We’ll be talking about the November 2022 general election up and down the Michigan, Washtenaw County, and Ann Arbor ballots, plus some general tips that will help you vote smart no matter where you live.
Getting ready to vote (especially in Michigan):
- Preview your ballot
- Read answers to the League of Women Voters surveys at Vote411
Come check out our episodes and transcripts at our website, annarboraf.com. Keep the conversation going with fellow Ann Arbor AFers on Twitter and Facebook. And hey, if you wanted to ko-fi us a few dollars to help us with hosting, we wouldn’t say no.
Transcript
0:00
Jess: Today we’re getting ready for the November 2022 general election. We’ll be talking about up and down the Michigan, Washtenaw County, and Ann Arbor ballots, plus some general tips that hopefully will help you vote smart, no matter where you live. If you’re tuning in from beyond Ann Arbor, please stick with the podcast. We think you’ll enjoy the next few episodes which include interviews with the co-author of Neighborhood Defenders Katherine Levine Einstein; Jenny Schuetz, who more recently published Fixer-Upper, and which I’m completely obsessed with right now; and community safety activists who are working with the coalition to develop non police programs in their community.
So, segueing into the election. Between now and the second week of November, there is still lots of time to volunteer for the campaigns you care about. These next few weeks are crucial, and every little bit helps. Michigan, the voting dates that matter are:
- You can register to vote online now through October 24th;
- you can register to vote at the City Clerk’s office in City Hall, October 25th through voting day;
- absentee voting already started September 29th;
- and you can vote at your polling place Tuesday, November eighth, 7am-8pm.
At the end of the episode. Molly and I will share with you our voting plans. We also dug very deep into the climate knowledge over two episodes, and you can go check those out for more if you haven’t already.
Molly: can you tell us about voting?
02:17
Molly: Yeah. So getting right into the meat of the ballot to start with, we’re gonna we’re gonna go from big to small. Starting with statewide races. We’re not going in ballot order. It just felt easier to organize it this way, but in terms of statewide races, for the partisan races this is an easy one: straight ticket for the Dems. This is not going to be a surprise to any of you. But there are a bunch of nonpartisan State races as well. A really important one is the Michigan Supreme Court race, and in this one the two candidates to vote for are Richard Bernstein and Kyra Harris Bolden. These are the two who are endorsed by the Washtenaw County Democratic Party. Often with these judge races, they are nominally nonpartisan, but actually there are candidates that each party is supporting, and it just takes more digging to figure out who they are. These two are both pretty exciting and appealing candidates. In this case it’s Bernstein and Bolden, which feels like an easy thing to remember. And they both are pretty exciting and appealing candidates. These are really cool people to get on the court if we can,
Jess: and I’m sure that’s true of their careers and decades of work that they’ve done. Also I happen to like Kyra’s hashtag, which is, #votebold, So that’s cool.
Molly: I like that. Yeah. And, I think one thing to note is that the Michigan Supreme Court is a key player right now, in the sort of bulwark that we’re trying to hold against fascism and the fascist creep specifically in Michigan and across the country. So this is an important one. Sometimes people just vote straight ticket and then stop. Please keep going. These are really important.
So next up, Court of Appeals, Third District, the choice here is Kathleen Feeney, And again, we’re making this call, based on the fact that the other guy is endorsed by former Republican Governor of Michigan, John Engler, and Feeney is on the dem side. So not a race where we have a lot of additional knowledge, aside from just this is how the parties are picking.
And then we’ve got some state propositions. And this is another easy thing to remember. This year, it’s “yes” on all the state props. we’ve spent all of this time trying to not sign petitions that were going to put bad shit on the ballot and good job, everyone! Only good shit on the ballot!
04:48
Molly Kleinman: [laughs] Jess, I see you unmuted. Did you want to say anything about that?
04:52
Jess: [also laughing] No, I just endorse your “all good shit on the ballot” comment.
