Cozy Oversight
Dear Overseers:
How does the DC Board of Elections and Ethics work to resolve
challenges to candidates’ nominating petitions? The Washington Post
editorial board spread a lot of misinformation in its Saturday
editorial, “DC’s Cozy Election Oversight,” http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dcs-cozy-election-oversight/2011/03/11/ABFBZLS_story.html
The editorial starts from the same wrong assumption that the Post
editorial board promulgated last year, when it promoted the candidacy of
an unqualified and unsuitable candidate nominated by Mayor Adrian Fenty
to be a member of the Board of Elections: “It’s disturbing that a
totally Democratic body will decide whether a Republican can stand for
election. Despite a legal requirement for minority representation on the
three-member elections board, which supervises voting, it’s been more
than a year since the board has had a Republican.” The law does not
require that the three-member BOEE have a Republican member. The law
requires that not all three members of the Board be of the same party.
If two members are Democrats (and there’s no requirement that two
members be Democrats), the third member can be a Republican, a
Statehood-Green Party member, or an independent. In DC, there are more
independents than Republicans, but no independent has ever been
appointed to the BOEE.
The editorial also complains that what seem on their face to be
several forged signatures on Patrick Mara’s petitions were not
discovered by the Board on a preliminary review of his petition sheets.
The Board doesn’t do any preliminary review of candidates’ petition
sheets, except to count whether a sufficient number of signatures are on
the sheets; it assumes at that point that all signatures are valid.
There’s a very good reason for that: the law doesn’t allow the Board
to make it’s own independent review of candidate petitions; it can
only act if a citizen files a complaint. There are two rationales for
this. First, a government agency, even if it is independent, should not
be initiating a process that may keep candidates off the ballot. Second,
since the BOEE judges whether complaints about candidates’ petitions
are valid or not; it should not be making its own complaints and then
judging them.
Then the editorial board misunderstands or misstates the process by
which complaints about petitions are brought to the BOEE. Any citizen
can complain that any candidate’s petitions do not contain enough
valid signatures, though in practice those complaints are usually filed
by a competing candidate. Those complaints are reviewed by the staff
members of the BOEE, led by the Registrar of Voters. The Registrar
issues an opinion about whether there are a sufficient number of
signatures on the petitions. That opinion is presented at a hearing that
is chaired by a member of the General Counsel’s office — the
attorneys who represent the Board — where both the complainant and the
candidate can present their arguments. The General Counsel’s office
then rules whether to accept or reject the opinion of the Registrar of
Voters. At that point, either the complainant or the candidate can
appeal to the actual Board of Elections. If there is an appeal, the
Board members will hold a hearing — at which time they will see the
evidence for the very first time.
Regardless of party, the institutional bias of the Board of Elections
has always been to accept petitions and to put candidates on the ballot
if any reasonable argument can be made to accept their petitions. To
prevail, complainants have to present overwhelming evidence that
petition signatures are bad and that there aren’t sufficient valid
signatures on the petitions — and in my experience even overwhelming
evidence may not be enough to convince the Board. The Post’s insinuations
that partisan bias influences the BOEE’s decisions on this point are
simply unsubstantiated. But the Post is right about one thing.
Because Mayor Fenty neglected the Board of Elections throughout his
term, and repeatedly nominated unqualified and unsuitable candidates to
be members of the Board, the three-member Board of Elections is down to
two members, and one of those two is serving over a year after his term
expired. The Gray administration should make it a high priority to
nominate two new members to the BOEE as soon as possible, and some
diversity in the party membership of Board members should be
reestablished.
#####
Commentary on the Sulaimon Brown charges against Mayor Gray and his
campaign have become repetitive over the past few days, but Bruce
Johnson of WUSA added new information tonight about Brown’s
background, (http://tinyurl.com/4knug5a).
Unfortunately, most people will probably interpret this information as
confirming what they already believe to be true.
Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com
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What I Thought I Wrote About the DC City Council and Salaries
Richard Layman, rlaymandc@yahoo.com
The DC city council isn’t just a “city” council, so it is
important to make correct comparisons. This is key. I am big on making
proper comparisons because without such, analysis is worthless. I didn’t
necessarily justify super-high salaries for council people. I just said
that given that, since they serve as a kind of combination of
city-county-state legislature, the question needs a deeper
consideration. I don’t believe that it is right for city
councilmembers to be paid that highly and still work part time for other
compensation.
With regard to higher salaries for staff, I merely made the point
that white collar work (analysis, etc.) tends to be paid more
highly. And I made the point that I sure wish our council turned out top
notch research, commensurate with its purported status.
It happens that I am interested in various ways in which local
government is structured to enable public engagement, input, and
participation. I happened to write about this a few weeks ago with
regard to DC and local government, and compared salaries for DC
councilmembers to county councilmembers in neighboring jurisdictions: http://urbanplacesandspaces.blogspot.com/2011/02/highly-paid-dc-city-council-and.html
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The March 9 post [“Breakdown,” themail, March 9] could not have
expressed my sentiments more exactly! But I do want to add a couple of
thoughts.
