Brian’s Utah Weblog

Earlier I told the story of the massive million dollar failure of Parents For Choice In Education to bankrupt Utah’s schools at the ballot box. Today we look at one aspect of the campaign.

Poll Watching

Every election day hundreds of volunteers head out to watch the polls in Utah. Sometimes they’re looking for voting irregularities but usually they’re just trying to get out the vote.

The way it works is that you make a list of your supporters. Through canvassing door to door or through volunteer phone contact or through sophisticated statistical sampling you determine who is going to vote for your candidate. Then you split the lists by precinct or polling location and send volunteers out to check if your people have voted.

Volunteers start arriving after the morning rush and poll workers turn the pages of the voter list for the precinct while the volunteers check off the people on their list who voted. As long as there are no voters in line poll watchers — properly designated by a state political party chairman — have a right to see the voter list, though they do not have a right to touch the list itself. Only the poll workers can turn the pages of the list for poll watchers.

It takes an hour or three to go through a list, depending on voter activity.

When the lists arrive back at headquarters phone bankers make calls to remind supporters to vote, mentioning that they have been to check the lists in the morning and the voters haven’t been there yet. It’s particularly effective in getting family members of regular voters to vote and persuading marginal voters to get out in the last hours.

Most people who answer a GOTV phone call are happy to get out and vote once they’re asked directly by someone who knows they haven’t done their civic duty yet. A few are upset to be interrupted but they aren’t likely to vote anyway.

The Pirates

The pirates of so-called Parents For Choice In Education are working hard to deny my children and your a quality public education. They want to divert hundreds of millions of public school dollars to the pockets of their billionaire funders. They targeted about a dozen incumbent Utah representatives who are steadfast for our children and against the pirates’ corporate welfare scheme.

I was poll watching for one of the endangered incumbents. At each polling place I visited there were one or two full-time poll watchers for the pirates. They were not checking the voter list and moving on to another precinct but sticking around all day long with runners to carry lists into headquarters.

Apparently the pirates had to pay temporary agency workers to do their poll watching and didn’t trust them to go from place to place or to check off a list. They were simply marking down each voter as he arrived at the polling place. There must have been a team of paid callers to phone up the voters at the other end of the operation, but I didn’t see that of course.

In districts across the state the pirates spent tens of thousands on get-out-the-vote operations traditionally run by volunteers and candidates. It’s a shocking development and a drastic change. But I don’t expect to see this as the wave of the future, since the pirates’ effort was an astounding near-total failure.

Polling Here At Brian’s Utah Weblog

Vote in the new poll in the right-hand column here at Brian’s Utah Weblog. Don’t be afraid of not knowing enough to be sure — just go with your gut.

• There are still four close races being counted in Salt Lake County. Results haven’t been released to the public but Republican and Democratic lawyers are watching ten thousand or more absentee, provisional, and paper ballot votes be counted. The deadline for the official canvass is two weeks from election day so it will be one more week before we know whether districts divided by 25 votes (Duckworth), 32 votes (Walker), or 46 votes (Curtis) will swing. Even the county auditor race is in question (344 votes countywide).
• The legislature is gearing up to speculatively redistrict so that Congress might consider adding a congressional seat to Utah. Remember from last time that these guys proved they can’t be trusted. They can’t even stick to the one-man-one-vote rule. From the 2001 House redistricting (using 2007 party control),
  

  House Districts	Average Population
  Ideal Equal Size	29,776
  Actual Republican Districts	29,639
  Actual Democratic Districts	30,177

  This is systematic, far too large and persistent to be by chance. Republicans controlled the process and determined to draw larger districts around Democrats as part of their strategy to expand Republican power and shrink accountability to voters. The difference in size is enough to add up to two new Republican ‘representatives’ even without widespread dishonest gerrymandering by the Republicans. Senate numbers are similar,

  Senate Districts	Average Population
  Ideal Equal Size	77,006
  Actual Republican Districts	76,518
  Actual Democratic Districts	78,293

  No wonder Congress doesn’t trust these stooges to draw new lines.