Molly: Yeah. So the things are, just to give you a little bit more context, State proposition One is public Financial disclosures. requiring more public financial disclosures of candidates, plus adjusting term limits. So Michigan has some pretty stringent term limits, and there’s a fair amount of consensus at this point that they cause some problems that we can’t really build up any sort of expertise or knowledge within our State government, and people are having to rotate off too fast, so it becomes much harder to get things done, and much harder to do good governance. This would extend the term limits. But only If you stay in the same position longer. What we have now is, we’ll have people who hop from elected role to elected role as they hit their limits. And again they can’t build that expertise. This way we can have someone stay, for example, in the State Legislature for longer, but then they can’t immediately hop out again and run for something else. so it’s not perfect. But from the folks I’ve talked to about it, and what I understand, this is a step in the right direction. So this is a yes.
State prop two is the newest Promote the Vote proposition. It would build additional early and absentee voting opportunities, and it would also put some more election protections in place, I think, in the State Constitution that again are helping to hold back the Republican… “The Republican bullshit” is what I put down, I mean, I, I was thinking of words like “nonsense” and “Tom foolery”. But The thing is that, these are not lightweight jokey sorts of things. This is treasony sorts of things, and so
Jess: we need to call bullshit.
Molly: We need to call bullshit, and State Prop Two is one of the things that will help us hold that back not just this year, but going forward, so that even if we have other people in office in the State, this is still enshrined in our Constitution in a way that gives us some additional protection.
Also enshrining things in our Constitution, State Prop three, which would enshrine the right to abortion in the State Constitution. It would get rid of the 1931 law that many of us have been hearing about that banned abortion in the State, and that has been on the books, and has stayed on the books, so that when the Supreme Court of the United States vacated a national right to abortion, Some people have been arguing that this 1931 law should should be activated, and some prosecutors around the State have been threatening to go after people for abortion. So State prop three, super super important, lots of energy and momentum here. But my understanding is that there’s actually quite a bit of energy and momentum on the other side as well. So again. Keep going after you get through the partisan section. Voting Straight Ticket is not enough this year. It’s probably not enough any year, but really not this year. So vote yes, on the Reproductive Rights Amendment.
07:51
Jess: And though we’re talking about it now, as Molly mentioned before, we’re not going in ballot order, so these proposals are very close to the end of the ballot, and it’s really important. We’ve talked about this on earlier episodes: there’s a huge drop off the further down the ballot you go, even though the further down is local races, which is mostly what we talk about, mostly what we’re going to talk about today. These state proposals are really crucial to preserving and enforcing basic rights for every person in the state. So please be one of those people that raises the percentage of folks that make it all the way down the ballot this year.
08:34
Molly: Keep going, flip the ballot. Keep going all the way to the end. All right. that’s it for statewide stuff. moving on to county. There’s just a couple. One of them is the Circuit Court, in the 22nd circuit. For this one our pick is Arianne Slay. This is an interesting one, I think. Slay has a lot of endorsements. We’re not always going just by endorsements. We’re going to talk more about that as we get to the more local races. In this case she’s endorsed by the Washington County Democratic party, but also by folks that have previously been her opponents. So Eli Savit, who she ran against for a county prosecutor in 2020 has endorsed her in this race, and I think, you know, it’s been a process for me with with this candidate in particular, because she and I, I think, have pretty different understandings of what’s wrong with the criminal legal system, and in particular how to address what’s wrong with the criminal legal system. She describes herself as a reformer, and generally believes that the system we have can be fixed, and that we can continue to work with the system that we have to fix it and get something that looks more like justice. I tend to be more on the side that it’s not fixable. And I think in a role like prosecutor, that can mean some really very different decisions and approaches to policy and approaches to action. But from people who know this topic much more deeply than I do I’m hearing that, though, in a judgeship, some of those differences are less important, and some of the values that we do share are more important. That’s how I got here on this race.
10:34
Jess: That makes sense. This puts me in mind of a conversation that I had with a good friend recently, who is very much a change-maker both in her professional and her personal life. She considers herself someone who really focuses on transformation; whatever it is she’s working on. If it’s not transformational, it’s not interesting to her. She’s been doing this work for decades. She and I were talking about what it means to do that work, and she’s like, The closer that I get to transformation in the different systems that I’m working, the more I understand I actually do kind of have to be an incrementalist; because I have to figure out how to get from where we are to the beloved community that we’re trying to build. Listening to you talk about this race helps me understand that sometimes in the micro, you are working on the same things, even if it builds to a different macro.
