarwood Church, 1900 N. Germantown Pkwy., Memphis, 38016

• Collierville Church of Christ, 575 Shelton Dr., Collierville, 38017

• Compassion Church, 3505 S. Houston Levee Rd., Germantown, 38139

• Dave Wells Community Center, 915 Chelsea Ave., Memphis, 38107

• Glenview Community Center, 1141 S. Barksdale St., Memphis, 38114

• Greater Lewis Street Baptist Church, SE Corner of Poplar and E. Parkway N., Memphis, 38104

• Greater Middle Baptist Church, 4982 Knight Arnold Rd., Memphis, 38118

• Harmony Church, 6740 St. Elmo Rd.,  Bartlett, 38135

• Mt. Pisgah Missionary Baptist Church, 1234 Pisgah Rd., Cordova, 38016

• Mt. Zion Baptist Church, 60 S. Parkway E., Memphis, 38106

• Raleigh United Methodist Church, 3295 Powers Rd., Memphis, 38128

• Riverside Missionary Baptist Church, 3560 S. Third St., Memphis, 38109

• Shelby County Election Commission, James Meredith Bldg., 157 Poplar Ave., Memphis, 38103

• Second Baptist Church, 4680 Walnut Grove Blvd., Memphis, 38117

• Solomon Temple MB Church, 1460 Winchester Rd., Memphis, 38116

• The Pursuit of God Church (Bellevue Frayser,) 3759 N. Watkins, Memphis, 38127

• White Station Church of Christ, 1106 Colonial Road, Memphis, 38117

• The Refuge Church, 9817 Huff N Puff Rd., Lakeland, 38002

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Bid-Rigging for County Election Machinery?

Appearing to confirm earlier reports from Shelby County Election Commissioner Bennie Smith that manufacturers’ bids to supply new voting machinery for the county were adjusted locally to favor the ES&S Company, officials of Hart Intercivic, one of the bidders, charged that unnecessary costs were added to their company’s bid after it was received by the office of County Election Administrator Linda Phillips.

The charge of post-submission bid-rigging was made in a letter to Shelby County officials dated Monday, October 5th, and signed by Hart president/CEO Julie Mathis and her regional sales director Bob Heisner. Hart was, along with ES&S and Dominion Voting Systems, one of the three bidders for the Shelby County contract.

A bid from ES&S to supply new election scanning machinery at a cost of $5,815,405 was approved by the Election Commission last month and submitted on Monday, September 28th, to the county commission, which would be responsible for approving the purchases.

Amid serious skepticism among county commissioners, who have several times expressed a preference for hand-marked voting devices rather than the ballot-marking devices marketed by ES&S, the matter was deferred until the next regular meeting of the county commission on this coming Monday, October 12th.

Indications are that the ES&S bid might be rejected and that the county commission could instead adopt a stopgap measure to rent additional scanning machines so as to handle an anticipated increase in mail-in ballots for the November election.

The letter from Hart complained of “major discrepancies in the vendor pricing comparisons that were presented to the Election Commission” and listed $2.7 million of unsubmitted and unnecessary costs that were added on to its bid to inflate the apparent expense of its equipment. The letter contends also that Hart’s estimates for hand-marked paper-ballot devices per se were not even scored.

(Bidders had been asked to supply cost estimates for both ballot-marking devices and hand-marked paper-ballot devices.)

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

County Commission to Look At Voting-Machine Costs

UPDATED. Anybody who has followed county government processes knows how easy it is to get lost in the weeds of complex numeral series. Such was the case with the Shelby County Commission’s budget negotiations earlier this year, and such is the case with a key matter before the commission today, Monday, September 28th.

The commission is scheduled to take up the matter of new voting devices for Shelby County. This is an in issue that has been simmering for well over a year, and, amid a bidding process that engendered no meager amount of controversy, county election administrator Linda Phillips ultimately has recommended, and the Shelby County Election Commission has confirmed, the selection of new ballot-marking machinery from the ES&S Company, which dominates the election-machinery field.

The actual scheduled vote on Monday was for $5,815,405.00 for equipment including scanning equipment for prospective immediate use in regard absentee votes, with $2,410,000.00 of that offset from expected reimbursement funds from the State of Tennessee.(After some debate, the Commission voted 7-6 to defer the item until its next regular meeting).

A variety of other numbers figure into the respective bids, as well, and the expertise of the County Commission, the ultimate paymaster, in working with conflicting columns of numbers could be called on again at the Monday meeting. There are ample weeds to be dealt with.

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Politics Politics Feature

How the Votes are Breaking: Flyer Arranges for a Statistical Breakdown; Last-Minute Legal Shenanigans.

Shelby County Election Administrator Linda Phillips drew some heated comments this week for her failure to provide category-by-category breakdowns of the statistics for early voting to this point in the county general election and federal-state primaries that culminate on August 6th.

But Bennie Smith, one of three Democratic members of the Shelby County Election Commission and a data analyst for FedEx by trade, has done his own homework on the raw numbers (which is all Phillips provided) and emerged with the demographic specifics of the voting.

Analyzing the election data, Smith found that, as of July 25th, roughly 35,900 eligible voters had cast ballots, with approximately 23,100 of them being Democrats and 12,500 being Republicans. Females outnumbered males among the voters, 22,100 to 13,900. Voters’ ages skewed heavily to those over 50, whose numbers totaled 28,800. This tendency included all voting groups, regardless of party, gender, or ethnic category.

The racial breakdown of those voting was 15,600 African-American, 12,200 white, and 8,100 “others.” Among the early-voting sites skewing most heavily Democratic were Anointed Temple of Praise (94.83 percent Democratic); Abundant Grace (97.51 percent); Greater Middle Baptist Church (94.30 percent); Mt. Zion Baptist Church (97.64 percent); and Solomon Temple Church (6.55 percent).

Sites with proportionately greater Republican voting included Harmony Church of Bartlett (75.17 percent); Collierville Church of Christ (81.62 percent); The Refuge Church (79.17 percent); Compassion Church (70.53 percent); and Arlington Safe Room (74.37 percent). (Stay tuned to memphisflyer.com for updates and additional data.)

