Showing posts with label Ann Arbor politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ann Arbor politics. Show all posts

Sunday, February 5, 2012

This what democracy (really) looks like: Voting in a one-party town.

 Ann Arbor is solidly in thrall to the Democrat Party and so voting, except in the primary election, is nearly always an anti-climax to put it mildly. The intern over at the Ann Arbor Chronicle picked through the write-in ballots from 2011's First Ward Democratic Party primary election. Pathetic doesn't come close describing the feeling you get looking at these ballots. People show up to vote and find there is only one name on the ballot. So they vent their feelings with write-in votes. Some write in their wife, or themselves, H.P. Lovecraft characters, or scrawl fragments of political graffiti like "no fuller road" a reference to the proposed train station-parking structure boondoggle currently under discussion. One man, one vote, and one frickin' candidate. This is what democracy looks like in a one party town. Embrace the suck.

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Ann Arbor city council still acting like goofy tweens with their first cellphone

Some of council members are mortified at the prospect of the public reading their "personal" messages sent and received during council meetings using city issued computers and so they have directed the applicable bureaucrats to redact all that shit from publicly available transcripts. WTF are they even doing sending texts, IMs and emails during meetings for? They are supposed to be present, alert, and paying attention to the proceedings at hand, no?