NDFA Meeting Notes - March 6 2008 w/ Guest Speaker David Orr

Written by: Sandra Verthein on Jul 3, 2008 5:32 AM EDT

Linked to groups: Northside DFA

The meeting notes below were prepared by our NDFA Recording Secretary, Melissa Lindberg, based on notes she took during the meeting.  They are NOT a direct transcript, so please do not attribute any portion of these notes as direct quotes from our speakers.  If you have questions or comments, please contact Melissa at: http://democracyforamerica.com/users/206530-melissa-lindberg

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NDFA Meeting Notes - March 6, 2008 with Guest Speaker David Orr

Updates on Candidates:

Daniel Biss: Biss had a fundraiser with a local band: ~ 65 attended, and ~ $3,000 was raised.  This event was organized by some of our NDFA members. In the primaries,  Biss received about 16,000 votes to Beth Coulson’s 6,000: of course, this may shift as people won’t draw straight Democratic tickets for the General, so some of the Democrats who like Coulson may choose to vote for her in November.  But it is an encouraging sign. 

Obama:  Jim Ginsburg gave a report on his canvassing in Ohio.  He was in Cuyahoga County, in Shaker Heights, where his wife has family.  He was impressed with the Obama campaign in Ohio: a true mix of young and old, rainbow of ethnicities, very diverse campaign. 

Two politicians/candidates were present and recognized: Scott Harper is the Democratic candidate in the 13^th congressional district in Illinois, running against incumbent Judy Biggert (R).  Heather Steans, newly elected State Senator to the 7^th State Senate District in Illinois, was also present.

(Continued.)

Events:  On Saturday, March 8, there will be a special election in Illinios 14th congressional district, to fill the seat vacated by Dennis Hastert.  Bill Foster is the Democrat running: we will be carpooling out to the 14th to help out GOTV on Saturday.  The 49th Ward Dems (on W. Greenleaf) will be phone banking at 6 pm tomorrow.  Both of these events count for voting membership.

There will be a campaign strategy meeting for anyone who would like to attend, to brainstorm ideas of how to approach the general elections in terms of using NDFA’s resources wisely.  Anyone who would like to attend is welcome.  Also, there will be a Forums Committee meeting to decide on whether to do more forums in the upcoming year, and what topics to pursue.  Suggested topics include: solutions for the healthcare crisis, a forum on TIFs, Iraq war protests, etc.

The Greater Lincoln Park DFA will host Mike Quigley on Thursday, March 13, at 7:00 pm at the DePaul Lincoln Park campus.  Quigley will speak on “The Truth about TIFs.”

Speaker: David Orr, the Cook County Clerk, spoke.  Part of his responsibilities are elections in Cook County.  He’s a former college professor, former Alderman, and former Vice Mayor.  He told stories about his time in the City Council, about taking on the Machine and the risks involved for both him and his campaign workers, about Council Wars and Harold Washington.  He noted that while our elected officials are often wonderful people, they don’t get the need for political reform, or campaign reform.  We don’t have the people at the top of the Democratic Party who recognize the need for change. 

Partially because of his experiences running against the Machine, he feels strongly that elections are sacrosanct.  This is one reason why he feels passionate about his current job.  The County Clerk handles elections, tax rates, birth/marriage records, and has a small portion which deals with Ethics.

There have always been election shenanigans: he noted that 4 precinct workers were indicted 3 days before one of his elections – for breaking the legs of volunteers for other campaigns, and obstruction of the election.  He noted this goes to the top: note the inappropriate intervention by the Supreme Court in 2000.  We have to learn the lessons from this, and demand change.  The road to change is difficult, because who does it benefit?  Not the ones currently in power.  Mayor Daley quietly against Motor Voter at the beginning of the fight to change voter registration laws; and the first calculation about early voting was – is it good for Democrats?  All of those political calculations had to be overcome to pass those reforms.

