Amendments

Dear Amenders:

Three Home Rule Charter Amendments will be on the ballot Tuesday. These amendments resulted from legislation passed by the city council last December in an attempt to make it appear that it is doing something in response to the ethical scandals that have enveloped it. Unfortunately, these three proposed amendments were passed by the city council at a meeting in which the language of the amendments was written spontaneously by Councilmembers Kwame Brown and Muriel Bowser while on the dais. The final, written versions of the amendments wasn’t even available for months after the council voted, and there has been some dispute over whether the amendments actually reflect what councilmembers intended, or thought they were voting for. Because these amendments are changes to the charter, they must be approved, not just by the council, but also by the voters.

Proposed Charter Amendment V establishes a procedure by which councilmembers can expel a member of the council "for gross failure to meet the highest standards of personal and professional conduct." The legislation makes it clear that expulsion isn’t to be used simply because of political differences — Democrats shouldn’t use this provision to expel any non-Democrats who accidentally get elected to the council. However, to protect against that in actual practice, the proposal makes it nearly impossible to get an expulsion vote. Five-sixths of councilmembers, or eleven out of thirteen, have to vote for expulsion. That means that a councilmember who is the subject of an expulsion motion will have to get only two other members to vote against the motion, or to abstain from voting for it, for the motion to fail. Don’t expect this proposal to have any beneficial effect, therefore; it’s for cosmetic purposes only, and won’t ever be used in practice. But it’s also not likely to have any negative effect, either.

Proposed Charter Amendments VI and VII would require that councilmembers, or a mayor, who are convicted of a felony while holding office are ineligible to remain in office or to hold that office again. Again, these provisions are unlikely ever to have any effect. They can be evaded easily. The proposals don’t make all felons ineligible for office, but only those who commit and are convicted of a felony while holding an office. An officeholder who foresaw the possibility of conviction for a felony could resign before the conviction, and still be eligible to run for office again (e.g., Kwame Brown). Also, there is some dispute over whether councilmembers believed that they were voting to make all felonies disqualifications, or whether they intended the disqualification to apply only to felonies that had a direct relationship to their official duties while in elected office. In the unlikely event that either provision were ever invoked, that legal argument is sure to be raised. Because of the confusion that was caused by the way in which these proposed amendments were written, they’re likely to cause more harm than good.

Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com

###############

Voting
Dorothy Brizill, dorothy@dcwatch.com

From October 22 through this past Saturday, nearly fifty-five thousand residents voted at early voting centers in the District. As has been reported, the lines at all the sites were very long; wait times of two to three hours were not uncommon. During the first week of early voting, it soon became apparent that the plans and poll set-up that had been done by the Board of Elections was inadequate. Because of that, during the two-day closure of the District government because of hurricane Sandy, the BOEE did place additional voting machines and equipment and assign additional staffers at all the early voting centers, as space permitted. In large measure, the problems at the early voting centers stemmed from the fact that this is a presidential election year, and more District voters turn out on presidential elections than in normal municipal elections. Moreover, early voting centers are a fairly new phenomenon in DC, dating from just 2010. In the last presidential election, in 2008, District residents could cast absentee ballots, but could only do so by mail or by going to the second-floor office of the Board of Elections at 1 Judiciary square. In 2008, long line developed and snaked their way up and down the staircases at 1 Judiciary. When the long lines were shown on national television, Mayor Adrian Fenty, who had been an early Obama supporter, directed the City Administrator to detail staff and resources to the BOEE, and relocated early "absentee" voting to the old council chambers at 1 Judiciary Square. Long lines persisted, but they were more manageable because of the additional resources.

Several additional factors have served to compound the problems at the early voting centers this year. First, because of redistricting, there were 661 different ballot configurations this year, and the memory cartridges for the current electronic voting machines could not accommodate all of them. As a result, and since voters from all over the city could vote at any early voting center, voters had to be directed to specific machines to access the correct ballot for their address and Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner race. In addition, it should be noted that all three members of the BOEE and the executive director for the BOEE are new, and are planning and overseeing their first presidential election in the District.

