Michelle McManus: Sharp teeth needed to fight off ACORN

A Snarky Picture Worth a Thousand Words (4.00 / 1)

McManus's vision of election law... (work-safe, but slightly icky)

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by: boehmianrhapsody @ Thu Dec 10, 2009 at 17:41:38 PM CST

But More Seriously... A Window in the Mind of McManus (4.00 / 2)

One of her ideas for election law reform: Senate Joint Resolution C. Among other things, this would require every referendum or initiative at the state level to collect at least one signature from every county and 100 signatures from each of at least 42 counties (out of 83).

Incidentally, in 2000, Keweenaw County had a population of 2,301 according to Wikipedia, making it the least populated of the counties. And of course, not all of them are registered voters. So in McManus's world, if 2 million Michigan voters signed a ballot initiative petition, but all 2,301 Keweenawans refused, those 2,301 people would effectively veto the rest of us.

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by: boehmianrhapsody @ Thu Dec 10, 2009 at 18:15:59 PM CST

$0.02 on ACORN (4.00 / 2)

What most politicians seems to forget is that ACORN is more than a C4.  They are also a C3 organization, doing important work in the urban centers of the U.S.

I spent more than two years working closely with ACORN and a number of other nationally visible housing/community development organizations as part of a federally funded program.  I audited many of ACORN's client files and spent a lot of time with representatives from the group. If measured on the Michelle McManus scale of "I heard ACORN was bad from TeeVee" scale, I practically have a Ph.D. in the matter.

That said, I don't think ACORN is perfect and their delivery method for first time homebuyer education gets a solid D+ from me (no measurable outcomes, poor client tracking, too many proprietary loan products) HOWEVER, they are no worse than many of the other national organizations delivery housing counseling services and far better than most of the small, local nonprofits that try to do it without benefit of oversight and the resources available to the larger regional and national groups.

Michelle McManus would do Michigan residents a much larger service by looking very closely at some of the faith-based groups funded under Bush II (or just read an Auditor General report on the subject), I'm quite sure she won't because A) that would require literacy, B) but... but... JESUS can't be wrong and C) she's too darn lazy to do anything that isn't a soundbite on her deluded path to higher office.

Do stupid people know they are stupid?

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by: JPowers155 @ Fri Dec 11, 2009 at 07:45:42 AM CST

Where to start? (4.00 / 1)

McManus is of course running for Secretary of State, so she needs to parade her anti-liberal credentials in order to  impress the right-leaning yahoos who run her party.  She doesn't have any interest in actually enacting any legislation, so analyzing these bills is entirely an exercise in futility.  But here I go...

In the first place, the House wouldn't pass it, unless it were part of some huge deal, which is not in the offing.  

In the second place, unless things have changed, I believe Bishop has ordered that no bill amending Chapter 168 be allowed out on the floor, because it could be amended to permit no-reason absentee voting, for which the Senate already has a clear majority, which he can only thwart by preventing any vehicle bill from being available.

Finally, I think prohibiting pay for registering voters (which is essentially what the bill does) is probably in violation of the U.S. Constitution, as interpreted by Buckley v. Valeo.  Interfering with gathering of petition signatures may be one thing, since initiative and nominating petitions are creations of state law and don't have any general place in the federal scheme.  But preventing people from being paid to register voters in Federal elections, when the registration method was created by a Federal enactment, probably wouldn't survive a test.

But we'll never know, since it will never amount to more than huffing and puffing.

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by: Grebner @ Fri Dec 11, 2009 at 08:03:57 AM CST

But they register (0.00 / 0)

poor people to vote! Isn't that against the law?  

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by: happy camper @ Fri Dec 11, 2009 at 10:23:44 AM CST

Who can be more conservative? (0.00 / 0)

Both are playing to the base, and both have opposed the progressive measures passed out of the House Elections Committee to improve voter turnout, such as no reason absentee voting, early voting, registering 16 year-olds and online registration.

Communications Guru The Conservative Media http://liberalmedianot.blogspot.com

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by: kjbas58 @ Fri Dec 11, 2009 at 14:52:25 PM CST