Since Janet Hooks resigned her seat on the City Council and created a need for a special election to fill that seat, the City Attorney's office has indicated that a Charter Review Commission can be elected during that election, which will take place in conjunction with the August County general election and State & Federal primaries.
While this is a great thing in many ways, one problem that this presents is that the largest ballot in County history just got even larger. How many people are going to work their way down that monstrous ballot in order to elect Charter Commission members, and who will they elect?
Unfortunately, if they make it that far, they are more likely to vote for a name that they know unless they just don't like that person. Which, of course, favors old hands who are likely to make few changes, which is NOT what we need here.
I am now going to shamelessly use this forum to request of our Election Commissioners that, if legally possible, that the time frame for early voting for next August's elections be expanded by at least a week. If there is a legal prohibition against it, then I will ask my legislators to change that law this spring.
It's too critical to do otherwise.
4 comments:
How about turning on the Atom (RSS) site feed for this blog?
How do I do that? on Firefox, I can get the RSS feed...
I went to settings, it IS on...
http://leftwingcracker.blogspot.com/atom.xml
Herenton has already tipped his hand on this by how he handled it the last time. He will encourage a lot of friends and cronies with high name recognition to run in order to overshadow the new faces we need to elect.
Remember that Shelby County had a Charter Commission once before. At their first and only meeting they voted themselves out of existence, never reconvening, and thus stopping all further action.
Most Memphians also don't understand that the Charter Comission is a multi-step process. Whatever final recommendations they make still have to go before the voters.
My guess is that even if Herenton et al. can't stop the Commission from moving forward, they will fund the campaigns of the folks they want so that the Commission is stacked. It will vote itself out of existence as before and nothing will come of all this.
Have a happy vacation.
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