• While pollwatching last week my wife Amy watched a polling place in a church. Right in the voting room there were posters calling for social justice, stories on the walls praising champions of our moral duty to look out for the downtrodden, a petition to repeal the rest of the regressive sales tax on food, sign up sheets for opportunities to care for children and needy families, and calls to love our neighbors and forgive our differences. The Republican Party should officially complain about polling in churches because it turns out God is a Democrat.

Out of state corporations invested close to a million dollars to destroy public education in Utah’s 2006 legislative elections.

The Background

Utah has a lot of children. Utah government spends lots of money on corporate welfare instead of education. Therefore, even with high taxes, we spend the lowest amount per pupil on our public schools of any state in the nation.

We have school choice programs within larger districts and a charter school system that provides novel and innovative schools a chance to exist within our public school system.

Some miscreants like Representative Ferrin (R-Utah County) have exploited loopholes in the charter school system to take millions of state dollars in advance payments for the non-binding promise to educate students for years in the future. Most of the advance payments are justified by construction costs and other start-up costs. It is unlikely that any of the schools set up this way will last long enough without any other capital costs to justify the millions given to the corporate welfare collectors.

Most charter schools are not run like that. I’m a proud graduate of a charter high school myself and I’ll work for real choice whenever it is offered. But a system with even more ready cash and less oversight than the charter system we have now is a recipe for disaster and discredit for the very existence of school choice.

The Danger

For years opponents of public education (and opponents of real choice) have worked to create ‘vouchers’ or ‘tuition tax credits’ which would transfer about $3000 per student from our public schools to private corporations running their own schools. Eventually the corporate welfare queens expect even more millions to reward their political pull at the expense of Utah’s children. Existing private schools that will lose autonomy when they have to take public money are just collateral damage to these pirates.

In 2004 the pirates won Jon Huntsman the Republican nomination for governor and subsequently the governorship so any bill through the legislature is likely to be signed and drain scarce remaining public school money away for ‘vouchers’.

The Villains

An organization called Parents For Choice In Education collected and spent between half a million and a million dollars from out of state donors to promote challengers to incumbents of both parties who have voted for public education and against unsupervised vouchers in Utah. That is a giant amount of money within the underfunded world of Utah politics. We don’t know the exact amount because our campaign disclosure laws are weak. But we do know the results.

The Republicans

PCE targeted two Republicans in the primary process. Dave Cox of Lehi didn’t have the support of the public school advocates either as he had upset them with advocacy of an untried process for school district splitting. Sheryl Allen of Bountiful was a long time public education advocate. Cox was eliminated at convention and Allen had to face a primary election. Corporate welfare pirate Ferrin of Utah County was also forced into a primary over his scheming with the charter school system.

Allen won her primary to return to public school advocacy; Ferrin lost his and will have take his bilking to the private sector. So far, no big victories for PCE.

The Election

In the general election, PCE targeted top Democratic advocates for public schools. Reps. Lou Shurtliff (D-Ogden), Karen Morgan (D-Holladay), Jim Gowans (D-Tooele) and Carol Spackman Moss (D-Millcreek) are former teachers and PCE attacked them because they could never be persuaded to betray Utah’s children. Others like Rep. Roz McGee who ran a children’s advocacy group were also targeted. And some like Rep. Carl Duckworth just didn’t vote to help the pirates steal from our kids and they were targeted. All of these Democrats were in swing disricts.

What Did PCE Do?

Every targeted Democrat was attacked with thousands of mailings and flyers accusing them of immorality, cheating disabled children, taking money from sick medicaid recipients for their own use, and worse.

None of the mailings admitted, of course, that the senders wanted to institute vouchers and decimate public schools because Utahns are against that. And PCE knows Utahns oppose their agenda.