We have made a point, these last few election seasons, of using the term “bogus ballot” to denote a species of advertisement sheets and/or four-page mail-outs that contain the names and pictures of political candidates who have paid some local entrepreneur for the privilege of appearing on them — often in overtly devious ways that suggest, falsely, that the Democratic Party is behind the endorsements.

Two of the entrepreneurs — Greg Grant and M. LaTroy Williams — are at it again this election season, even after being enjoined by a court last year to cease and desist, and have  been freshly warned by special judge Bill Acree that they proceed at their own peril.

Jake Brown and Bruce Kramer, the attorneys for the plaintiffs who during the 2019 city election sought and got the injunction against the balloteers, have taken the pay-for-play mischief-makers to court once again. At a status conference on Monday, presiding Judge Bill Acree, who is on loan from the Jackson circuit, advised the principals that he intended to set a date for a post-election hearing on the matter and let it be known that criminal penalties were an option for continued violation of his original injunction.

Nothing suggests the excesses of these two proprietors so clearly as does the streamer line that Williams appended to the top of his most recent “ballot.” It says, in bold capital letters: “JUDGE ORDERED M. LATORY [sic] ALEXANDRIA-WILLIAMS ON BALLOT AS DEMOCRAT NO ‘JIM CROW.’”

Not only is that claim wholly untrue regarding the congressional office Williams (or Alexandria-Williams as he now signs himself) was seeking until an April meeting of the state Democratic executive committee declared him invalid. It is a uniquely skewed falsehood in that the man manages to misspell his own name, which is “LaTroy,” not “LaTory.”

Anyone who cares to confirm that Williams’ name is not on the August 6th Democratic primary ballot for any office at all need only consult the website of the Shelby County Election Commission (shelbyvote.com). Yet on his own self-published “ballot” (more properly regarded, perhaps, as an advertisement sheet for the favored — or paying — candidates) there is a mugshot of Williams as a candidate for Congress alongside a mug of his son Marion Alexandria-Williams Jr., an actual candidate for the Democratic nomination for state Senate District 30.

The Williams ballot is labeled as the product of the “Shelby County Democratic Club” — with the first three of those words displayed prominently on the sheet and the climactic word “club” in relatively small letters underneath. The effect is to suggest the status of an official organ of the Shelby County Democratic Party — the very kind of claim that led the actual Shelby County Democratic Party, along with the Shelby County Young Democrats and John Marek, a 2019 candidate for the City Council, to file suit last year against Williams, his “club,” and his ballot.

In a sad and ironic twist, no sitting Shelby County judge was willing to hear the case. They had all either paid at some point to be listed on such a ballot, or they had no wish to embarrass their judicial colleagues. Or, in many cases, for both reasons.

Ultimately, a hearing was conducted before Judge Acree. A day or so before the election, Acree issued a temporary injunction against further distribution of “endorsement” ballots proceed by both Williams and Grant. The time-span of the injunction was indefinite and is still in effect, according to attorneys Brown and Kramer —  a point repeated by Acree on Monday.

In the interval between last year’s injunction and the release of new “ballots” by Grant and Williams, Brown and Kramer had moved — for reasons “unrelated to the case,” says Brown —  to withdraw from involvement. It was then, he says, that both Grant and Williams, “evidently deciding that all bets were off,” acted independently of each other and moved to issue new ballots for the current election, both ballots still implying a fictitious relationship with the official Democratic Party — Williams on behalf of the aforementioned Shelby County Democratic Club; Grant via the “Greater Memphis Democratic Club.”

Both are shell organizations, says Brown. Grant’s ballot at least had a disclaimer in fine print “that the ‘Greater Memphis Democratic Club’ operates ‘independently of the Shelby County Democratic Party and its affiliates.’” Grant’s chief coup, if one wants to call it that, was to secure the inclusion on his ballot as an “endorsee” of former Shelby County Democratic chairman Corey Strong,  now a candidate in the Democratic primary for the 9th District congressional seat. A mere two years ago, in 2018, Strong, in his chairman’s role, had attacked that year’s Grant ballot for implying official Democratic connections and said it was “nothing more than a paid advertisement.”

At any rate, lawyers Brown and Kramer discarded their withdrawal motions (Brown: “We were frankly pissed off”) and re-involved themselves, asking Judge Acree to impose both civil and criminal sanctions against the two ballot entrepreneurs for “willful disregard” of the judge’s injunction. Monday’s status conference on the matter, held electronically, was the immediate result. And clearly more efforts to redress the matter lie in the future.

Rarely, in fact, have legal remedies played so large a role in the conduct and oversight of an election as they have this year. It will be recalled that it required another suit on behalf of a group of Memphians  in the Up with the Vote 901 organization as well as the ACLU to enable universal eligibility for absentee mail-in voting in this year of a coronavirus pandemic.

University of Memphis law professor and former County Commissioner Steve Mulroy, assisted by Brown and with parallel efforts from ACLU attorneys, easily persuaded Nashville Chancellor Ellen Hobbs Lyle back in June to issue her order on behalf of universal mail-in eligibility.

In her ruling, Chancellor Lyle not only discounted objections from the Secretary of State’s office but noted that the Tennessee constitution is “more explicit than the federal Constitution” in guaranteeing the right to vote and that the state’s “restrictive interpretation and application of Tennessee’s voting by mail law” constituted “an unreasonable burden on the fundamental right to vote.”

Lyle has periodically had to issue new directives enforcing her order as either state government or local election offices (including the Shelby County administrator’s) have tried to delay or sandbag it.

Recently Secretary of State Tre Hargett testified remotely to the U.S. Senate Rules and Administration Committee on the state’s attitude on the matter. Hargett was asked why the state has fought efforts to loosen absentee voting requirements amid the COVID-19  pandemic.

“Under Tennessee law, fear of contracting the coronavirus is not an excuse [to vote by mail],”  Hargett replied.

“Well, that’s pitiful,” said Senator Angus King (Ind-Maine).

And, as indicated earlier, the office of Shelby Election Administrator Phillips has faced accusations of going slow in response to the mail-in order.

At a recent meeting of the Shelby County Commission, lawyer Mulroy was among those noting that Phillips had allowed a pile-up of mail-in ballot requests by treating state Election Coordinator Mark Goins’ ultimate demand for immediate compliance with mail-in ballot requests as merely “advisory.” He had earlier pointed out that notices mailed by Phillips’ office to Shelby County voters omitted the required reference to COVID-19 as an acceptable reason for absentee voting.

