With the passage of Proposal 3 in 2018, and 2020 being a Presidential Election Year, there has been increased attention on absentee voting, and, as a result, there are more questions from those first-time and seasoned voters as well as from campaigns and the media.   First, the envelopes that absentee ballots, directions, return envelopes and secrecy sleeves have changed so […]

According to a breaking story in USA Today, a Betsy DeVos-sanctioned accreditation agency gave approval to operate for Reagan National University in South Dakota, a “university” with no students, faculty, administration, or facilities–things which one might think an “accreditation agency” might notice. DeVos’ Department of Education saved this accreditor from being removed from the DoE’s list of approved accreditation agencies, […]

By now you’ve likely read about Adrian Iraola’s confrontation with a Class A bigot during community meeting on diversity, equity, and inclusion in Saline. When Adrian stood up to talk about the impact bullying and racial slurs had on his teenaged son, a man named Tom Burtell asked him, “Why didn’t you stay in Mexico?” The moment was caught on […]

What’s the hurry? What if any pretense of rule of law in America were rapidly eroding and everyone was cool with it? That’s seems to what’s going on. Nicholas Grossman does an excellent job of laying out President Donald Trump and Attorney General William Barr’s multifarious assaults on the Constitution, which have only become more rapid and obvious since Trump’s […]

As someone who heads up a County Democratic Party, I had first row seats to the the Blue Wave of 2018. It didn’t begin in 2018, of course. It began on Wednesday, November 9th, 2016. As a nation woke up to the terrifying reality that a misogynistic, racist show business conman had been elected as the President of the United […]

Dude, is your hair on fire???! “We came up a little short” “I just got the numbers from Sara and they don’t look good” “The deadline is midnight tonight” “Can you chip in to make sure we beat Trump?” If your email inbox looks like mine, you spend what feels like hours a day deleting fundraising emails from candidates and […]

After the Iowa Caucus disaster last week, I received many calls inquiring how we (Michigan election officials) were going to make sure Michigan’s primary election does not turn into an Iowa-level debacle. While there are many things that set Michigan apart from Iowa, at its core, the main reason this will not happen in Michigan is simple: Michigan has professionals […]

We need to be as ruthless as he is There was finally a forum for the Democratic presidential candidates to confront what may be the most pressing issue of the era — the Republican theft of the federal courts. And while it’s essential to think how we combat the right’s successful hijacking of the judiciary that took place in an […]

Hard to see how this all ends well The Trump era is the Universe’s way of teaching people to stop making predictions. But I have to note one guess I may have gotten right. “Beto isn’t your problem, Bloomberg is” — was my late 2018 case that fans of Bernie Sanders fixated on the candidacy of a former member of […]

It’s the biggest broken promise in presidential history — and you know who pays for this one You know Donald Trump accidentally came close to telling the truth when he decides to lie harder. After telling CNBC that he would get down to cutting Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid “at some point,” he felt the need to go out and […]