LPM OnlineJuly 24, 2001 |
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As of July 20, 2001, the top ten signature gatherers
are: AL TITRAN 703 BENJAMIN F STEELE III 569 LEONARD C SCHWARTZ 496 JERRY E BLOOM 447 VIOLET STEELE 356 RICHARD JOZWIAK 240 TRAFTON JEAN 230 LLOYD SHERMAN 208 BENJAMIN F STEELE JR 163 DAVID COLLVER 160 Way to go guys! At the beginning of the petition drive we divided the number of signatures needed for success by the number LPM members. We then multiplied the quotient (27) by the number in members of each affiliate. The following is the resulting signature goal for each affiliate and how each is doing so far: Affiliate Collected Goal % Goal Allegan 43 560 7.7% Berrien 107 560 19.1% Clare-Gladwin 132 320 41.2% Ionia 11 240 4.6% Kalamazoo 36 1013 3.6% Lapeer/Genesse 16 1413 1.2% Livingston 77 1732 4.4% Macomb 1105 5784 19.1% Mid-Michigan 421 2852 14.8% Midwest Michigan 79 560 14.1% Oakland 2004 10688 18.8% Ottawa 56 800 7.0% SC Michigan 43 1652 2.6% Shiawassee 1357 293 463.1% Saint Clair 11 693 1.6% Traverse Bay 7 773 0.9% Tri-Cities 370 1173 31.5% Upper Peninsula 39 1119 3.5% Van Buren 45 426 10.6% Washtenaw 2870 2799 102.5% Wayne 636 8422 7.6% West Michigan 66 2799 2.4% --------------------------------------- Total 9531 46,671 20.4% The above totals are based on what has been checked and logged in. It takes a while to do the checking. So we may actually have more signatures at HQ than are reflected above. Remember: get those completed petitions to us as fast as you can. If you don’t trust the U.S. mail (a prudent concern), mail them certified to my address: Nancy O’Brien, 17015 Cicotte, Allen Park, MI 48101. To mail a stack of 300 or so petitions by certified mail will cost approximately $7.00. I will sign for them and let you know they have arrived safely. Volunteers Needed for Special BARC Project Do you hate to petition? Would you like, nevertheless, to help the ballot drive by doing something equally as important? Are you at least moderately proficient in word processing technology? Can you commit to working at HQ for a few hours between now and November 1? If you answered yes to all of these questions, BARC needs you to help with a project that may save us thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours of petitioning during Phase III of the campaign. We have obtained the state’s voter registration list on CD ROM. If we can verify a high validity rate for the signatures we have, it will reduce the number of signatures we had intended to gather as a “cushion” against the inevitable bad signatures collected in every petition drive. It will require you to work on a special database at HQ, entering names and addresses of signers to see if they live where they say do and are really registered to vote. If you are interested in helping with this project, please email me at nobrien321@home.com, or call me at (313) 562-5778. Please note: Since posting this request for volunteers last week I have received zero responses. Ben Bachrach spent approximately 12 hours configuring the database to make it relatively user friendly. He then installed it on both computers at HQ. If we do not find volunteers willing to help with this work, we will be forced to hire a temp to do it. If you have some time to work on this project, please let me know. Trip Hazards Petitioners. The most common error we are finding in checking petitions is that the signer has written the county in which he/she is registered to vote in the space on the petition provided for his/her city or township (the first box). This undoubtedly occurs because once a person has agreed to sign, our petitioners – quite correctly – ask in which county the person lives (in order to get the signature on the right petition). The signer responds, the petitioner turns to the appropriate page in the sheaf of petitions, and hands the clipboard to the signer. The signer then, still following up on the last question, writes his or her county into the box for city of township – not realizing that the petitioner has already addressed the issue by selecting the appropriate page and that he/she need not write in the county information (since it is already at the top of the form). Unfortunately, once this error is made, it is fatal to the signature because our checkers have no way of finding the signer’s city or township based only on the remaining information. Fortunately, this problem can be easily prevented by specifically telling the signer that you are presenting to him/her the petition page FOR that particular county as you are doing so. Also, note that some counties have a city, a township, or both, that shares the name of the county. For example, there actually IS a Macomb Township in Macomb County. This can lead to further confusion, as it can appear that the person is making the very mistake described above when, in fact, the designation is correct. If you aren’t sure, please ask the signer if his/her township has the same name as the county. Checkers. Some individuals have been designated to check signatures on behalf of their affiliate. I have provided each with a list of cities, townships and villages in each county. The State Elections Bureau provided that list to us. I am finding that the information on the list although correct, is incomplete. If you find signatures with cities or townships that don’t appear on the list provided by the state, please don’t cross them off without further checking. I suggest one of two approaches: you may go to one of the search engines on the web, type in the name of the city/township and county and see if you can find it. Or, you may put a paperclip over that signature and when you submit the petition, I will see if I can find it. BARC Announcements The BARC meeting set for Thursday, July 26 has been cancelled due to a scheduling conflict. The next BARC meeting will be Thursday, August 9 at 7:00. Remember: the submission deadline for Phase II is Saturday, August 18. All petitions, even those with only one signature, must be returned to HQ so we can assess what we need to do in Phase III. This is crucial to the effort, so please don’t let us down on this. Keep petitioning, but send in what you have collected up to that point.
Representative Dave Woodward (D-34) will be the special
guest speaker at a meeting of the Community Activist Network
being held at LPMHQ (619 E. 9 Mile, two blocks east of I-75
in Hazel Park) on Thursday, July 26 at 7:00 pm. |
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