If he could wave a magic wand, he have voting on holidays or weekends.  As it is, it’s a very long day for the election workers, from 5am to 9 pm – 99% of the errors are human errors, and most can be ascribed to fatigue.  He’d have shorter hours – maybe on both days of the weekend – to combat the problems associated with human error due to tiredness.   He needs 100,000 educated people to be election judges for each election.  The biggest election day problem tends to center around provisional voting, usually because voters go to the wrong polling places.  In 2004, they counted those ballots; but other counties didn’t count them.  In Cook County, 28% of provisional ballots are valid.  This varies across the country.  In California, 85% of provisional ballots are OK.  Orr turned down the LA County Clerk’s job.

Question from the audience: why can you vote in any polling place for early voting, but on election day you must vote at your precinct?  The answer has to do with the computers in use: there are so many open polling places on Election Day, the system would be unbelievably slow if each precinct had to be able to access the county-wide database of voters.  Early voting uses real-time computing, but that’s not possible on Election Day.  There’s just so much equipment in use, and so much potential for the failure of that equipment.

Another question was about hybrid voting in primaries: can you pull a 3rd party ballot along with either a Democratic or Republican ballot – so you could vote in the races that the 3rd party is not running in?  Orr noted that he believes in 3rd parties, but the parties in charge do not.  Its all state law, not different by county – there is nothing in the voting that is unique to Cook.  And primary ballots are supposed to measure the support for candidates within the party, so there is no incentive for the parties to open their ballots to those who are not interested in the future of the party. 

The next question was about electronic voting: how come ATMs can disperse receipts, but voting machines do not give you a summary of voting?  Orr stated that most clerks believe that receipts are a great temptation for fraud: voters have to be given the chance to make changes before the vote counts, not after the fact.  It also opens up the electorate to the old schemes of paying people to vote, or not to vote: the voter would then have a receipt to show the party operative how he/she voted, and could be paid off easily if it showed the correct votes.  As it is, there is tremendous pressure out there, and if there were receipts the pressure would be even greater.  There’s a reason why we have secret balloting.  In fact, the priority is in convincing people that their vote is secret, that they can trust their vote.  Most electronic voting now does have paper trails, and most areas do run audits of the vote.  Cook County does an audit of 5% of the vote, to see if there are irregularities.  Its very important to do the audits, and stay on top of it.  People will do anything to win elections; steal you blind to win.  Watch an audit sometime: one person will read the vote, while others make hash marks.  Every time they’ve done the audit there have been NO changes in the vote.  There has to be parallel testing to see if introduction of new software changes outcomes.  Yes, 90% of vendors run the show when it comes to their software.

Follow up question on access to vendor’s software – understand the software so you can understand when it goes awry?  This is very hard for smaller jurisdictions: they simply don’t have the manpower to monitor the software, and must take on trust that it works the way its advertised to do so.  You have to push hard to get more out of the vendor; the vast majority are not there yet.  There’s legislation pending on source code.  There are four major companies, but one may go out of business soon. 

Another question followed on the entrenched resistance to reform.  What’s in it for them?  Follow up on the Constitutional Convention: Orr is against it, he thinks most of the problems with the current state constitution can be resolved with amendments, and the problem with the Con-Con would be the delegates slated to attend: why would we expect a different result from what we’re getting out of Springfield these days?  He sees it having great potential for a trainwreck.

Question: how could things be made worse?  Well, Voter ID passed in committee, which is a flagrant attempt to depress minority voting.

Another question was about term limits: do they improve democracies?  Orr is against term limits: let the people decide who they want to elect, don’t impose artificial restraints.  When politicians are term limited, they often cut deals with corporations as they’re going out of office – they know they’re no longer accountable to the voters.  There’s nothing wrong with leaders with experience.  He sees term limits as a Republican trick. 

Question on TIFs: they have a technical function, to set tax rates to allow development in underdeveloped areas.  However, taxpayers need to have the information about TIFs, lights need to be shown on them, as they have become a way for tax income to be hidden from voters, a quiet way to control money.  $500 million are currently in TIFs.  We need to try to force budgets to show TIF money, put info out on these things: Make Noise! Raise Hell!  Take stories to Ben Jorvasky of the Reader – make as much noise as possible. 

