Thanks for tuning in.

The representative from the Michigan Fair Election Institute, Patrice Johnson, is with us.

Opposed to the ranked choice voting ballot proposal.

Our lead story, the House speaker gets into the property tax relief debate.

On the OTR panel, we have Lauren Gibbons Beth LeBlanc and Colin Jackson.

Sit in with us as we get the inside out.

Off the Record.

Production of Off the Record is made possible in part by bellwethe public relations, a full service strategic communications agenc partnering with clients through public relations, digital marketing and issue advocacy.

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And now this edition of Off the Record with Tim Skubick.

Thank you very much Welcome back to Off the Record.

We're in Studio C on this Friday morning and we have the Gotion deal.

Everybody's going, what's the Gotion deal?

It was going to be a want a battery plant up in Big Rapids.

And why is it not coming in?

Well, in September, the MEDC sent what's called a letter of default to Gotion, saying you haven't worked on this site for more than 120 days.

So we're considering it abandoned.

Which is i violation of Gotion is agreement in Gotion entered an agreement to get incentives for this project.

Part of that agreement was that they not abandon the project.

Additionally, there were there was wording in the agreement that basically prohibited lawsuits that would slow or delay them this site.

And Gotion of course, is involved in two lawsuit that have held up things there.

And so, yeah, the project is is basically dead now.

This became a consulate because Gotion was associated with a little group called the Communist Party.

Yes, that became a huge issue, especially in the last election cycle.

We saw a lot of Republican candidates and protest join on to local protests that were happening in the community.

It didn't start as controversial as it eventually became.

Yes, there's a lot of support at the outset.

At the outset, it was a lot of jobs, investment into a community.

But then as soon as that connection was made and really stressed during the election cycle, i became a lot less bi partizan.

And really, you know, it's a dramatic downfall.

What's your take?

I think it's very emblematic of the current landscape we see around these business incentives.

Whereas Lauren and Beth said this wasn't very controversial to begin with.

I remember when I believe the governor signed some of the bills tha would have funded this project.

It was a big fanfare.

You know, you had it.

Yeah, exactly.

You had MEDC leadership.

You had the governor.

You had a lot of people around, you know, and this was something that was very heralded, but to the point of fear brought up the Chinese Communist Party.

I think that's just one of the fatal flaws of these battery plants where some of the technology was leased from companies associated with the Chinese government and by definition in by law is just doing business in China means working with the government just because of the way things work out.

And it became politically untenable.

So the state really had no choice.

If the contract was being met through the like, they had no choice but to cut it off right?

Well, yeah, one would think so.

I mean, I think folks in the community would say it's been a lot longer than 120 days that they haven't been working there because because the you know, the community has seen that.

And finally, the they acted at this point in September.

Now, I also think Gotio in their response has has said, look, we're kind of between a rock and a hard place.

We've got the community that is suing, that is that basically took away some of our permitting for a waterline through there.

So we had to sue them to get that permitting back.

And then they're tangled up in that and they can't work during that time.

But I also think, you know, I think the headwinds were really against this project for a long time here.

This was this was expected, I think, by a lot of people.

In defense of Gotion because they had said publicly, you know, we're not a front for the Communist Party.

We are we're serious.

We need battery jobs and we can bring them in.

So that was their the statement.

All right.

We coming out of Washington now as a result is the shutdown SNAP.

Explain what's going on there, Emily.

Emily, I'm sorry, Lauren.

That's okay.

It's not the first time.

It's as of November 1st.

It's looking like SNA is not going to have the funding to continue until the government is no longer shut down.

What does SNAP do?

A SNAP is a foo assistance program that serves at least 1. million Michigan residents work, which is a program that assists women with young children and infants, is als being affected by all of this.

But essentially, the shutdown, if it hits a month, then SNAP is going to get delayed at this point.

And so a lot of a lot of the like community food banks and others, soup kitchens are saying, you know, we can't necessarily handle an increase like that if federal benefits are no longer available.

You know, this is a progra that I think people are really we talk about the federal shutdown and how a lot of times the general public has been blunted from that effect.

And in various ways, I think this will be one of the first ways where a lot of people, lik Lauren said, 1.4 million people, estimated 1.4 million households potentially feeling this and feeling like oh, this thing I had to rely on to feed my family to keep fed myself is going to go away or at least are going to be severely impacted and I think that could cause a big a bi impact on Michigan households.

And that could also chang how you see how people interact with federal lawmakers as the shutdown continues.

Yeah, I mean, I think fo for federal lawmakers, this is this is where things start hitting the fan in terms of of the shutdown in the impact that people actually feel.

Because a lot of a lot of what's done, like Colin said, can be blunted or what's not having at the federal level.

It can be blunted by state action t to kind of curtail some of this.

But this might be the point where where people start feeling the effects.

Well, but let's pick up on that.

It will somebody asked the state government to fill in the hole?

I don't think it's really possible for the stat to fully fill in the SNAP hole.

There's it's an expensive program.

It's also a federal program fundamentally.

So it's not easy for the state to just come in and say, hey, we'll take over SNAP.

It's not that simple.

And it would take, you know, some time to.

Start a new program and call it something else.

I mean, it's the money.

Therefore, it is the other question.

I mean, we just went through a very contentious budget process.

I don't know that lawmakers might I don't know that lawmakers have the will or the way to come back and say, all right, let's fund SNAP for however long the government is shutdown, which no one really knows.

I will.

The speaker had a news conference this week and talked about a lot of stuff, transparency being one of them.

What's the story there, Beth?

Yeah, so the the House has led on this initiative.

They've they've tried to pu in different vetting processes for earmarks that go through the budget.