The result was a new consent order from Lyle reinforcing the mandate to be explicit in that regard.

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Election Commission: No New Voting Equipment for This Year

Considering all the delays that have occurred in the drawn-out and contentious process of acquiring a new election system for Shelby County, this will not be the most surprising news: There will be no new devices — whether of the ballot-marking sort or of the hand-marked variety — for any county elections this year.

Word from the Election Commission is that, for several reasons, the federal/state primaries and the county general election scheduled for August will be performed on the county’s existing and outmoded machinery, and the same goes for the November election.

One of the reasons for the postponement, according to an EC source familiar with the thinking in the office of Election Administrator Linda Phillips, is uncertainty, at least in her mind, over the availability of funds allocated by the Shelby County Commission. Funding for a new election system was allocated last year by the county commission for the purchase of a new election system in the current fiscal year, but the money has not yet been appropriated.

Jackson Baker

Election Commissioner Linda Phillips

Phillips is said to believe that the funding process for new machines has been shifted to the coming fiscal year, 2020-21, but county commissioners involved in the ongoing process of determining the new budget said that was not the case. The administrator has told election commission members that no voting on any new system will occur until 2022 but that the state has committed to providing new scanners to accommodate the demands of increased mail-in voting this year.

There is still an element of suspense regarding the nature of the new election system, whenever it comes to be. The election commission recently accepted Phillips’ recommendation for the purchase of new ballot-marking devices from the ESS company, but considerable support still exists for hand-marked ballots, both in the community at large and on the majority-Democratic Shelby County Commission, which has the prerogative to appropriate the funding — and, arguably, to designate the type of machinery.

In any case, County Mayor Lee Harris has signed the necessary “intent-to-award” letter to allow the purchasing process to proceed. It remains to be seen when the county commission can cut through the current snags regarding budget calculations to address the matter.

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Welcome to the Machine: Fight Over Voting System Raises Issues of Integrity and Nepotism

Are the citizens of Memphis and Shelby County — troubled with decades of problematic and even botched election results — really about to acquire a new, improved means of expressing their will in the forthcoming August and November election rounds?

That question may be answered this week, as the Shelby County Commission decides whether to accept or overrule the judgment last week of Election Administrator Linda Phillips and the Shelby County Election Commission (SCEC) — apparently in favor of ballot-marking devices marketed by the ES&S Company, a monolith of the election-machine industry. The name of the chosen manufacturer was not explicitly revealed last week — “Company 1,” was how it was called in discussion — but several references by Phillips to the “thermal paper” uniquely employed by ES&S for production of machine receipts, were something of a giveaway.

Jackson Baker

Election Administrator Linda Phillips

The Shelby County Commission, which has the responsibility of paying for the machines (or not), had voted twice previously in favor of hand-marked ballots instead, on several grounds, including cost, transparency, and invulnerability to ballot-hacking. And an aroused contingent of local activists, abetted by a network of nationally known election adepts, is prepared to insist on that choice.

Theoretically, the SCEC voted last Thursday to accept something of a compromise resolution from Election Commision member Brent Taylor, one of the three Republicans on the five-member body. Taylor accepted Phillips’ recommendation on behalf of ballot-marking devices but proposed that voters in each precinct be offered, much in the manner of the grocer’s “paper or plastic” choice, the alternative of a hand-marked ballot. That was seemingly enough to win over Democrat Anthony Tate. But not Bennie Smith, the other Democrat and an election-security professional who is one of the sparkplugs of the case for hand-marked paper ballots.

The bottom line is that, despite last week’s 4-1 vote by the Shelby County Election Commission in approval of ballot-marking devices — again, presumably those manufactured by ES&S — the battle isn’t over yet. Hardcore proponents of hand-marked paper ballots, who have been highly motivated and organized from the beginning, are looking ahead to the prospect that the Shelby County Commission, whose duty it is to pay for and transact any purchase of voting-machine equipment, might override the stated choice of the Election Administrator and SCEC.

The county commission has put itself on record twice as wishing to purchase a system employing hand-marked paper ballots as the most cost-effective, transparent, and unhackable way to carry out an election. As the specter of COVID-19 began to make itself felt, the paper ballot adherents have also emphasized the lesser likelihood of viral infection via a paper ballot used singly than for metal used over and over by a sequence of individuals.

Jackson Baker

Commissioner Van Turner

One of the more dedicated believers in the paper ballot concept is Democratic County Commissioner Van Turner, who some weeks ago at a commission meeting was involved in a verbal exchange with Election Administrator Phillips, who was adamantly insisting on her preference for ballot-marking devices.

“We can vote down the funding,” Turner pointed out.

“We can sue you,” Phillips retorted.

Legal Aspects

Though conflict-of-interest and disclosure issues are involved in the dispute, the heart of the matter may well be fundamentally different ideas about the right to vote. Though both sides in the current controversy make claims that the system they advocate will save money and achieve accurate results, the question is deeper and more essential than that.

There may, in fact, be something more than an incidental correlation between the method we choose to cast our ballots and the degree to which the franchise is made available to the maximum number of people. As one instance of that, the partisans of hand-marked paper ballots tend to favor the maximum use of voting by mail for anticipated absenteeism and other reasons, especially in a time of enduring fears regarding the COVID-19 virus. One such advocate is Steve Mulroy, law professor at the University of Memphis and a former member of the Shelby County Commission and one of the leaders of the local activists seeking hand-marked paper ballots.

Jackson Baker

U of M law professor Steve Mulroy

Mulroy first came to public attention more than a decade ago when he was an early advocate locally of a paper trail for the purpose of double-checking, if need be, the votes cast in an election. The concept is now accepted virtually everywhere, and the idea of scanners to provide such a paper record of ballots cast is now built into both of the rival systems being considered for Shelby County’s new voting process.