11:26
Molly: Right? Exactly.
11:29
Jess: Not at all related to which, I’m going to transition to what shows up on the ballot as Community College Board of Trustees, then the subnote to that is that this is for Washtenaw Community College. There are three candidates, and the ballot asked you to vote for two. I’m enthusiastically endorsing Angela Davis and David Malcolm, both of whom have lived in Ann Arbor their whole lives, as have generations of their families before them. They have deep roots in the community, and given their work and the numerous boards they’ve served on in the past, they know what it means to both lead and serve. So Angela Davis for, name alone honestly we should be lining up behind her, but she’s awesome. So: Angela Davis and David Malcolm for Washtenaw Community College Board of Trustees.
Speaking of education, let’s talk about the Ann Arbor School Board. I’m going to kick us off for a couple of reasons. One, I haven’t picked my people yet, because I haven’t finished doing the homework. I’ll talk about that more in a moment. Two, I want to explain why I’m paying such close attention to this race when I don’t have a kid in the Ann Arbor Public School system.
For me, as I’ve paid attention to local politics over the last several years it’s become very clear to me that public schools and AAPS in particular has a clear role to play in larger community issues and the work that we’re doing, and I feel like often it either turns a blind eye to that, or is inimical to the progressive work we’re trying to do as a larger community. What I want is a school board full of people who recognize that the school system is a part of this community, and are willing to take up that work.
I am working through this enormous field of candidates. If you haven’t looked at the ballot yet, there are 14 people for four seats for four seats. We have a smorgasbord of candidates. This is how I’m deciding:
- I am using Vote411.org, which is nonpartisan survey answers that have been collected by the League of Women voters. I appreciate that it’s thoughtful; it doesn’t necessarily get specifically to my values and the things that I care about, but it’s a really nice place to start to understand how the candidates talk about themselves.
- I have attended one or two candidate events. I’m still very careful about the pandemic and mindful of other health issues, so I’m not in super attendance to all these things, but I go when I can, because it’s very helpful to talk to them and to the talk to the people who go to those events and hear how folks are talking and thinking about it.
- I have emailed all of the candidates my questions about how they see themselves in this race, and I only have two; one pertains to housing – I understand that the Board is probably never going to be responsible for directly providing housing, but I’d like to understand how board members are thinking about their responsibility in engaging that in our community – and the other question that I asked had to do with, How are we getting cars away from schools while still getting children to schools? I really want to understand how people are thinking about that. Candidates are still emailing me back; I’ve gotten a couple of very thoughtful answers which have been really useful for me.
- The last thing that I’m looking at is their endorsements, because I’m not sure that the Washtenaw County Democratic Party endorsements reflect my values. They have endorsed four candidates for the four seats; I looked at those four candidates, and I’m just not sure how closely they were reflect my values. So that’s why I’m doing my own homework.
15:30
Molly: Yeah. And for me, those endorsements in particular, I think it’s a mix. There are some candidates who are on my list as well, and then also some who are not. I’m looking at other kinds of endorsements as well in terms of who are people in the community who I trust, who I know I do share values with on things that are relevant to the School board. And then also, who are people where I know we really don’t align, and who are they endorsing. And sometimes we’re having to go on that as well. So the way that we’re coming at this, because I also am feeling still a little bit undecided in this race. Is that It’s a big field, and we’ve been narrowing it down. so for people where it’s clear for one reason or another that these are not the values that we are looking for, or these are not the priorities that we are looking for on the school board, those we have eliminated. What we have for you today is, I believe, a list of five candidates for four spots, so we’re getting pretty close to all the choices, but You’re still, maybe going to have to do some of your own reading and thinking, because There’s so much in this race, and it’s been difficult to get it all the way narrowed down and to figure out what’s really going on with some of these candidates. It’s not always obvious.