PCE couldn’t recruit volunteers for their efforts so they hired temporary workers to do poll watching for all their campaigns and turn out the Republican vote without ever telling the voters or even most of the pollwatchers what they were doing. They hired the largest team of pollwatchers seen in Utah within living memory.

The Result

Every target of PCE survived to serve in another legislature except one.

Carl Duckworth (D-Magna) faced a lot of negative press and criticism these past two years for his work in the House. The criticism was over issues unrelated to education. He also cast some crazy votes like the vote for H.B. 100 of 2006 which — in complete ignorance of the Constitution — asserted the authority of the Utah Legislature over federal courts, especially where environmental matters are concerned. Even Jon Huntsman could see that embarassment needed to be vetoed. And Carl Duckworth may have lost to a PCE candidate by 25 votes. But there are still ballots to be counted and Duckworth could still pull this out.

All the other candidates hit by this unprecedented attack are unbowed and ready to stand again for Utah’s children.

The Future

The last voucher bill lost in a 34-40 vote in the House. This year there will be two or three fewer pro-children Republicans to add to the solid 19 Democrats to reach the needed 38 votes to stop the pirates from robbing our kids.

Find your legislators and tell them to fight for public schools and against ‘vouchers’ or ‘tuition tax credits.’

The Utah legislature held elections on Friday to pick leadership teams for the upcoming two years.

The House Democrats elected the most progressive team you could possibly imagine,

• Leader Ralph Becker (D-Avenues)
• Whip Brad King (D-Price)
• Assistant Whip Carol Spackman Moss (D-East Bench)
• Caucus Manager David Litvack (D-SLC)

The Senate Democrats stayed the course but selected new senator (and experienced legislator) Pat Jones to join the leadership team.

• Leader Mike Dmitrich (D-Price)
• Whip Gene Davis (D-SLC)
• Assistant Whip Ed Mayne (D-West Valley)
• Caucus Manager Pat Jones (D-Mid Valley)

The House Republicans showed off their contempt for honesty and ethics in government by failing to muster even a challenger for corrupt speaker Curtis who was caught stealing public money with double-dipping falsified reimbursement reports.  He had to quit his county job but the House Republicans still want him in charge.

The race for majority leader was a contest between Dixieites Steve Urquhart (R-St. George) and Dave Clark.  Clark won but if we have the fourth congressional set next year it may work out well for Steve Urquhart who has ambitions toward higher office.  The primary to go up against Matheson in the new Sandy-to-St. George Fourth District will probably be between Urquhart and LaVar Christensen and Urquhart will need all the free time he can muster to win.

• corrupt Speaker Greg Curtis (R-Sandy)
• Leader David Clark (R-Santa Clara)
• Whip Gordon Snow (R-Roosevelt)
• Assistant Whip Brad Dee (R-Washington Terrace)

The Senate Republicans chose to elect a leadership that promised to be more aggressive.  Senator Valentine had to promise to drive the agenda to be reelected over Senator Waddoups (R-West Valley) to the Majority Leader position.  And Senator Bramble won over Senator Knudsen (R-Box Elder) on a promise to assert the power of the Senate over the House more forcefully.

At least Senate Republicans understand that the House Republicans with their casual approval of corrupt leadership need some adult supervision.

Brian’s Utah Weblog had an earlier comment on the absence of Salt Lake County representation in the Senate leadership.

• President John Valentine (R-Utah County)
• Leader Curt Bramble (R-Utah County)
• Whip Dan Eastman (R-Davis County)
• Assistant Whip Sheldon Killpack (R-Davis County)

The Civicspace project, which powers most of the progressive community web communities areound the nation, has redefined itself.

The Civicspace project started as Deanspace, the community organizing platform created ad hoc by the Dean For America campaign (now Democracy For America with Utah affiliate Democracy For Utah).  Later it evolved into a giant organizing platform called CiviCRM that integrated with the Drupal site management platform.

Then Civicspace Labs shut down its site for about a month and revived just this month as an online service provider hosting Civicspace sites for a fee.  Since setting up and running complicated software is expensive and time consuming, the new approach could be a success.