Even as Mulroy is joining with others to urge the county commission to expand its fiduciary intent and resources for the purchase of a hand-marked ballot system, he has filed suit in Chancery Court in Nashville against relevant public officials of the state of Tennessee — Governor Bill Lee, Secretary of State Tre Hargett, state Coordinator of Elections Mark Goins, and state Attorney General Herb Slatery — seeking relief for several named individuals and organizations from state regulations impeding or prohibiting their wish to vote absentee by mail in the face of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

Court is where the voting machine case could end up, too. The partisans of hand-marked paper ballots are hopeful that the seven Democratic members of the county commission who have voted twice to endorse the purchase of such a system will stick to their guns and vote to overrule the Election Commission’s official recommendation. Such a vote could happen at the county commission’s next regular public meeting, on May 18th. Or it could come earlier via a special called meeting.

In the event such a vote does occur, it is probable that the issue would be contested legally. A first step would be Chancery Court locally, where, as County Commissioner Turner, a proponent of hand-marked ballots, sees it, the odds would favor his side. “After that, who knows?” said Turner, who foresees a round — maybe several — of appellate testing, as well as a possible action supporting ballot-marking devices by a reconvened state legislature with its Republican super-majority. “However it goes, I’m with it to the end,” vowed Turner, who said he thought the other six Democratic commissioners favoring hand-marked ballots would persevere as well. (It should be noted that the party-line aspect of the current controversy owes much to a public letter from GOP state Senator Brian Kelsey addressed to the three Republican SCEC members insisting on their support for ballot-marking devices.)

Administrator Phillips is very much a true believer for her side. She has made numerous public statements disparaging paper ballots and extolling ballot-marking devices, and, even as her original RFP (request for proposal) went out to potential vendors, she had an op-ed published on behalf of such machines. And she has made frequent public statements alleging that voter error is a rampant feature of paper ballots and, even more sensationally, told a county commission meeting recently that voter fraud occurred “100 percent” in the realm of paper ballots.

Mulroy, who has authored numerous serious papers and a book on the kaleidoscope of issues relating to voting, promptly debunked Phillips’ assertions, producing evidence that such paper-ballot fraud is hard to authenticate anywhere and has been non-existent in Tennessee. Further, Mulroy cited studies demonstrating that the rate of voter error was no higher in paper voting or in absentee ballot counts than in touch-screen voting. Significantly, he used research performed by the conservative Heritage Foundation to buttress his conclusions in both cases.

A Matter of Bona Fides

Adherents of paper ballots have been at pains of late to question the bona fides of Phillips’ professed positions, citing her own relationship — and that of her family members — to companies with whom she has arranged contractual relationships. Inasmuch as her preferred vendor for the new ballot-marking devices she wants for Shelby County is apparently ES&S, it may or may not be relevant that, as her PR assistant Suzanne Thompson acknowledged in a recent communication, one of Phillips’ two sons, presumably Andrew, “worked for ES&S,” adding, “He’s no longer employed there.”

Documentary evidence does establish that Andrew Phillips, along with another Phillips son, Chris, did work at the voting-software company Everyone Counts in 2017, when Shelby County, during Phillips’ first year as election administrator , concluded a $1 million-plus contract with that company, for the purchase and maintenance of voter-registration software. Controversy surrounds the history of that contract, first of all, since not only the two Phillips sons but Phillips herself had been an employee of Everyone Counts. Everyone Counts was, in fact, her immediate past employer at the time she took the job of Shelby County election administrator.

At the time, Everyone Counts seems not to have been regarded as a leader in its field. During the first year of the Shelby County contract, in fact, Everyone Counts suffered financial difficulties and was purchased by a company called Votem, which took over administration of the voter-registration contract. In short order, Votem would divest itself of the Shelby County contract, passing it on to a third company, KnowInk.

Coincidentally or not, Chris Phillips, one of Linda Phillips’ sons, would end up in the service of each of those companies in turn — first Everyone Counts, then Votem, and finally KnowInk, where he remains today. Meanwhile, Shelby County has continued to pay an annual maintenance fee to whoever held the contract, and has purchased KnowInk e-poll books for $175,000 on a sole-source contract.

The issue of family connections is not the only one that has arisen regarding that voter-registration contract, which was Linda Phillips’ first major action in the service of Shelby County. There is some indication that she may have waived the duty of keeping her commission members sufficiently informed about the vendor or the other relevant facts regarding the contract.

Prior to concluding that 2017 contract, Phillips, who had been hired by Shelby County in 2016, went through the motions of asking Marcy Ingram, then the ethics officer in the Shelby County Attorney’s office, a series of questions, including those of whether her own past relationship with Everyone Counts needed to be disclosed and whether her son’s employment at the company should be disclosed as well.

Attorney Ingram’s answers were succinct: “As you are involved in the evaluation of the proposals,” she said, Phillips needed to make disclosure in both cases “to the other evaluators” to avoid “an appearance of impropriety.”

In her query of Ingram, Phillips had offered this assurance: “I’m not going to be making the final decision on what to purchase; that will be the Election Commission decision to recommend the vendor.” [Our italics]

There is no record in the minutes of Shelby County Election Commission meetings or elsewhere to suggest that the commission was in fact invited to pass judgment on the vendor. Norma Lester, an election commissioner at the time, is adamant about that and affirms, too, that there were no disclosures to the election commission of the sort mandated by Ingram. Phillips’ own PR consultant, Suzanne Thompson, explains the letting of the contract thusly:

“For the purchase of the VR equipment, a scoring machine [sic] made up from county IT reps and the election commission each ranked the equipment. Each member rated the system independently. She [Phillips] didn’t make a recommendation for the Voter’s Registration System because it was all up to the folks in purchasing.”

In short, while various IT technocrats may have had a shot at “evaluating” the contract, the Shelby County Election Commission itself seemingly did not. This may or may not be a problem of substance. It is certainly one of optics.

Also in the optics category is another odd circumstance: John Ryder, the veteran Shelby County Election Commission attorney who doubles as a vintage Republican Party eminence, was revealed recently to be sharing office space with the Nashville firm of MNA Government Operations. The head of that firm is Wendell Moore, a longtime Ryder friend, who lobbies for the Greater Memphis Chamber of Commerce and for ES&S, that major player in the election-machinery field, and the ultimate choice of Linda Phillips and a 4-1 majority of the Election Commission as the contractor of Shelby County’s new voting system.

