LPM Online

July 24, 2001

Contents

  1. Upcoming Events
  2. BARC Update
  3. Rep. Woodward to address anti-SLAPP legislation

  1. Upcoming Events

    July 25, 2001 - 6:30 PM
    LP of Oakland County General Membership Meeting. Public welcome. Meet for dinner at 6:30pm, business begins at 7:30pm.
    Location: Sila's Restaurant, 4033 W. 12 Mile Rd, Berkley. Sila's is 2 blocks west of Greenfield on Twelve Mile Road.
    Contact: Chris Pellerito Phone: (248) 373-9411 E-mail:  LpocChairChris@aol.com

    July 31, 2001 - 6:00 PM
    Fundraiser for the Andy LeCureaux For Hazel Park City Council Campaign. This is a family event. $25 for adults, $12 for kids includes 3 games of Cosmic Bowling, shoe rental, pizza and soft drinks.
    Location: Hazel Park Bowl & Lounge, at Hughes and Woodward Heights. (From the HQ, go east on 9 Mile, turn left on Hughes, go north about 1/2 mile until you see the bowling alley.)
    Contact: Dave Collver Phone: (248) 542-9274 E-mail: DCCollver@aol.com

    August 6, 2001 - 7:30 PM
    Meeting of the Andy LeCureaux for Hazel Park City Council Campaign.
    Location: LPM HQ, 619 East Nine Mile Rd., Hazel Park
    Contact: Dave Collver Phone: (248) 542-9274 E-mail: DCCollver@aol.com

    August 8, 2001 - 6:30 PM
    Libertarians of Macomb County monthly meeting. Drinks and dinner at 6:30 PM, business begins at 7:00 PM.
    Location: Miles World Resturant, 17689 Masonic, Fraser, MI 48026, 810-415-4500.
    Contact: Diane Barnes Phone: (810) 774-1625 E-mail: dbarnes98@aol.com

    August 9, 2001 - 7:00 PM
    The Ballot Access Restoration Committee meets the second and fourth Thursday every month -- until we submit petition signatures to the Bureau of Elections to be certified to once again be able to run Libertarian candidates in partisan races. All LPM members are welcome to attend and help with both the planning and execution of our petition drive.
    Location: LPMHQ, 619 E. 9 Mile, Hazel Park (just east of I-75)
    Contact: Nancy O'Brien Phone: (313) 562-5778 E-mail: nobrien321@home.com

    August 11, 2001 - 1:00 PM
    Lit drop for the Andy LeCureaux for Hazel Park City Council campaign. Join us for a BBQ picnic in the HQ parking lot afterward. Picnic is free to volunteers who drop lit, but Dave will hit up everyone else for donations. Rain or shine, this is a family event so bring your kids!
    Location: LPM HQ in Hazel Park at 1:00 pm on Saturday, Aug 11, to drop lit to all 6500 houses in Hazel Park.
    Contact: Dave Collver Phone: (248) 542-9274 E-mail: dccollver@aol.com

    August 13, 2001 - 7:00 PM
    CLARE-GLADWIN LIBERTARIAN PARTY MEETING, turn in signatures, get new petitions, review FAIR success, get ready for Freedom Banquet 2001, refreshments provided.
    Location: Grant Twp. Hall, one mile west of Jay's Sporting Goods on Surrey Road.
    Contact: Ghazey Aleck Phone: (989) 386-2699 E-mail: aleckfamily@voyager.net

    August 15, 2001
    Monthly meeting of the St. Clair County affiliate.
    Location: Figaro's is located at 1503 11th Street, Port Huron, MI 48060. TX: (810) 987-3588. Join us for dinner at 6:00 PM. Business begins at 7:00 PM.
    Contact: Richard Friend Phone: (810) 982-7178 E-mail: rfriend@advnet.net

    August 16, 2001
    The Van Buren County chapter gives everyone a month off to enjoy the summer. See you on the third thursday night of next month. Get some more signatures on your copy of the petition!!!
    Location: CT's Restaurant, South Haven, located on the corner of M-43 and Blue Star Highway
    Contact: Bill Bradley Phone: (616) 637-4525

    August 20, 2001 - 7:30 PM
    Meeting of the Andy LeCureaux for Hazel Park City Council Campaign.
    Location: LPM HQ, 619 East Nine Mile Rd., Hazel Park
    Contact: Dave Collver Phone: (248) 542-9274 E-mail: DCCollver@aol.com

    More
    For more events, see the online calendar at:
    http://www.michiganlp.org/lpmonline/events.php

  2. BARC Update by Nancy O'Brien

    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.
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  3. Rep. Woodward to address anti-SLAPP legislation by Tim O'Brien

    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.

    The state rep (whose district includes LPMHQ) will discuss his bill to restrict lawsuits brought against citizen activists in an effort to silence them. Such litigation is commonly called a "SLAPP suit" (for "Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation").

    I had a personal experience with this tactic several years ago when my former mayor filed a SLAPP suit against me for participating in an effort to have him recalled from office.

    While I was not intimidated and in fact won not only a Motion to Dismiss but also my costs (because the judge ruled the case frivolous), many citizens who want to become more involved but are less accustomed to dealing with statist politicians are often so frightened at the prospects of being sued that they shut up and go away.

    California has already amended its rules of civil procedure to make such abuse of process far more costly to litigious, bullying politicians. Michigan can now at least consider similar legislation.

    The meeting is free and open to the public.

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