16:54
Jess: We had a little bit of angst – or, I’ll speak for myself – I had a little bit of angst, not feeling like I’d finished my homework in order to be able to come to this episode, and say, I confidently endorse these candidates; and then I realized there’s actually a lot of value in talking about the process. I know a lot of folks are thoughtful about how they pick who they vote for, and a lot of folks are also not really sure: like, how do I do my homework? So that’s part of what we wanted to do, is pull the curtain back on, “This is how we’re thinking about it. This is how we’re asking questions. These are some of the information sources we trust to help us understand. Does this person align with our values or not?”
This is one of those things where you can’t flip to the back of the book and check the answers. But we will help you understand the question better.
17:43
Molly: Yeah. And as we did in the primary election explainer episode, we’re gonna focus on the positives about the people that we are supporting, and we’re not going to spend time talking about the various people that we are not supporting. We’re gonna try to keep it positive, especially in a school board race in a town This small. It starts to get real personal, real fast, and we’re trying hard to walk that line,
Jess: everybody is somebody’s neighbor.
Molly: Right. So all of that said, here are the options. and for me, I’ve done some of what Jess has done as well. I’ve also been able to have some direct conversations with candidates, and at this point I’m Pretty solidly decided on The community centered slate for three of my votes. So this is a slate of candidates who are running together, and there are a few different of these combos, or at least a couple of different combos, but this slate, they describe themselves as “community centered,” and it’s Jacinda Townsend, Jeremy Lapham, and Rima Mohammed. They’re running together, and each also has their own strengths or reasons that I would support them. Jacinda Townsend is particularly impressive, and I think, an excellent choice for this race. She has past experience serving on a school board in Indiana, where she used to live. And one bonus for me is that it was a district that had good and comprehensive bus service, which is one of the things that I care about a lot in this race that is not getting talked about that much. But what I found from my conversation with her, and from what I’ve seen of her answers to things, is that I think in part because of that past experience, She understands how governance works. She recognizes the importance of oversight, and that oversight role of a board. And this is a big one. It seems to me like she has a pretty clear handle on what the division of labor is and should be between a board and an administrator. So my experience on the board of the district library, as an elected trustee is that the trustees have really very limited… There’s a very limited number of things That is our responsibility, but a big one is overseeing the library director. And then almost all the other stuff is up to him and/or his staff. And I think sometimes when people run for these kinds of boards they want to get in and get real micromanagey about stuff, and that’s not the role of the board, and it’s gonna lead to dysfunction, and it’s gonna lead to dissatisfaction among staff, Make it harder to keep good staff. And so That’s something that I’m thinking about in this race. And this is something that to me in particular, Townsend seems to have a clear handle on, what the role of the Board is.
20:42
Jess: Molly is talking about why she feels that Jacinda is well positioned as a leader. I think this distinction of an understanding the division between what a board is supposed to do and what staff is supposed to do is really a distinction that’s lost on a lot of folks, so it’s a difference that’s important to highlight.
Molly’s points are really important.
My point, that she has amazing lipstick game, has absolutely nothing to do with her value as a candidate, but I just want to say, amazing. I asked her about it. She mixes her own colors! It’s so cool. So, anyway, Jacinda for School Board.
Molly: Awesome. Another person on the slate is Jeremy Lapham, and he is a school nurse and a Union rep, and I think both of those experiences are really valuable. Direct experience working in the schools is super valuable. The fact that he has that strong union relationship… teachers unions often get vilified. It’s been particularly bad during the pandemic. I believe unions are important, and I think that while I don’t always agree with the decisions that unions make in terms of say pushing for no vaccine mandate. I understand why those decisions get made, and I think, having someone who deeply understands union work and how and how that organizing happens. I think it’s going to be really valuable in a leadership role like this.
22:07
Jess: One of the things that I appreciate about Jeremy is, he’s somebody who’s been paying attention to local politics and events for years. He is coming into this race and this role with deep context and deeply informed about different issues. That gives me a lot of hope for a board member who is paying attention to the School Board’s role in the larger community.
Molly: Not on the slate, there are a couple of other candidates we are also talking about. Jess do you want to talk about Andrew?