Once the matter of his office-sharing became public, Ryder argued that his presence in the Nashville office of MNA was due to the fact that his law firm, Harris-Shelton, rented space there and that he had no working relationship with either MNA or its client ES&S. He said further that he had no knowledge of the then-active RFP for Shelby County voting machines nor any of the vendors seeking the county’s business, and therefore he had seen no need to make any disclosures.

Left hanging over the affair in the aftermath, and never quite explained, was photographic evidence that, in two different versions of the glass register in the lobby of the Bank of America building in Nashville, Ryder was listed as an associate of MNA.

Jackson Baker

Election Commission in session

“Slimy Tricks?”

One thing is incontestable: As already indicated, ES&S, which absorbed its main rival, Diebold, some years ago, is a major player in the election-machinery business, a veritable titan. Critics of the company see it as an industry giant squelching would-be competitors and running rampant over contractual and constitutional processes in the jurisdictions where it operates.

Voting rights activist Susan Pynchon, a Floridian who, with local activist Erika Sugarmon, has organized several recent Zoom sessions on the voting-machine issue, has compiled a lengthy list of articles pertaining to the company’s activities nationwide. They run from charges of bribery to criminal negligence to playing fast and loose with contractual obligations to error-prone hardware and undependable software.

As a sort of distillation of all that, U.S. Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), in a recent Zoom seminar on election security, said that ES&S “uses every slimy trick in the book” to get states to buy “overpriced, insecure voting machines.”

That, of course, is one side of the issue. ES&S has its partisans, too, who see the company as the industry standard, inveighed against as much for its success as for any actual misdeeds. For the record, ES&S markets a hand-marked paper ballot system as well as its line of ballot-marking devices, though it more aggressively pushes the latter. The SCEC’s recent RFP saw three companies competing for Shelby County’s business: ES&S, Dominion Voting Systems, and Hart Voting System.

The Next Step

The next step in the purchase process will see Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris formally acknowledging the receipt of SCEC’s recommendation and signing an order for the Shelby County Commission to arrange a purchase for new machines to be used in August and thereafter. Word is that he will leave it to the county commission to accept the SCEC recommendation or make its own choice. If it does the latter, presumably it would opt to accept the low bid from among the various bids received in response to Linda Phillips’ RFP. And, as indicated, such an action might well be subject to legal action.

In any case, at some point in the near future, Shelby County stands to be outfitted with new voting devices, hopefully in time for the August election round. Even if human disputation is off the table by then, there might still remain the issue of whether the COVID-19 virus will remain persistent to the point that a truly serious urgency will attach to Mulroy’s aforementioned suit to allow the unimpeded use of “no-excuse-needed” mail-in ballots. For the record, those would be hand-marked.

…

Widely Differing Estimates

Election Administrator Linda Phillips and local activists for hand-marked paper ballots have difficulty agreeing on many things — notably the respective costs to Shelby County of the kind of new voting machines each prefers.

Phillips reckons the immediate purchase costs of new ES&S ballot-marking devices, which she favors, to be $7,160,000, as against $8,150,000 for a hand-marked ballot system. She sees the 14-year extrapolated cost of maintaining the hand-marked system to be $24,785,000, compared to $9,415,000 for ballot-marking devices.

The local advocates of hand-marked ballots, on the other hand, see their system as costing only $3,039,314 up front, with annual maintenance expenses of only $612,564, while they see the ballot-marking machines favored by Phillips to have an initial cost of $8,268,314, with annual expenses thereafter to be $885,203.

Not only different systems, but different vocabularies for figuring costs. No wonder this particular twain can’t meet.

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Further Questions About Linda Phillips

As previously indicated in this space, the controversy over selection of new election machinery for the August and November rounds of voting in Shelby County has involved potential conflict-of-interest issues. 

Linda Phillips

One such issue involved the fact that John Ryder, attorney for the Election Commission,
shares office space in Nashville with the lobbying firm MNA Government Relations, headed by his longtime friend Wendell Moore, who represents ES&S, a major election-machinery vendor. (The voting machines currently in use in Shelby County are ES&S manufactures, and a majority of the Election Commission voted last Thursday night to award the company a contract for the new machines to be purchased this year.)

Ryder responded that his law firm, Harris-Shelton, is merely a tenant of MNA and, beyond that rental arrangement, has no direct working relationship with MNA. He said further that he had no involvement with the Election Commission’s decision process on vendors of new machines and did not even know at that point which vendors had bid on an RFP (request for proposal) sent out by Election Administrator Linda Phillips.

The other conflict-of-interest question continues to develop and concerns Administrator Phillips herself.

The first revelation regarding Phillips had to do with the fact that a contract for new voter-registration software approved by her office in 2017, a year after she began her work in Shelby County, was awarded to Everyone Counts, the firm she had worked for in Indiana before taking the Shelby County job. There is no evidence that she disclosed that relationship to the Election Commission, and then-Commissioner Norma Lester is adamant that Phillips did not disclose either that fact or the further one that Phillips had a son then working for Everyone Counts.

Asked about this, EC public relations consultant Suzanne Thompson, passed on the following explanation: “For the purchase of the VR equipment, a scoring machine [sic] made up from county IT reps and the Election commission. Each ranked the equipment …. She [Phillips] didn’t make a recommendation for the Voter’s Registration System because it was all up to the folks in Purchasing.” That Election Commission itself, as Lester indicates, seems not to have been asked to make a judgment about the contract.

Previous to the purchase, Phillips had inquired of Marcy Ingram, then ethics officer in the Shelby County Attorney’s office, whether she had a duty to disclose her previous relationship with Everyone Counts or the fact of her son’s employment with the company.
On the first matter, Ingram responded, “As you are involved in the evaluation of the proposals, you should disclose this former employment relationship to the other evaluators to avoid an appearance of impropriety.” On the second, she advised, “[A}s you are involved in the evaluation of the proposals, you should disclose this familial relationship to the other evaluators prior to exercising any discretion in the matter to avoid an appearance of impropriety.”

In her request to Ingram for an ethics ruling, Phillips had said, “I’m not going to be making the final decision on what to purchase; that will be the Election Commission decision to recommend the vendor.” [Our italics] As indicated, there is no record of any such recommendation from the Election Commission.

