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How Entitled Should Voter Registration Employees Feel?
People use sunshine laws to retaliate against political opponents (it’s easy to find technical violations and use them to show an opponent is not being open; and you don’t even have to find them: newspapers write up baseless allegations just the same).
But it is rare that sunshine laws lead to fisticuffs. According to the Star Press of East Central Indiana, this did happen last Wednesday in Delaware County, Indiana, home of Muncie.
An appointed county voter registration office worker was arrested for having attacked not someone he felt broke the state’s sunshine law, but a reporter who did not challenge the legality of a county election board meeting due to allegedly insufficient notice. The board chair considered it an “emergency meeting.”
The alleged assailant also happened to be secretary of a Delaware County party committee.
Click here to read the rest of this blog entry.
This makes one wonder whether party people should be appointed to voter registration jobs. It’s typical for registrars to be political appointments, but isn’t there a conflict of interest here? Shouldn’t such employees be seen as neutral and fair? And shouldn’t they see themselves not as someone entitled to his position, but rather as just another county employee or, even better, as someone who has to look fair?
Would an employee who didn’t feel somehow entitled ever think of striking a reporter, especially one who had written nothing bad about the employee?
Here’s how he defended his actions:
“It wouldn’t have happened if you [the newspaper] hadn’t promoted it. When you promote illegal activities, there are ramifications. ... I was wrong in what I did, but at some point there’s got to be an attention-getter.”
You see, a party committee secretary is incapable of getting his committee to file a complaint, or writing a letter to the editor, or making a public statement at the next meeting. A party committee secretary is entitled to take the law in his own hands and get immediate attention for his cause. And he succeeded.
But he also got immediate attention for another cause: the cause of having neutral voter registration employees. I realize that this is like asking for neutral sports fans, but it should be like asking for neutral referees.
Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics
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Comments
donmc says:
Mon, 2008-04-14 14:56
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Upon reading the article at the Star, I found what I considered to be the most egregious aspect of the incident to be in the comments - to have a worker in the electoral system with such grossly bigoted views is appalling.
See the text of the specific comment below:
[quote=Comment Posted: Fri Apr 11, 2008 7:43 pm]“Statom said the Ball State registrations should not be a concern because the students wouldn’t vote anyway. Then he focused on the African American community members in attendance and said, "I don’t have to sit here and listen to THESE people." It was the way that the words came out and all in attendance knew what he was actually saying. I was so offended by his tone and remarks that I spontaneously stood up along with many others in objection and disgust. Statom said the forms would probably all be sloppy and illegible and that this was a big to do over nothing.”
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/4/11/141541/838/455/493809
Statom has to go. He should not represent any political party. When a person serves on any political board, they understand they are representing the masses. Statom's take on it is personal.[/quote]