Sulaimon Brown went to the wrong place to seek redress for his
grievances with the Gray administration, and instead of steering him in
the right direction, the Post took his complaint as valid,
disregarded all the confessions in it of his own highly questionable
actions, did a “study” of his cell phone records as though they were
the smoking gun that proves the Gray administration’s guilt, gave Gray
a word or two for his side, and then proceeded to concoct a front and
center page case in its Sunday, March 6, edition for all the world to
see (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/03/05/AR2011030504378.html)
in which the Post plays judge, jury, prosecuting attorney,
forensic evidence provider and ethics committee all in one, ruling that:
“See, we were right! Gray is corrupt. Case Closed!”
In handling Mr. Brown’s complaints and allegations this way, the Post
has revealed far more about itself and its own condescension and
contempt for the city of which it is a part than it has about actual
wrongdoing in the Gray administration. Certainly, what Mr. Brown told
them raises serious questions — on a lot of fronts. But why didn’t
the Post pursue a course in which wrongdoing, if any, by Gray or
Brown, could be actually shown instead of just throwing a big wad of mud
out upon the whole DC government, every resident in this city and the
whole world?
Seems to me, the real scandal here is that Brown has misused the Post,
the Post has misused him, and the Gray administration together
with We the People have been caught — and misrepresented to the world
— in their revengeful and retaliatory mudslinging.
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Full Time Councilmembers
Ed Shanbacker, shanbacker@msdc.org
I am not sure you got it right in correcting Ed Cowan [themail, March
9]. I went to the District Charter, and nowhere in there does it speak
to full-time or part-time employment of the councilmembers or chairman.
What it does say is that the chairman alone is precluded from outside
employment. The other twelve are free to have outside employment or not
if they choose. I agree that a number of the councilmembers work far in
excess of forty hours per work and in no way can they be considered “part-time”
under the Fair Labor Standards Act or any other meaning.
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Petition Challenges
Kesh Ladduwahetty, keshinil@yahoo.com
Thank you for your coverage of the petition challenges in the special
election.
I wonder why we in the District of Columbia cannot rely on our Board
of Elections and Ethics to review the petition signatures and confirm
their validity. Since it is BOEE’s own requirement that the petitions
be submitted, it should be BOEE’s duty to validate that all the
requirements are met by all candidates. Currently, BOEE leaves it to
individual campaigns to challenge their competitors, and apparently only
those with aggressive, professional campaign managers do so. This
infuses the petition process with political motives. It is time that
BOEE puts its own house in order to raise the petition process above the
political fray.
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March InTowner Issue Now Online
P.L. Wolff, intowner@intowner.com
This is to advise that the March 2011 issue PDF is available at http://www.intowner.com
and may be opened by clicking the front page graphic on the home page.
There will be found news, commentary, and features content, including
the popular Scenes from the Past (this month titled “Art Deco a
Standout at the End of a block of Victorian Row Houses”) — plus all
photos and other images.
This month’s lead stories include the following: 1) “Petworth
Branch Library Re-Opening Reveals Major Enhancements Inside”; 2) “InTowner
Visits With Whitman-Walker’s Director — Finances, New Focus
Explained”; 3) “Danish Embassy Sets the Standard for 20th Century
Modernism in DC.” The Selected Street Crimes feature, which is
separately posted on the web site, will be updated shortly, at which
time we will provide notification.
The next issue PDF will publish early in the morning of April 8 (the
second Friday of the month, as usual). For more information, either send
an E-mail to newsroom@intowner.com
or call 234-1717.
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CLASSIFIEDS — EVENTS
Nieto Sobejano, March 22
Stacy Adamson, sadamson@nbm.org
March 22, 6:30-8:00 p.m., Spotlight on Design: Nieto Sobejano. The
Spanish architecture firm Nieto Sobejano continues the country’s
architectural exploration of form and material in innovative ways.
Founding principals Fuensanta Nieto and Enrique Sobejano discuss their
work, including the Madinat al Zahra Museum in Córdoba, Spain,
recipient of a 2010 Aga Kahn Award for Architecture. This program is
co-presented with Virginia Tech’s School of Architecture + Design and
the Embassy of Spain during Spain: Art and Culture 2011. Prepaid
registration required. $12 members, free students, $20 nonmembers.
Walk-in registration based on availability. At the National Building
Museum, 401 F Street, NW, Judiciary Square Metro station. Register for
events at http://www.nbm.org.
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Life After the War on Drugs Symposium, March 24
Joe Libertelli, jfl@udc.edu
The UDC Law Review at the University of the District of Columbia
David A. Clarke School of Law (UDC-DCSL) is proud to present the 2011
Symposium: Life After the War on Drugs: Reviewing Past and Present
Policies with an Eye Toward Legal Reform. The daylong symposium will
take place on Thursday, March 24, at UDC-DCSL (Windows Lounge: Building
38, 2nd Floor 4200 Connecticut Avenue, NW).
Join Ronald C. Machen, Jr., US Attorney for the District of Columbia;
Wade Henderson, President and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil
and Human Rights; Jasmine Tyler, Deputy Director of National Affairs for
Drug Policy Alliance; and numerous other legal scholars and policy
experts from Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), Students for
Sensible Drug Policy, The National African-American Drug Policy
Coalition, and other organizations from across the country in a
symposium exploring the past, present, and future of drug policy in the
United States in wake of the War on Drugs.
For more information and to register, please go to http://www.law.udc.edu/event/Symposium2011
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