After the software contract was awarded to Everyone Counts, that company experienced financial difficulties and was purchased by Votem, which in its turn sold the Shelby County voter-registration contract to KnowInk. Records show that both of Phillips’ sons, Andrew and Chris, were employed by Everyone Counts when the contract was let, and son Chris was employed successively with both Votem and KnowInk, as each obtained the voter-registration contract.  [See below.]
[pdf-1] In maintenance of the contract, the county still pays an annual fee to KnowInk, as it did to Votem. In April 2018, in apparent anticipation that the voter-registration contract would be made over to KnowInk in 2019, Administrator Phillips had purchased KnowInk e-poll books for $175,000 on a sole-source contract.

About the sons’ employment history, PR consultant Thompson had this to say:

“At the time the VR equipment was purchased, one of her two sons was working for KnowInc.

“The other son worked for the ES&S. He’s no longer employed there. He left the company some time ago. The selection the company used to provide software for the voting equipment we currently use was made years ago., long before Linda came to Shelby County. I don’t know this for sure, but that son was probably still in college when that long-gone group of commissioners made the decision on the software for the voting machines we currently use.”

For the sake of clarity a fuller version of the communication from Thompson, relating as it does to matters of public information, is appended below. Deleted from her statement are personal remarks and a discussion of another matter unrelated to the immediate one of public contracts.

The current process of purchasing voting machines, as you know, the Commissioners decide which company to select. Linda makes the recommendation. We don’t even know what they will decide – it’s up to them. Her son works for KnowInc., as a desk tech – a low level position. The company he works for has nothing to do with the voting equipment or software….

The county’s system for the purchase of Voter’s Registration equipment was quite different from the process currently underway. All the decisions go through purchasing. At the time the VR equipment was purchased, one of her two sons was working for KnowInc.

The other son worked for the ES&S. He’s no longer employed there. He left the company some time ago. The selection the company used to provide software for the voting equipment we currently use was made year’s ago., long before Linda came to Shelby County. I don’t know this for sure, but that son was probably still in college when that long-gone group of commissioners made the decision on the software for the voting machines we currently use.

This is all laid out in the attached e-mail. The attachment is a memo that came from the Ethics officer for the Shelby County Attorney, Marcy Ingram, which pre-dates the issuance of the RFP for the Voters Registration system. For the purchase of the VR equipment a scoring machine made up from county IT reps and the Election commission Each ranked the equipment. Each member rated the system independently. That’s about the only similarity in the two system’ purchase – a scoring team.

She didn’t make a recommendation for the Voter’s Registration System because it was all up to the folks in Purchasing.

I thought it was probably best to sit down and write this out for clarity’s sake….

;

Categories
Politics Politics Beat Blog

Administrator Phillips is Target at Zoom Seminar

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.

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Cover Feature News

What’s Next as Tennessee Restarts Its Economy?

As the song made famous by the late Doris Day has it, “Que sera, sera/Whatever will be, will be/ the future’s not ours to see/Que sera, sera … ”

Indeed, but the residents of Memphis and Shelby County, like those elsewhere in the inhabited world, can’t be blamed for wondering: Just what does come next?

So far, there have been no armed protests locally, like those that took place in the Michigan state capitol last week. And no reason to, inasmuch as the officialdom of Memphis, Shelby County, and the county’s other six municipalities have all concurred on a business-reopening plan to begin this week.

But there remains a distinct possibility that medical circumstances could impose a hitch on those plans. After all, it is known that the reopening plan was originally scheduled to be announced by the powers-that-be on Monday of last week but was delayed until Wednesday by a reported spike in the number of coronavirus cases.

Still, here we are, with a timetable for reopening, after tiresome weeks of isolation and social distancing and shuttered establishments of virtually all kinds, public and private. Local officials made every effort to accentuate the positive, but there was inevitably a tight-lipped ring to their statements, a left-handedness to their public optimism. The opening paragraph of the reopening announcement, undersigned by mayors and health officials, for example, went this way:

“After careful study of the data, and on the advice of our medical experts including the Shelby County Health Department, the mayors of Memphis, Shelby County, and the six surrounding municipalities have determined that May 4, 2020, is the date that we can begin phase one of our Back to Business framework.”
Brandon Dill

Mayor Jim Strickland

That first salvo of official broadsides had Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland proclaiming this: “Along with our doctors, we believe it’s time to slowly start opening our economy back up and get Memphians working again.”  

Not exactly bursting with confidence. And Strickland sounded even less certain when asked to elaborate in interviews. Here he was, speaking to WMC-TV, Action News 5 last Thursday: “We feel comfortable that over the last month, for the most part, the new cases and hospitalizations have remained fairly static.” [Italics ours.] With all due respect, the effect of those two qualifying phrases — “for the most part” and “fairly static” — is daunting.

The fact is, the way forward is strewn, not with palms or garlands, but with thorns and pitfalls. April was, if not the “cruelest month” of poetic legend, unkind enough. At the beginning of the month, some two weeks into his March 23rd stay-at-home order, Strickland took stock of the city’s financial outlook and found, as he put it, anything but a “pretty picture.” With the budget yet to be calculated, the mayor foresaw revenue losses of some $80 million in the coming fiscal year. As the month wore on, his estimate rose to at least $100 million — fully a seventh of what would be a maintenance budget of $700 million.

Strickland said sales taxes, which represent about 23 percent of the operating revenues for the city’s general fund, were estimated to decline by 25 percent, with a worsening of a situation that had already seen “significant reduction in the services we provide to thousands of citizens and layoffs of hundreds of city employees.”

In the course of the month, the city received assurances of $113 million from the federal government, but it could not be used as bailout money. The strings were that every penny would have to go for COVID-related expenses. Ditto with the $50 million of CARES Act money expected by Shelby County government. The city holds a reserve fund of some $78 million but needs to hold on to most of that as a last resource in case the disaster takes even more unpredictable turns.