A commenter agreed that term limits should come from the ballot box, not legislation.  She serves as an election judge, and wanted to praise the Mikva project girl who worked her precinct on Election Day: she was fabulous.  We need to pass legislation so that kids can be juniors as well as seniors (high school) and serve for more than one year.  There was agreement that we need to find ways to get young people involved in the election process.

David Orr was thanked for his time.

Group Announcements: Democracy Burlesque’s next shows will be on March 25, April 1, and April 8 and entitled “Poorhouses: or this economy is killing me.”   Its at 8 pm at No Exit in Rogers Park.

Sunday at 3 pm at the Bookceller, Amnesty International will host a presentation by the person (missed the name) who edited a book of poetry by Guantanamo Bay detainees. 

Nick recommended the American Prospect Magazine; and also announced that Dennis Kucinich won his primary in his Ohio congressional district.

Two years ago there was a town hall meeting hosted by Danny Davis about the fact that funding for HIV/AIDS was decreasing.  As a result of that meeting, Karen Yarlborough and Jackie Collins got legislation passed (with a lot of lobbying help) so that there are now Instant Lottery tickets whose proceeds go to funding HIV/AIDs.  Red Ribbon cash, $2.  Buy them!

Claire reminded us of the Illinois Ballot Integrity meeting, Wednesday, the 12^th of March, at the Fullerton Library from 7 to 9 pm.  There are fliers at the check in table.

Trudy reminded us of Earth Hour 2008: 8 pm on Saturday, March 29: turn your lights and other electrical appliances off.  Also, be sure to install energy efficient light bulbs in your house!

There was a break, after which the members’ meeting continued.

Several committees were proposed:

Members were invited to join the Candidate Strategy Committee to decide what races we want to be involved in for the General election, and create a list of recommendations.  This involves a maximum of two meetings, creating a big list of recommendations, doing research, then narrowing the list.  Barry agreed to host the committee but not chair it.

Another committee opportunity is the Forum Committee, which will decide the strategy & topics for upcoming forums.  The idea is to do 4 forums, quarterly, with the idea that they help us grow the group.  What topics should we tackle, and where and when should the forums be?  Sandra will host the first meeting on March 16 at 2 pm.  One idea is for a forum on the Constitutional Convention?  It will automatically be on the ballot in November (part of the state constitution); is it a good idea?  We need to educate ourselves on it.

Sandra also proposed doing a referendum project: we can get an advisory referendum on the ballot precinct by precinct.  She sees this as a good way to get involved in our own communities, as the signature requirement for precinct referendums is not high. Its important to do things locally.  This is also a way to reach out to progressives who are willing to work with you on an issue.  It will increase our visibility in our community.   There are no binding referendums except for the Constitutional Convention referendum.  One idea is to write a referendum on campaign finance reform.

Vote: Interest in Referendum Project:
Yes: 15

One person spoke against spreading our resources too thin: stressed the need to keep our focus, and keep our eye on the ball (i.e., electing progressives).

But if we don’t do it, who will?  Though the Trial (s) have shown spotlights on the corruption in state political arenas, they still have lacked the will to do meaningful reform.  This is a great way to mobilize voters while the issue is still in the spotlight.  If we keep it to limited areas, that will be good – not spread too thin. Perhaps we can encourage other groups to do this as well.   Plus the signatures have to be in by August, so we can then focus our energy on the general election from September onwards.  It’s a good way to do outreach to people who are disgusted but don’t know how to get involved.

Sandra and Jeff will do more research on the referendum question.

Other business:  which restaurant to meet in?  Other options not clear.  Transportation is difficult to Reza’s.  Furama’s Chinese restaurant was suggested.  The group decided it would prefer to stay at Reza’s at least one more month. 

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Location: Chicago, IL 60640