And now Civicspace is no longer a single piece of software.  CiviCRM integrates now also with the Joomla site management software.

Webmasters, enjoy all the new choices.

Rosalie ran a fever today. I gave her some acetominophen and she perked up enough to chase around with big sister, but she asked to be put back to bed afterward.

Here’s a picture of Rosalie in happier days. In this case the happy day was Hallowe’en and this happy moment came before the massive consumption of candy.

Looks like the Senate Republicans have chosen to elect their leadership without a single Salt Lake County member. Forty percent of Utah isn’t very important in the Republican view of things.

Senator Waddoups (R-West Valley) was running for senate leadership, but apparently lost.

Maybe Salt Lake is better off without a voice in the Republian leadership, though. It might keep the waste, fraud, and corporate welfare scheming focused elsewhere.

For years, Democrats and Republicans in statehouses and Congress and even a vocal passel of retired Generals from our armed services have been demanding the resignation of Secretary Of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. And the disastrously bad handling of the Iraq war should have led any president who was doing his job to conclude that Rumsfeld must be replaced.

But it wasn’t until Monday the Congressman Jim Matheson (D-UT2) joined the chorus of voices calling for Rummy’s head. Two days later Rumsfeld was gone. Coincidence? I think not.

With the election of a Democratic United Stated House, The Honorable Representative Jim Matheson (D-UT2) becomes even more powerful. As co-chair of the Blue Dog Coalition in the incoming House Matheson will head the conservative Democrats holding the swing votes on most every issue facing the United States in the next two years.

Yes, the Secretary Of Defense is a big scalp, but save space on Matheson’s wall for some even bigger trophies.

I received an invitation yesterday from a candidate for mayor of Salt Lake City to a fundraising breakfast.  It was perfect timing to kick-off election 2007.

Today I saw Greg Schulz planning his run for Utah House 22 in 2008 with Utah Democratic Party leaders.  Of course, we’re all still hoping that Rep. Carl Duckworth (D-Magna) will pull out a victory in this close race on the provisional ballots.  But I like to see a candidate with the energy to work right from the first day.  Good for you, Greg.

Welcome to election season for 2007 and 2008.

While the national results show the Democratic candidates ahead by about 5% to 10%, in Utah we didn’t see any change in partisan results.

State Democratic Party officials say that Utah results improved just over 4% statewide over the historic average trend. But we didn’t win any elections on that rise, so I think it’s nothing but systematic bias based on changes in which races Democrats and Republicans targeted in this cycle.

For example, Democrats challenged Republicans in Iron and Washington county for the first time in years and Republicans challenged Democrats in districts like Sentate District 2 where former senator Paula Julander was unchallenged in 2002. None of those candidates won, but our long shots did better than their long shots.

Lucky for America, it looks like the trend did hit in our neighboring western states. Colorado and Arizona are sending more Democrats to Congress and Colorado has a new Dem governor. Wyoming and New Mexico may yet elect more Democratic congressmen.

Nothing much happened in Utah yesterday. It was a warm, sunny autumn day along the Wasatch Front with calm winds and even calmer political winds.

In the most important races, there was no change. County Council incumbent David Wilde (R-Murray) narrowly defeated challenger Diane Turner to secure Republican control of the Salt Lake County Council for two more years. That loss will put our transit future in peril even with the measure three money. Corrupt Utah House Speaker and admitted thief of public money Greg Curtis (R-Sandy) made his way back into the legislature by a slim 40 vote margin over hardworking challenger Jay Seegmiller. There will be recount in that race and some provisional ballots need to be counted. If you love Utah, you will pray for good news in that race but the margin is likely large enough to hold.

The partisan divide in the House remains 56-19 and in the Senate remains 21-8.