Conflict in County Government
Shelby County’s budget situation is uncertain as well, and like much else in county government, is subject to a kind of internally raging civil conflict. The discords of the moment, under Mayor Lee Harris, are hardly as pronounced as were those of the administration of previous Mayor Mark Luttrell, who, during his second term (2014-2018) found himself almost totally estranged from the Shelby County Commission. 
Justin Fox Burks

Mayor Lee Harris

Although Luttrell was a Republican and the commission had a Democratic majority, their differences were not partisan. Indeed, Luttrell faced his severest tests under two Republican chairs, Terry Roland and Heidi Shafer. Democrats still dominate the commission, but party loyalties, now as then, provide no cushion for Harris, himself a Democrat. His difficulties, like those of Luttrell, stem from disagreements over budgetary matters.

Luttrell’s alienation from his legislative body began when he evinced a determination to play fiduciary matters close to the vest, withholding information in 2015 about a looming budget surplus that commission members, once they tumbled onto its existence, decided they had plans of their own for. From that point to the end of Luttrell’s tenure, a power struggle persisted. When Harris took office in 2018, he took pains to express solidarity with the commission that had been elected that year, but discovered that maintaining an effective liaison with commissioners required a more systematic and continual effort than he had realized.

When he proposed his first budget in early 2019, he told commission members he wanted passage that very evening. He didn’t get it, of course. The budget didn’t get finalized until weeks later, after the usual give-and-take of negotiations. But in essence, he hazarded something similar this year, announcing last month, in the first blush of the coronavirus crisis, that he’d worked out a series of emergency reductions, across the board of county agencies, totaling $10 million, that would allow the county, by the nearest of near things, to escape bankruptcy.

Several department directors disputed his cuts, and the commission members couldn’t agree on them, and the bottom line was that nothing got done, not even a $2.5 million appropriation that was to have been the county’s contribution toward the costs of PPEs and other local COVID expenses.

Second thoughts on the commission’s part got that latter omission rectified two weeks later, and by then Harris had retooled his own plans, announcing a “lean and balanced” austerity budget of $1.4 billion that now required $13.6 million in cuts as well as a loan of $6 million  from the county’s fund balance, leaving that reserve fund at the “go-no-lower” level of $85 million. There were a few fillips, too, in the way of pre-K expenditures, money for the sheriff’s deputies who’ll have to be hired to police newly de-annexed areas of Memphis, and a few million dollars extra for the schools.

The gremlin in the mix was the ever-unpopular idea of upping the county’s wheel tax, to the tune of an additional $16.50 to be added to the base automobile license fee of $50. No other place to go, said Harris, inasmuch as local property and sales taxes had already topped out.

Between that meeting and this Monday’s, the commission held committee meetings last Wednesday in which disagreement over budget possibilities flared into open name-calling between Commissioner Edmund Ford Jr. and Harris.

Serving as vice chair to budget chair Eddie Jones, the two of them opened up a tear in Harris’ plans, which Ford called “garbage,” floating a plan to ignore the mayor’s “lean”model budget and replace it with a thinly reconditioned version of the old 2020 budget, coming in at $1.3 billion.

“I used to think I was halfway decent at math, but it’s obvious that I can’t add,” CFO Mathilde Crosby said. Harris accused Ford of having been a “bloodletter” when they both served on the Memphis City Council, and Ford reciprocated that Harris was “presumptuous and arrogant and ignorant.”

Perhaps wisely, Harris kept his distance from Monday’s commission meeting, at which the Ford-Jones idea of rehabbing last year’s budget was happily forgotten and the mayor’s own “lean” budget was equally ignored. With all hopes of agreement dissolving, Commission Chair Mark Billingsley seized upon the expedient of a budget retreat to be held on Friday in FedEx quarters at Shelby Farms, with only the commissioners, the mayor, CAO Dwan Gillom, and CFO Crosby there to reason together at six-foot distances and find both the humane initiatives favored by Commissioner Tami Sawyer and the “shorter shoestring” demanded by conservative Republican Commissioner Brandon Morrison.

Jackson Baker

Matters of State
Governor Bill Lee’s own “shelter-in-place” resolve was hardly long-lasting, and it was none too stout to begin with, although an online survey of Tennesseans, conducted by a condominium of northeastern universities found that Lee’s now-you-see-them, now-you-don’t actions have been welcomed by some 64 percent of Tennesseans, while only 13 percent disapproved.

In Nashville, this year’s session of the General Assembly was abandoned when the dimensions of the pandemic and its reach into Tennessee became clear. It was at a time, for better or for worse, of much unfinished business. Left pending were such matters as the funding (and timing) of private-school vouchers, the designation of the Bible as the state book, a carry-over anti-abortion bill, and open-carry gun legislation.

As reported by Erik Schelzig, the diligent and ever-accurate editor of the Tennessee Journal newsletter, “Senate leadership has made it clear its preference is to focus only on downward adjustments to the budget required by the economic impact of the coronavirus. But a vocal faction in the House wants to instead throw open the doors to the legislation left hanging when lawmakers left town in March.”

A not unimportant matter is the question of whether state legislators, if indeed they resume deliberations by the planned date of June 1st, would authorize “no-excuse” absentee voting. Early voting for the August 6th election round is scheduled for July 17th, mere weeks later. As of now, a firm cut-off date of May 8th still applies to absentee applications. As Schelzig notes, “There’s been little sign so far state Republicans are becoming more receptive to liberalizing rules on voting by mail. And they have ample political cover from President Donald Trump, who has been a vocal critic of allowing more absentee voting. If it remains just Democrats advocating for sweeping changes to Tennessee’s current vote-by- mail laws, the issue will likely be dead on arrival.”

Locally the ballot will contain a mini-Shelby County general election and, as elsewhere in Tennessee, a primary for state and federal offices. The much-beleaguered county commission, on which Democrats have an 8-to-5 partisan edge, has formally resolved both to seek an extension of the absentee ballot and to urge the county’s Election Commission to purchase new equipment enabling hand-marked paper ballots. Indeed, the commission has conflated the two matters into a single resolution, which has passed twice now with the minimum seven votes required.

Under the more limited approach, a small number of committees would meet the last week of May before gaveling into session June 1st for as little as a week. Under the situation-normal approach, the session could last as long as three weeks — or even butt up against the end of the budget year on June 30th.

Jackson Baker

The Pending August 6th Election
Leaving aside the seemingly remote chance that a re-summoned legislature would facilitate an expansion of absentee voting, the chance that Governor Lee would support such an undertaking is equally unlikely. As indicated, the issue has no place in the playbook of the state’s Republican super-majority.