On election day on Tuesday, District residents who didn’t vote early or by absentee ballots will vote in both a general and a special election. In the general election, residents will vote for the President and Vice-President of the United States; the District’s Delegate to the US House of Representatives; two at-large members of the DC city council; ward members of the city council from ward 2, 4, 7, and 8; a US (Shadow) Senator; a US (Shadow) Representative; an at-large member of the State Board of Education; members of the State Board of Education from wards 2, 4, 7, and 8, and two hundred ninety-six Advisory Neighborhood Commissioners. In addition, voters will vote on three separate Charter Amendments dealing with the ethical conduct of the Districts’ elected officials. Charter Amendment V would allow the council to expel a member for "gross misconduct." Charter Amendments VI and VII would disqualify a councilmember and mayor, respectively, from holding offices if they were "convicted of a felony while holding the office." In the special election, voters will elect a city council chairman to replace Kwame Brown, who resigned, to hold that office for the remainder of Brown’s term, until 2014. Both the general and special election will appear on a two-sided printed ballot.

On Tuesday, polls will be open from 7:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. Anyone in line by 8:00 p.m. will be allowed to cast a ballot. Prior to going to the polls, you can visit the BOEE web site (http://www.dcboee.org) to review a sample ballot, see the list of candidates, and see your rights as a voter. More information is contained in the Voter Guide that was mailed to voters by the BOEE; more copies of the guide will be available at the polls. Be a vigilant voter. If you see anything at the polls that you believe to be improper or illegal, for example, electioneering inside a polling place, you can report it by speaking to the precinct captain at the poll or by calling the BOEE’s General Council, Kenneth McGhie, at 727-2194 or Executive Director, Clifford Tatum, at 727-2525. It helps to have much detailed information and evidence as possible. (It is legal to take a photograph inside of a polling place, as long as you don’t photograph a person while he or she is actually casting a ballot.)

###############

Committee of 100 Urges Rejection of Streetcar Barn at Spingarn
Byron Adams, Committee of 100, 100 badamsc100@verizon.net

In testimony delivered to the DC Historic Preservation Review Board, the Committee of 100 on the Federal City called on that group to reject a District Department of Transportation (DDOT) proposal to locate a streetcar maintenance facility at Spingarn High School in Northeast. The Committee of 100 says that the facility will eliminate green space and "is totally unsympathetic to the aesthetics and architecture of the Spingarn campus."

Spingarn, located on Benning Road, was the last District school campus constructed in the Colonial Revival style. In addition, the school complex, construction of which began in 1951, was at that time the first predominantly African-American high school built in DC in thirty-five years. In addition, the school is part of a four-school campus that, in conjunction with the adjacent historic Langston Golf Course, provides a college-like setting. As a result, the neighborhood Kingman Park Civic Association has nominated the school and campus to receive landmark status. While the landmark application is pending, no action that would degrade the property can occur. Landmark status, if granted, would make it harder for DDOT to locate the facility at Spingarn.

DDOT would use the facility for the storage and maintenance of streetcars on the proposed H Street/Benning Road line. DDOT originally intended to locate the facility beneath the "Hopscotch Bridge" near Union Station, but it was unable to secure permission to do so from Amtrak, which owns the station and needs the space for its own projects. Once that plan fell through, DDOT hastily chose the city-owned Spingarn site after little more than a cursory review of other alternatives. That is yet another demonstration of the pitfalls of the piecemeal planning process which DDOT has followed. The Committee of 100 continues to support the creation of a world-class streetcar system. But DDOT’s haphazard planning process, studded with artificial deadlines, has consistently put the agency in the position of fighting with the communities it ought to serve.

