By: Diane Benjamin
Tari Renner was on WJBC this morning. He stated elections should be taken away from the County Clerk’s office and put in the hands of a non-partisan election commission.
City elections are supposedly non-partisan. What were the first words uttered by Tari Renner when he was first elected?
He announced is was the first Democrat ever elected mayor of Bloomington. Almost 6 years later it’s obvious a Democrat was elected. Spending skyrocketed and the Tari campaign promises were a lie. He has promised for 2 elections to fix the roads, hows that going? Downtown is all that matters. Tari made local elections partisan, his name was even listed on the local Democrat website for his last election. The elections early next year are now partisan because of Tari.
Believing an election commission will be non-partisan is a fairy tale. People aren’t non-partisan, an election commission will never be because of the people running it.
Taxpayers have a chance to get rid of one unit of government – the Bloomington Election Commission. The opportunity to save money by not training and sending duplicate staff to conferences should be seized. The space they use now in the government building can be eliminated. The County and BEC do not use the same equipment for elections. Since the County is much larger, the cost for BEC to standardize equipment for the County would be astronomical.
If an Election Commission was established, these people would not be elected, they would be appointed by partisans. The County Clerk is accountable to taxpayers. An Election Commission would only be accountable to whoever appointed them.
The local Libertarians and GOP are circulating petitions to put a referendum on ballot to eliminate BEC. Sign it or download one and help get signatures. Both groups are circulating the same petition. See the GOP website here: https://www.mcleancountyrepublicans.org/election_authority_consolidation
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Not only is BEC equipment different than County, it’s relatively new! Tari is so clueless!
Tari reminds me of Hitler more and more everyday. I can only imagine his election commission looking like his liquor commission. Is it just me or is this scary?
Angela this is so true.
Same nonsense from the Normal mayor and council. We are neither Democrat or Republican when the election is occurring. Only after the election do we show our true colors with rainbow parades and spending sprees that requie taxes to be raised yearly! Bring Normal back to a ward system so I actuslly have someone representing my ward/district and declare who you are in elections. Being non-partisan only at election time is like wearing a mask. Only after sn election do we see who you are by your votrs and actions.
Never have been a Nazi, nor do accept any beliefs or methods of that abhorrent regime.
Nor am I a fan of Adolph Hitler. But to compare Mr. Renner to Hitler is demeaing to Hitler.
Hitler appealed to large throngs of volks. Mr. Renner appeals to small groups of folks.
Hitler was well liked by many people. Mr. Renner is not well liked by many people. Hitler filled the coliseum in Nuremberg. Mr. Renner might have a hard time filling the Bistro.
Hitler may well have been insane. Mr. Renner is just plain goofy!
1.) The ultimate objective of the Democrat progressive marxists is to eventually ELIMINATE elections. Any steps they take now are to that end.
2.) The are trying to wrestle elections away from the current County Clerk. She is not one of their own.
Both the Republican party and the Libertarian party who are pushing this petition are non-partisan. Tell another fairy tale.
Obviously since the Democrats aren’t circulating petitions they don’t support saving money, unless they get to save it the way they want. Yes it’s partisan, just like an election commission would be – except that commission would have no accountability.
Saving money? If it was about “saving money” you’d think Republicans in the county would be less heavy handed about their bald face partisan power grab. This is a take over and elimination of a commission so it swings to the Republican party.
Gee, I believe the voters elect the person they want handling elections. Republicans don’t have a padlock on the position. Your argument is laughable.
Again if this is really about saving money, the election commission should be moved out of the Clerk’s Office to a non-partisan county commission.That’s not the proposal, the proposal is to eliminate a 100-year-old election commission. Why now? Is this for the 2018 midterms? My argument is far from laughable.
bEC has no clue how to handle petition challenges, I’ve seen them in action. They are much smaller and could never handle a county wide election. November has nothing to do with this, it has been talked about for years. This is people cutting expenses since government refuses to.
The old I hate government excuse. If you hate government so much why don’t you stop doing a lot of the things the government makes possible for you do? Everything is anti-government until that government actually bails you out or gives you something you really need. Go to a country that has a bad or weak central government and you’ll see the difference. If you really think Bloomington or Normal have “bad” roads, go to a third world country for dirt roads and non-existent roads and poor infrastructure. Want to drink bad water? Go to a country with contaminated river water that doubles as a sewer as your drinking source. Gee, isn’t America grand, you just turn on you tap for clean water. Thank you government.
If you hate government why have you repeatedly tried to run for county government positions? That government you want to run must also be exactly conform to your very narrow and bigoted opinions of the role of government.
