Dereliction of Democratic Duties in Scottville

[XLFD]

Michigan's governor imposed some strict lockdown procedures for the state beginning on March 23, 2020 and these continued mostly unabated throughout the spring.  This posed an unprecedented  problem to local clerks in the county who are traditionally engaged in activities in preparation for the primary and general elections in August and November respectively during this time. 

Most jurisdictions require nominating petitions to begin as a candidate for local office, so that in a place like Ludington, for example, one must seek out 40 signatures from Ludington electors on a petition in order to get on the ballot (only 20 signatures for councilors representing one of the six wards).  This presented not only a bit of a hardship for a candidate seeking signatures from their fellow citizens when door-to-door canvassing was effectively against executive orders, but also a problem getting the necessary materials and feedback from county, city, and township clerks, who were generally acting remotely since courthouses, city halls, and town halls were mostly shut down.

Experienced clerks like Ludington's Deb Luskin had some problems with the new challenges and looked to the state for guidance, which was spotty at best or contested in courts.  So even though Luskin knew that City Treasurer Tom Ezdebski was not running again early that year, that information was never passed along to the Ludington electorate, leading to nobody running for the office.  A write-in candidate few heard of, Mari Jo Lange, from the county treasurer's office, was the eventual winner getting 14 votes of the 4500 votes cast in Ludington.

In Scottville, City Clerk Kelse Lester (above) was facing her first even-year elections in 2020.   It is unclear what training the outgoing city clerk gave her for handling elections given that the transition occurred in the middle of 2019.  A look at her personnel file shows only training in being an 'election inspector', with no other training in election procedures.  

A look at Scottville's city commission election in 2020 showed that three people were running for four open at-large seats, two of them were incumbents (Graham and Benko), and the other was a city employee (Yeomans), albeit of Ludington.  All could be said to be insiders who were already working with municipalities and cognizant of the inner workings of city politics taking place during the early pandemic.  

A thorough scouring of the Scottville city website, their official Facebook page (which they maintain better than their website in regards to notifications), and all other media and sundry sources reveal that there didn't appear to be any sort of dissemination to the public about the commissioner races in Scottville in 2020.  The city charter, however, has some very definite duties that apply for elections regarding notifying the public about running for offices.  I introduced this in a FOIA request to the City of Scottville to find out whether the minimum noticed was given to the people who may have been interested in running for commissioner (like Tarra Perez, for example):  

"Section 4.6 of the Scottville City Charter says:  "The Clerk shall, prior to every city election, publish notice of the last day permitted for filing nomination petitions and of the number of persons to be nominated or elected to each office at least one week and not more than three weeks before such day."  Please provide:  

All evidential documents showing that the necessary publishing described above was accomplished and paid for in 2020 both timely and properly."

An extension of 10 business days was claimed by the FOIA Coordinator Carlos Alvarado to look though more records, at the end of which he admitted that: 

 

"Your FOIA request below has been DENIED. A public record does not exist under the name given or by another name reasonably known by the FOIA Coordinator."

Clerk Kelse Lester had a proscribed duty from the city charter to alert the public within 7-21 days of the deadline to the fact that they can run for office by filing a nominating petition with her.  This denial means that she did not do that basic notification duty, robbing Scottville citizens, like Tarra Perez, from knowing that they could run for office. 

This neglect of basic responsibilities associated with the city clerk's office made it so that only city insiders ran for office, and why the commission would eventually handpick the fourth spot, guaranteeing a full set of four insiders that have only complied with the rest of the commission's nucleus in their actions since the election. 

As noted in other articles, the commission appears to have no compulsion to follow the city charter as pertains to meeting procedures and budgets, they have shown similar disregard to state statutes dealing with the FOIA and Open Meetings Act.  One can imagine that they will not consider this disenfranchisement of the citizens of Scottville that runs contrary to charter as a big deal, since it only cements their power further. 

These are the same people who ran their city manager out of office ostensibly for almost missing a deadline when she was nine months pregnant.  While on company time, City Clerk Kelse Lester throws a rock through a window, knowing that young kids are under it.  She repeatedly embezzles money from citizens by claiming unauthorized overtime that she does not qualify for, and yet in all that time and overtime fails to do her basic duties.  She's still working, and the rest of the corrupt officials in Scottville appear to be still standing behind her.  

[Willy]

Terrific research X. I know this seems to be a local issue but I wonder how many cities and towns did the same and snuck in a candidate. It's possible that this was pre-planned by the leftists in order to fill as many elections spots as possible with like minded goons. Just like wealthy lefty's who have been buying offices such as prosecutors, one can assume that uunless the Republicans stand up to this nonsense we will end up Like Venezuela. We are definitely on our way.

[XLFD]

I am naturally suspicious, but as you note, this difficulty to run a local campaign extended throughout the state.  Governor Whitmer and SOS Benson did not make any great concession to allow people to go out and get nominating petitions signed in the usual March and April period, they fought concessions to extend deadlines and relax petition minimums due to Covid.  

Ludington City Clerk Luskin had some concerns at the time, but she wasn't giving much guidance herself for those who might have wanted to run for city office.  Councilors Miller and Lenich along with Treasurer Ezdebski were not running, but this info didn't get out to the general public.  The result was that city insiders only ran, with the exception of the first ward, where two came forward to run, one likely hand-picked by the outgoing councilor.  The City of Ludington could have easily publicized position openings and procedures on their website and Facebook page, they didn't, so one can make the presumption that they weren't interested in the democratic process.