###############

The Electoral College, and Winner-Take-All
Jack McKay, jack.mckay@verizon.net

It’s so much the norm these days that winner-take-all allocation of each state’s Electoral College votes is not even questioned, despite its blatant unfairness. Republicans in DC and Democrats in Wyoming might as well not bother voting for president, because their votes will count for nothing. Yet there’s nothing in the Constitution that mandates winner-take-all, and two states — Maine and Nebraska — don’t, instead allocating their votes relatively fairly between candidates. Winner-take-all means that the whole College vote for a state can be swung, one way or the other, by a mere handful of votes, such as might be diverted from one of the principal candidates by some third-party candidate, or by a flawed ballot in one confused county; see West Palm Beach, Florida, 2000.

That’s what’s got Republicans in Virginia worried, because whatever vote Constitutional Party candidate Virgil Goode might get will presumably be at Mitt Romney’s expense, potentially giving all thirteen of its Electoral College votes to Obama. Fair, according to current polls in Virginia, would give six Electoral College votes to Romney, six to Obama, and one to Goode. But of course, that’s not how it’s done, thanks to Founding Father James Madison. Before 1800, Virginia chose its Electoral College representatives by district. But Madison saw that those district elections in 1800 would surely give some of Virginia’s Electoral College votes to John Adams. So he cleverly instigated the change in Virginia to winner-take-all, thus assuring that all forty-two of Virginia’s votes went to Thomas Jefferson, none to Adams. In that election, Jefferson won in the Electoral College by just eight votes, so if Madison’s maneuver deprived Adams of just five of Virginia’s forty-two votes, he had decided the outcome of the 1800 election.

That’s what winner-take-all is about: making sure that all of a state’s Electoral College votes go to the party of the majority in that state, with none given to the candidate of the minority party. It’s about raw partisan politics, not democracy. Parties in other states saw the political advantage of Madison’s technique, and by 1832, winner-take-all was nearly universal, as it remains today. So, if a handful of votes to Virgil Goode causes Virginia to fall into Obama’s column this coming Tuesday, blame James Madison, Founding Father, author of the Bill of Rights, fourth President of the United States, and ruthless partisan politician.

###############

Czarism and the Department of Transportation (DDoT)
Clyde Howard, ceohoward@hotmail.com

What is the problem with the District of Columbia’s Department of Transportation (DDoT)? Why has it asked churches of different denominations to present a plan of parking for their church members? Why should the churches present a plan for parking? It was not their doing to place signs for ward-registered vehicles through out the ward where the churches are located. This is what a czarist type of government would do.

DDoT did not confer with the churches before enacting this draconian rule. They acted in the dark and leaped out with their signs regardless of who they hurt. Was it because they are Godless in their position against the churches? It seems that there are some who do not want any church in their neighborhood because they occupy prime real estate which can be put to use for expensive apartments or condos. Perhaps all churches should move into the suburbs. After all, there are those who do not go to church except when there is a disaster or some calamitous event that make them run to the church for salvation. Or is it because that which made the previous community harmonious and homogenous is no longer and that the quantifiers now in control and in certain segments of government intend to remove that which was good for the masses at that time.

Moving the churches to the suburbs would complete the design in making Washington, DC, a godless city and would designate it as a prime target for those who would want to see it as a city of bicycles like some Asian city. I hope they get their wish and that bicycles can be used as emergency vehicles to put out fires, transport the injured, and move heavy equipment.

###############

Kwame Brown’s Sentencing Recommendation
S.E. Reuter, rtlreuter@aol.com

A slap on the pinky finger?

###############

CLASSIFIEDS — EVENTS

MacIntosh User Group Meeting, November 10
Ken Nellis, NCA-MUG, webmaster@nca-mug.org

The National Capital Apple Macintosh Users Group (NCA-MUG) will hold its next monthly meeting on Saturday, November 10, from 10:00 a.m. to noon, in the first floor meeting room of the Cleveland Park branch of the DC Public Library. Apple representative Aaron Davis will present the new features of iOS 6 and, with time, the latest Apple products. For more information, please refer to the group’s web site, http://www.nca-mug.org.