I didn’t say that I necessarily wanted the city to run the elections. Bloomington is not the only city that has an election commission. I find it dubious that the Republican party is pure as the driven snow as to their motives supporting the elimination of the Election Board. I also find that Tea Partiers like you have motives of suppressing voter roles with fake voter fraud claims. I believe this is a tactic to suppress voting in the more liberal Bloomington. I’m not alone in that assumption.
Thank you for proving the local uniformed do exist! Hate government? Government is STEALING money from citizens for their agenda – which they fail to disclose when running for office. Who NEEDS things from government – other than essential services it is government’s job to provide! I ran to CUT government. It is bigoted to believe local government’s job is Police, Fire, Roads, Water, Sewer, and very little else? Look up bigot. It describes you perfectly. Suppress votes, what a joke. It’s pretty difficult to get the local turnout any lower, I’ve done MANY stories trying to increase it. Thanks for the laughs.
Thank you for proving my point. Bigot: “a person who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices; especially : one who regards or treats the members of a group (such as a racial or ethnic group) with hatred and intolerance.
You pretty intolerant of anyone else’s opinion. Government is “stealing” money? Oh, the “I’m a slave” statement. You’re not a slave. You’re not anywhere close to a slave. Just because YOU think that government should do ONLY certain things doesn’t make it so. Just because you proclaim something with a loud voice so doesn’t make it right. That’s YOUR opinion. Government does other things like allying with science, business and higher education to bring a better standard of living in this country. We went to the moon. Where exactly did it state that government should do that? It didn’t. But that alliance brought great technological advances that we’re still using today. There are other alliances between arts, entertainment and businesses with government.
Voter suppression is real and it’s you who has wanted to be engaged in that voter suppression. You have done stories not increase voter turnout but to suppress that turnout. Your support of Project Veritas and scapegoat immigrants and people of color pretty much makes your protest comical and disingenuous.
You must read a foreign language into my posts! It’s local but you keep bringing in national issues. Since you don’t know history, the only people who have ever tried to suppress voters are in Democrat party. Jim Crowe was democrats. The fire hoses turned on black people.were democrats. Nice job with the Fake News. Just because you think Government should do something doesnt make it right. You are a government slave because you are buried in debt. You sound like a government employee. Hope you aren’t expecting a pension,they forgot to fund them.
I’m not talking about the south and Jim Crow around 1890-1950’s. I’m talking about now in 2018. Efforts like photo ID, purging voter rolls, efforts by the current Republican party and in particular Tea Partiers like you. That’s modern day voter suppression, and it’s a very much local concern. Don’t assume it can’t happen in Bloomington/Normal area.
I’m a “government” slave? No, I’m not. Perhaps YOU need to check your history books for what was actual slavery. It doesn’t include having to pay taxes. Slavery involved force hard labor, rape, vicious beatings, brutal murder, forced family with separations with absolutely no hope. This slavery bonded black people in our country for over 400 years. You are really deluded. Fake news? Is that anything that you don’t want to believe because of your intolerance? I think someone doth protest too much.
I’m “buried” in debt? No I’m not, you don’t know anything about me. I’m quite comfortable, Thank you.
Hilarious! Voter if is voter suppression. Everything in life needs an if except voting. Evidently minorities never but alcohol, never open a bank account. And never cash checks. Purging voter roles is required by law! It’s pretty easy to commit voter fraud when they aren’t. You are a slave to the debt government as created. State and local taxes keep going up because of it.
And you are not so hilarious. If voter fraud is so easy, why can prosecutors count on their one hand the amount of voter fraud that they have prosecuted with in person vote fraud? That’s the only voter fraud photo ID supposedly stops. There is very little in person voter fraud, where a person goes from vote polling place to place voting. Any such fraud is minimal to non-existent. Purging voter rolls purges those who didn’t vote in the last election, at least that how it has worked in several state which have done so. So you are disenfranchised for not voting let say for a couple of elections.
Again, I’m not a slave and you are not a slave. You do historical slavery a huge disservice by claiming to be “a slave”, your claim is a slap in the face of every single African American who is descended from actual slaves.
All governments carry debt, ALL. If you’re that unhappy about this government debt, don’t let the door hit you on the way out. You could move to a government that’s really bad, like either Russia or any other third world country. I bet anything you’d be slapped down writing about anything in those countries. Apparently complaining is all you capable of doing.
Thanks you for claiming voters are purged after not voting once. Proves how clueless you are. Sounds like the same fake news Niki is selling, maybe you are her? Google.voter fraud. Without id it’s so easy, that why democrats don’t want it.
I’m clueless? Fake news, that’s what you provide on your blog. If I’m so clueless why have these different purges gone wrong happened?