Only two seats changed parties in the legislature. In House 22, Carl Duckworth (D-Magna) has been hit with accusations of weak and ineffective leadership throughout his past term. He avoided a primary this spring by only a few votes in convention over progressive challenger Greg Schulz of Magna. Tuesday he lost to Republican Deena Detton Ely, but the result was a razor thin 25 votes and an automatic recount is in progress.

In House 36 Phil Riesen defeated Susan Lawrence (R-Millcreek) to give a solid chunk of the East Bench complete Democratic representation. Districts to the north and south were already Democratic.

No senate seats changed party hands.

Bond initiatives in both Salt Lake and Utah counties for transit passed by wide margins.

The biggest change this year is that there is a new sheriff in town. Jim Winder, Salt Lake County Sheriff-elect will bring energy and strength to a department that had weakening leadership under Aaron Kennard. Congratulations to Jim Winder and Salt Lake County.

Update (11-9):  The Senate is 21-8 Republican.  When I wrote 20-9 I was still dreaming that Utah had won with the election of Trish Beck in Senate 9.  It had been a late election night for me.

The Tribune did a story today on the Mozy computer programming Deathmatch.

Jon Jensen wrote a story about the Deathmatch on his weblog.

Mozy reports that of several hundred entries and 122 who submitted some answer to one or more challenges

• 93 were eliminated in round one
• 21 were eliminated in round two

And none of the eight submissions in the finals completely met the criteria of the challenge, although some came close.

The results page shows that my entries for the ten problems in rounds one and two were all successful but my entry in the finals, like the seven others, didn’t meet all the performance criteria.  We came pretty close, though.

The biggest issue in legislative elections is the number one item in the state budget, education.  The state House and Senate spend all of our income tax money and millions of sales tax money on education every year.

This year the so-called Parents For Choice In Education, a political action committee funded by out of state millionaires, is working hard to defeat candidates who stand up for public eduation in Utah.  PCE wants to siphon off public education money for private corporations to run schools with no accountability to taxpayers.

Private corporations running schools below the college level (where students are adults and can make their own choices) have been a disaster in California and Texas.  And in Utah, where we are already dead last in education funding, it could be much worse.

PCE has been sending out attack flyers accusing public school supporters of cheating disabled children and other atrocities.  Let’s fight back against the liars.

Now it’s time to reelect Rep. Shurtliff (D-Ogden), Rep. Gowans (D-Tooele), Rep. Morgan (D-Cottonwood), Rep. Moss (D-Millcreek), Rep. Duckworth (D-Magna) and others under attack from out of state millionaires that want to rob our kids of their birthright.

A review of the big things at stake in Salt Lake County

The transit initiative (number three) will help determine the fate of Salt Lake County for a generation to come. It will raise about a billion dollars with a quarter cent sales tax to pay for badly needed transit lines. Diane Turner and David Wilde will determine a lot about our future also.

• First, electing Diane Turner will reward our wonderful Mayor Peter Corroon with a 5-4 Democratic majority on the council and help him cut the budget to keep our taxes low while services stay efficient.
• Second, Diane is a solid vote against any money for sports stadiums that isn’t approved by the voters in a referendum while Wilde is wobbly on the issue.
• Third, Wilde voted for the transit initiative but the rumors around the council chamber were that he refused to support it unless supporters could bring along one other Republican councilman first. We need a council that will take a stand for our future without cowering behind the skirts of either political party. I know Diane and I promise that she will do what she believes in and not what any party tells her.
• Fourth, read the Trib endorsement of Diane Turner.

Let’s take note that the leader of the legislature that put our transit money in jeopardy this fall is running to be reelected to the Utah State House in Salt Lake County. The corrupt Greg Curtis (R-Sandy), who has been caught double-dipping into state and county reimbursement funds, left the country in October and let his campaign warchest speak for him. Jay Seegmiller is working the ground to replace him in the 49th district in Sandy. If you want our transit money spent in Salt Lake County by Salt Lake County government instead of being taken by a greedy and vindictive legislature, vote for Jay Seegmiller in Sandy.