Jess: I’ll just mention Andrew Spencer as somebody that I’m considering. He’s one of the people that has responded to my questions so far about housing and transportation. What I appreciated about his response is, it was deeply thoughtful and deeply humble. He acknowledges the areas where he doesn’t have as much information as he could. He, too, is coming from another school system where he felt like things worked a lot better; while he didn’t serve a board function in that role, I do think it’s really valuable when you have a positive example that you’re working towards, and not just mired in the, This-sucks-let’s-make-it-better bucket. That that that can be a little bit difficult. I appreciated both the thoughtfulness and his humility. I’m still waiting to hear back from all of the candidates. But I am positively inclined towards Andrew,
23:32
Molly: and then another candidate, who I am positively inclined towards, is Alex Wood. In general, I think her values are in the right place. But one thing that really has stood out to me is the way that she’s talking about the needs and safety of LGBTQ+ kids. they’re really front and center in her campaign, both in terms of her own identity and in terms of the way that she wants to be supporting kids throughout the district. That feels really important to me. I think anyone who loves a queer or trans or gender non-conforming kid knows that while our public schools have the stated values that would talk about protecting our kids, it doesn’t always actually play out that way in practice, and it varies a lot by school and by teacher and by leader, and having someone on the school board who will push us to do better on this particular issue is very appealing to me. We’ve spent a chunk of time talking about how we’re looking for someone who’s not just showing up for one specific issue. But I would argue that someone who is trying to show up for queer and trans kids is someone who, a lot of their values are going to be in the right place because they’re looking at the kids who are getting the least help. Who are some of the most vulnerable. And So that’s what’s been really appealing to me about Alex Wood.
So that’s school board. moving on to the Ann Arbor Library trustee race. This one is a lot simpler for me. There are three seats open. There are six candidates running in total, but there is a three person slate, and if you vote for all the people on that slate, we’re going to get some great people on the library board and the slate is who I am supporting this year. One member of this latest Jim Leija, who is currently the chair of the Library Board. He’s one of our longest serving board members. He managed the search and hiring of our new library director with so much care and diligence, I’ve been very impressed with his leadership. He’s bringing some of that history and expertise that I think is super valuable, and Jim Leija is fantastic. Vote for Jim. he’s running with two other people as a slate. Partly, I think his judgment is worth listening to Here. These are the people he thinks are worth bringing on to the board. So Jim is the only incumbent in the race. So he’s running again, and then two of our incumbents are cycling off. One of them is Dharma, Akmon, who’s going to join city council, huzzah! The other is Kerene Moore, who’s been fantastic. I’m not sure what she’s doing next, but I think she’s got some good options. So these are two new people who’ll be new to the Board: Aiden Sova and Cat Hadley. They’re both fantastic. Cat has already been doing a lot of really amazing service in the community for several years. Aidan is younger, but I would say a rising star. There’s fewer years worth of things that he can put on his list, but he’s really fantastic, and I think has a real, deep understanding of the role of libraries in a community, and the way that libraries are meant to serve everyone in a community, and that is really important. That’s how I think about the library, too.
26:58
Jess: One of the things that I love about Cat and Aidan: Kat, I think, has been active in community issues a little bit longer than Aidan, but they’re both younger, and I really love when younger folks get deeply involved in community processes and are demonstrating what younger leadership looks like. The energy is awesome. The values and the way that they talk about things is really important. I think it’s really fantastic that these young leaders are opting into the Library as their way to step into elected leadership. Whether they continue on to run for different roles, or however they decide to bring that leadership forward, what a lovely place to step into.
27:41
Molly: Yeah, It’s a really exciting crew, and I hope that you will join us in voting for them all the way at the very bottom of the ballot. I remember from when I was running, the library board is truly one of the very last things on there. So keep going. Keep going all the way down to that, to the those last couple of things.
Another thing towards the end of the ballot, we’ve got one city proposal this year.