The secret and inconsistent manner in which purges are conducted make it difficult, if not impossible, to know exactly how many voters are stricken from voting lists erroneously. And when purges are made public, they often reveal serious problems. Here are a few examples from this year:
Voters are purged secretly and without notice.
Bad “matching” criteria leaves voters vulnerable to manipulated purges. Many voter purges are conducted with problematic techniques that leave ample room for abuse and manipulation.
Insufficient oversight leaves voters vulnerable to manipulated purges.
In Mississippi earlier this year, a local election official discovered that another official had wrongly purged 10,000 voters from her home computer just a week before the presidential primary.
In Muscogee, Georgia this year, a county official purged 700 people from the voter lists, supposedly because they were ineligible to vote due to criminal convictions. The list included people who had never even received a parking ticket.
In Louisiana, including areas hit hard by hurricanes, officials purged approximately 21,000 voters, ostensibly for registering to vote in another state, without sufficient voter protections.
States regularly attempt to purge voter lists of ineligible voters or duplicate registration records, but the lists that states use as the basis for purging are often riddled with errors. For example, some states purge their voter lists based on the Social Security Administration’s Death Master File, a database that even the Social Security Administration admits includes people who are still alive. Even though Hilde Stafford, a Wappingers Falls, NY resident, was still alive and voted, the master death index lists her date of death as June 15, 1997. As another example, when a member of a household files a change of address for herself in the United States Postal Service’s National Change of Address database, it sometimes has the effect of changing the addresses of all members of that household. Voters who are eligible to vote are wrongly stricken from the rolls because of problems with underlying source lists.
I will reiterate, photo ID does NOT stop your imaginary voter fraud. That fraud is in your head. You can “Google” anything to get your very own prejudiced result.
This news isn’t “fake” it’s a Supreme Court ruling:
“The Supreme Court on Monday upheld Ohio’s aggressive efforts to purge its voting rolls, siding with Republicans in the latest partisan battle over how far states can go in imposing restrictions on voting.
The court ruled that states may kick people off the rolls if they skip a few elections and fail to respond to a notice from election officials. The vote was 5 to 4, with the more conservative justices in the majority.” New York Times June 18, 2018
So yes, I’m right. States like Ohio are purging voters if they “skip” elections. You’re effectively disenfranchising millions of voters.
Have you noticed this is a local site? Here it’s at least 8 elections before anybody is removed and we have SAME DAY registration. Move to a state with problems if your goal is to fix elections. Here we just have dead people voting in Chicago and possibly illegals. I poll watched Madigans precint. When people who can’t speak English pick up their “Voter Guide” at the door and hand their ID to the registrar, it looks bad.
How the hell do you poll watch a Madigans’s precinct if you’re so local? You go all the way up to southwest Chicago from the Bloomington area? What is that around 90 miles? Perhaps you need to move. You insist that dead people vote? I guess you see dead people. There is no law says that if you are a citizen that you have to speak English to vote. You have zero evidence of voter fraud.
It was a project, around 200 participated. I notice you didn’t mind every voter told who to vote for.
It was up to the voter to say who they voted for, I presume, unless you tortured people for their answer. You stated that “dead” people vote and illegals voted in Chicago. Again, for someone who insist the this is a local blog, you have to go pretty far to make you bogus accusations.
I also find it amazing that you stated you “poll watched” in a Madigan’s precinct hundreds of miles north of were you live. I’ve polled watched and no poll watching I’ve done allows you to ask people who they voted for under any circumstances, you are only allowed to observe under strict rules. You were doing some other than poll watching..
If you even bothered to read my post above, it easy to say someone is dead when in fact they are not, they are very much alive. Why don’t you try this “experiment” in Ellsworth Illinois, if voter fraud is as easy to commit as you claim? I guess it’s easier to insist that voter fraud exist only in bad Chicago.
It’s illegal to hand voters a piece of paper showing a completed ballot. Thanks for missing that part. I think.you need to go away permanately!
Excuse me, I caught you in a huge lie. You went all the way up to Chicago to poll watch? That’s not possible, that’s EXACTLY what you said in black and white. Poll watchers are credentialed and don’t travel some 90-odd miles to observe a precinct. As I stated no poll watching allows you to question people, which is WHAT YOU SAID YOU DID….”It was a project, around 200 participated. I notice you didn’t mind every voter told who to vote for.” I have to go away permanently? Why because challenge you? That I notice your misspellings and poor grammar?
And you call yourself a journalist. A journalist would know the difference between facts and making things up. Your exposed yourself as a liar.
You are gone forever. I don’t lie, we did poll watch Mike madigan ‘s precincts. Parties can credential anybody they want. They did. Since you have nothing constructive to add to discussions, goodbye.