What is more to the point of reality is the issue of new voting machines for Shelby County, which county election administrator Linda Phillips has expressed hopes of putting to use in time for the forthcoming August election.

As indicated, early voting for that election is scheduled to begin on July 17th, a fact that presents a drastically foreshortened timetable for resolving a matter that has been seriously contested, in one way or another, for years, and confounded local elections for a decade or more.

No one needs to be reminded of the numerous electronic glitches that have led activists to join forces to campaign for a particular kind of machinery, which, perhaps ironically, constitutes a throwback to a less technological time. Among these activists are Shelby County Election Commissioner Bennie Smith, an acknowledged expert in the field of voting machinery; law professor and former Shelby County Commissioner Steve Mulroy; White Station High School government teacher Erika Sugarmon; and Mike Kernell and Carol Chumney, both former state representatives and veterans, respectively, of the Shelby County School Board and the Memphis City Council.

All of the foregoing are advocates of hand-marked paper ballots and argue that given Shelby County’s own checkered and error-prone voting history, and in acknowledgement also of the hacks and rumors of hacks that have plagued national elections, a resort to hand-marked ballots verified by scanning machines would be both safer and less costly. And, in a time of potential viral infections of metal surfaces, they would also be safer than the kind of ballot-marking devices that Phillips and the GOP members of the Election Commission have expressed a preference for.

So far the battle over voting devices has been a back-and-forth affair, and the forced reversion to electronic webinar meetings of the Election Commission occasioned by the coronavirus outbreak has complicated things further. A definitive choice of machine vendors by Phillips and a subsequent vote on her recommendation by the Election Commission members were both aborted by an electronic snag that kept member Brent Taylor, a Republican but a potential swing voter, from participating in a virtual executive session of the EC last week.

The Election Commission is slated to have another go this week, and so, for that matter, is the Shelby County Commission, which, unlike the EC, is dominated by Democrats and has repeatedly voted its preference — twice recently — for hand-marked ballots. Given the fact that the county commission controls the purse strings, the stage is set for a possible showdown between the two bodies over the voting-machine matter.

Meanwhile, the major pressure on all public bodies is the determination on so many people’s part and in so many jurisdictions everywhere to resume public activities — in advance of the reasonably arrived-at phases announced by President Trump requiring 14 straight days of declining coronavirus cases, advances in testing and contact tracing, and much else — parameters that have been roundly ignored everywhere — and not least in the White House itself.

In a recent discussion on CNN with Wolf Blitzer, various experts were heard to theorize that a second, more virulent phase of the pandemic would be coming in the fall and that, sans some unforeseen good fortune to concocting a vaccine, the plague would be with us for at least two more years.

That, said one of the authorities on tap, explained the sudden mania to hit the beaches, the supermarkets, and the national shrines. It was a matter of get-it-while-you-can, the scientist — not a fantasist — theorized. And it is undeniably a goad to our public bodies. Somewhere out there our future beckons — into some rosy and becalmed sunset in which to find our dreams or, if things should take a dystopian turn, there’s Edgar Allan Poe and “The Masque of the Red Death.”

And there is surely something in between.

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Election Commission Attorney Shares Office with Voting-Machine Lobbyist

CREDIT: JB

In advance of a scheduled meeting Thursday afternoon at which county Election Administrator Linda Phillips was expected to reveal her preference for a vendor of new election machines for Shelby County, proponents of hand-marked paper ballots expressed alarm over a potential link between an Election Commission lawyer and one of the vendors bidding on the county contract.

Selene McClure

plaque outside the MNA office in Nashville

The ES&S company, vendor of the controversial Diebold election machines now in use county elections and known to be a bidder for the contract on behalf of a line of devices that mark ballots by mechanical means, is represented by the lobbying firm of MNA Government Relations, which leases space in its Nashville office to the Memphis-Nashville law firm of Harris-Shelton.

Both John Ryder and Pablo Varela, attorneys for the Election Commission, are principals of the law firm, and Ryder’s name appears in tandem with that of MNA on the interactive glass register in the lobby of Nashville’s Bank of America Building. Upstairs on the 10th floor, a metal plaque outside the office door of MNA lists the two companies together, with the company name of MNA followed by a forward slash and then the name of the law firm. [See photos.]

The photographs were supplied by Selena McClure, the daughter of Erika Sugarmon, a Memphis activist, high school government teacher,  and advocate of hand-marked paper ballots.

Asked about the nexus between the two firms, Ryder said that the relationship was solely that of landlord and tenant, with Harris-Shelton leasing the space but having no involvement in the ownership of MNA and possessing no partnership with the lobbying firm. He acknowledged being a longtime friend of Wendell Moore, the senior official at MNA but said he had had no knowledge about MNA’s client base and, in particular, did not know whether that company had a client bidding for the Shelby County voting-machine contract.
Selena McClure

Nor, said Ryder,   JB

John Ryder

did he have any awareness of who the respondents were to the RFP [request-for-proposal] sent out by Phillips seeking bids on the contract.

Ryder could offer no explanation for the linking of his name — (twice; once in an apparent list of MNA employees) —— with that of the lobbying firm on the lobby register. “That’s just a mistake,” he said. He repeated that there was no working relationship between MNA and Harris-Shelton and therefore no reason for him to have made a public disclosure.

Besides being an attorney for the SCEC, Ryder has long been an eminence in the fields of law, where he specializes in bankruptcy and has won several awards for his expertise, and politics, He served in the recent past as general counsel of the Republican Party, nationwide, and was his party’s principal adviser on reapportionment matters in the wake of of the post-2010 census. He currently serves on the board of the Tennessee Valley Authority, having been appointed by President Trump.

Selene McClure

another view of the interactive lobby register in the Bank of America building

As indicated, however, advocates of voter-marked ballots are not so sanguine about the apparent relationship between Ryder’s law firm and MNA, however coincidental or incidental it might be. “All the companies bidding on the machines are entitled to be on equal footing, and the public needs to be assured that it’s getting a fair deal,” said Carol Chumney, a lawyer and former public official who favors voter-marked ballots.

Chumney said she had respect for Ryder but felt strongly that he should have made some sort of disclosure about the relationship between his law firm and MNA.