The Conscience of the Cain

[XLFD]

Tomorrow at 9:00 AM the Mason County Board of Canvassers will convene a meeting in the Community Room in the basement of Ludington City Hall in order to recount the votes in Ludington's Fifth Ward.  In the November 6th election, the vote totals for that ward of roughly 1000 electors amounted to 243 votes for Angela Serna, 239 votes for Wally Cain, and 5 write-in votes.   

The 4 vote difference among less than 500 voters amounted to a win by almost one percentage point (0.82%), which makes it a lot less close than the City's mayor race in 2016, where Kaye Holman beat Cheri Rozelle by 8 votes with about 3400 votes cast, a win by only 0.24%, or more than three times as close than the Fifth Ward race:

Even though Cheri was a non-incumbent, unlike Kaye who had served nearly a year as Mayor in a pro-tem role after Ryan Cox's abdication, she decided against having the votes recounted.  Wallace Cain, in contrast, is an incumbent appointed by the city council to take over Nick Tykoski's spot in 2017, who has shown himself to greatly favor the city corporate over its citizens through the years; his opponent with a winning margin in November, is anything but.  

Wallace (left) filed his petition the Friday after the election, reportedly doing so without clarifying his reason for doing so on the petition.  Election law mandates a reason (MCL 168.862):  "A candidate for office who believes he or she is aggrieved on account of fraud or mistake in the canvass or returns of the votes by the election inspectors may petition for a recount of the votes cast for that office... The candidate must be able to allege a good-faith belief that but for fraud or mistake, the candidate would have had a reasonable chance of winning the election."  See also (MCL 168.865):  "Such petition shall be sworn to and shall set forth as near as may be the nature of the mistakes or frauds complained of "

Losing by less than a percentage point is tough when you're the insider candidate, but unless Wallace believes the workers or equipment at the polling place were incompetent or working unfairly against him, he has no basis for the petition and the additional costs to the people he currently serves that the process will take. 

Wallace told a friendly COLDNews reporter:  "I did not anticipate requesting a recount.  But upon input from family, friends, colleagues and constituents, I now feel it is my civic duty to confirm the accuracy of this close race."   Besides admitting a high degree of suggestibility, the absence of any clear reason to ask for a recount seems more of a waste of public resources  and a call for more help from his colleagues who propped him into his current status, rather than a civic duty. 

Had Wallace lost by the margin Cheri did in 2016, he would have only had to pay $25 for a recount of the Fifth Ward ballots, since the margin he lost was over 0.5%, but less than 5%, he has to pay $125 to initiate the process (MCL 168.867).  Nevertheless, our county clerk has stated that she has put aside $1000, which may or may not be enough to cover the cost of this unjustified recount. This cost would include the wages for the four-members of the County canvassing board; in addition to the costs of the election inspectors—one from each political party—who will be there to perform the duties of the recount.

You don't have to be high on recreational marijuana, which is legal in Michigan starting today, to figure out that Wallace Cain's demand for a recount is about as rational as Hillary Clinton's inability to accept the results of 2016, where she got trounced in the electoral college.  It almost looks like Wallace is morphing into the former First Lady in this recent picture.

[AQUAMAN]

A strange time to get civic duty minded by Cain now. He hasn't been civic duty minded since his appointment on voting, nor answering his phone, nor giving his constituents a fair shake on political statements, where local issues should be for locals, not tourists. Another big-city outsider simply in this for the power and media attention imho.

[Willy]

Funny photo X. What gender should we assign to Cain?