28:08
Jess: This is the very, very last thing on your ballot, if you’re in the city of Ann Arbor. It is the Ann Arbor City Charter Amendment Tax for community climate action. Of course: yes. Yes. And if you need to know why we’re endorsing this, you can check out the episode where we interviewed Missy Stults, who’s the director of the Office of Sustainability and Innovation, and asked her every question that we could think of: How are you going to use this money? Why are you doing this now? What exactly are we doing about our burning planet here in Ann Arbor? And what does all this matter? She was very lovely in answering all of those questions.
And, if that isn’t enough for you, you can check out the episode where Molly and I had a “fight” about it. Though…barely a fight. The most midwestern fight possible. Right? I agree with you using different words. It’s where we both came around to the point of, This is a yes for both of us. this is the right thing to do, and the right time to do it.
Oh, I want to bring this in. I think I mentioned this in one of those two episodes, but the metaphor that I keep hearing (I know you and I have talked about this before) of voting. A lot of people think of it like marriage: I want to look for the best possible person, and then get married to that person. Where voting is more like catching the bus: you look for the best option that is closest to you that’s going to get you where you want to go. Both Molly and I agree that we wish that there were other ways to accomplish what this millage is going to do; but the end, in this case, is worth the means, because it is going to get us for the most part where we want to go.
All right. What else do we want to talk about? I think we’re going to talk about our plans to vote. We’re still talking about voting. (That’s all we’re talking about today.) All right. So what’s your plan to vote?
29:59
Molly: My plan to vote is that I am on the list to get an absentee ballot. So first I get the application for an absentee ballot. I fill that out, which I did months ago, and then the absentee ballots come to me on schedule. I know that mine is in the mail because I got a text message or email about it, I already forget which, but I haven’t seen it yet. So mine is going to be here any minute. Last night I had a dream about voting. I had a dream that I used a yellow marker to fill in the bubbles, and then realized that that was wrong, and I shouldn’t have used it, and it was like a whole thing.
Jess: That’s not a dream that’s a nightmare!
Molly: It was a nightmare, and the thing is that this has actually happened to me, where I used a Sharpie, and then it bled through to the other side, and I could not get a clear answer on whether or not that that was an okay thing, if it was still gonna work. I have an absentee ballot, and it means that I have a choice of all of the different writing implements in my house, and so I’m here to tell you: Blue or black pen. Do not use a sharpie, do not use a yellow marker. I don’t know what my subconscious was doing, What’s going on there, but that’s a thing to think about if you’re voting at home versus in the booth where they have the writing implements there for you. So I’m going to use the correct writing implement. I am going to sit down at my table and fill out my ballot with all of my notes around me, and then I will put it in my own mailbox with the flag up to send it back in.
31:34
Jess: For me, I live half a block away from my polling place, which is an elementary school, and it’s just so fucking cute to walk in there and see the wee fountains and the wee chairs. So I like to vote in person because I really love my polling place. What I’m going to do is, once I finish doing my school board homework, I’m going to print out my ballot from the Secretary of State website and mark up all of the answers (basically I’ll give myself the test key) and I’ll bring that into the booth with me, and I will vote at my local elementary school polling place, and I will leave with the sticker and utterly charmed.
All right. We did it! We made it through the whole ballot and our voting plan. Thank you guys.
As a reminder: if you are tuning in from being beyond Ann Arbor, and even if you live here; please continue to stick with us. We pretty sure you’re going to enjoy the next few episodes where we talk a whole lot about housing, transportation, and community safety, including with the co-author of Neighborhood Defenders, Katherine Levine Einstein; Jenny Schuetz, who published Fixer-Upper; and community safety and transportation advocates who are working to improve their relative communities in various ways.
And that’s it for this episode of Ann Arbor AF.
Come check out past episodes and transcripts at our website, annarboraf.com. Keep the conversation going with fellow Ann Arbor AFers on Twitter at the a2council hashtag and Facebook in the Ann Arbor Housing for All facebook group. And hey, if you want to send us a few dollars at ko-fi.com/annarboraf to help us with hosting, we always appreciate it.
We’re your cohosts Molly Kleinman and Jess Letaw; and thanks to producer Scott Trudeau. Theme music is “I dunno” by grapes. You can reach us by email at annarborafpod@gmail.com. Get informed, then get involved. It’s your city!