These are Pork Barrel Spending.

Yes.

Yes.

That's it's also known as that Tim.

Yes thing.

Yeah.

So the House has been trying to crack down on that, get a little more vettin of these projects in the Senate hopped on board later this year before the budget passed.

But everything they've done so far is by agreement or by deal o or handshake deal in that sense.

So what they're trying to d is they're trying to cement it into state law to require this before earmarks are passed.

But there is the devil i in the details in those things.

And the Senate package that passed, it only requires a ten day advance of budget passage for disclosure of those earmarks.

Speaker Matt Hall sai That is too short a time period.

He wants a longer time period.

He threw out 90 days but said it could be different, different windows of time, but it has to be longer than ten days.

Well, the debate that the Republican is we're on a crusade to end was is that the Senate position was will vote on this stuff.

And we'll we'll let you know what those projects are after we vote on it.

Mr.

Hall said well, time out.

You know, that sort of not not in the right order.

So now, how do they, do they find a middle ground here or do we wiff waff after a while?

Well, it looks like it's going to be closer to what Senate or what House Republicans have been asking for.

You know if you talk to Senate Democrats, they'll say they originally led the way by starting this earmark transparency thing where after the fact, these budget requests become public later on, the departments let these reports, they get filed.

House Republicans this year said, no, we're going to do this upfront.

We're going to have a hard time on our website.

They got the Senate to agree to that near the end of the budget process last this month.

But now to best point, I think it's going to come down to.

Okay, but how far ahead is that notice going to happen?

You know, even ahead of th Senate vote, you saw Republicans try to amend the bill to, I believe, include a 60 day notice.

Senate Democrats shot that one down.

And no Republicans are saying 90 days.

So wherever that falls in between, I think it's going to really be the sticking point here.

This is resolvable.

Okay.

Pick a date that they both ca agree to 45 or whatever it is.

All right.

Mr.

Hall, also in that news conference, talked about property tax relief.

Interesting story.

Let's take a look at that.

There is a strategy that sometimes lawmakers often use to block a petition drive if they don't like the conten of what the citizens want to do.

Lawmaker devise their own plan with hopes that the citizens will give u on their plans in the process.

Sometimes the strategy works, sometimes it does not.

Karla Wagner is leading a citizen's petition drive to slice and dice the local property tax.

Needless to say, local government group and educators oppose this effort since their financial lifelines are directly linked to the property tax.

Entering the debate, House Speaker Matt Hall, he says nothing about tryin to block the petition drive, but he does say he wants to tackle the issue too.

We're going to move ahead on property tax reform.

I hear a lot about property tax.

That's wha people are really talking about.

It used to be income tax.

You'd hear we're hearing a lot about property tax.

And so our caucus, we're working on forging that unity on which property tax proposal we bring forward very soon.

Ms.

Wagner says this about that.

It would have to be something pretty spectacular.

She argues the speaker's problem is you can talk all you want about property tax cuts, but if you can't get the votes to pass it.

It means nothing.

It's meaningless.

I want to see people get that same relief in their homes.

However some would say wanting to do it and actually doing it are two different things.

And ending the petition drive would depend on what the final legislative product looks like.

Ms.. Wagner says It'd have to be a pretty sweet deal to stop at this point.

Obviously, she's not i the speaker's corner just yet.

Colin what do you make of this?

Listen propert taxes haunted this legislature for about 50 or 60 years to get this thing right.

Another bite of the apple.

I don't think this is th legislation to do it right now.

Not only have divided government.

You also just have, I think, a lot of things that rely on property taxes.

You know, in the opposition to the tax.

My tax proposal that you were talking about.

You have school groups saying, you know, we rely on property taxes.

You have education groups saying we really are not education.

Would you have like libraries, museums or what have you, fire departments, public services, etc., saying, you know, all these things are dependent on property taxes, parks and these are things that we want to continue happening to make our communities nice more livable, etc., in Michigan.

And so what the speaker says, we want to address property taxes.

I think it's going to be a very hard thing to get tha not only passed his own chamber, the Republican led House, but also a Democratic Senate and a Democratic governor to sign off on it.

I want to make it clear that he did no way in that news conferenc said he was trying to stop this this this effort, that petition drive effort.

But clearly, if they could come up with a plan that pleases Ms.

Wagner, she might stop the drive.

But the chances are pretty slim, aren't they?

Yeah.

Yeah, it does seem pretty slim.

And I think they have a timing issue here, Right?

Like they just took the budget process up until the brink because they couldn't come to an agreement with it in that budget agreement included a tax increase.

So now you're looking at possible property tax decrease, You know, cutting into revenue that the state relies on I think is going to b a difficult sell in the Senate.

I think they wouldn't be abl to get the votes in the House, but I think it would be a difficult, a difficult thing in the Senate.

The other thing is Speaker Hall also said that economic development, some kind of deal moving forward to replace saw i some of these larger incentives that that's a priority as well before the end of the year.

And that was in fact part of the budget deal.

So I think they've go a lot on their plate right now.

I think property tax decreases are going to be difficult to accomplish in that time.

We're also coming up on 2026, an election year.

They're going to have to go back to their districts and defend their work.

Do we really have time to delve into a property tax revival or reform or anything like that?

I don't know that that that the timeline is really working there.

And just one more thing to point out.

You know, I think if you talk to Ms.

Wagner herself, she'll say that as my tax is in a very well funded, are very well resourced, rather operation.

And it seems like without a lot of resources and energy and momentum behind something like property tax reform, it' going to have an uphill battle.

All right.

Let's tal about elections with our guest.

Ms.

Johnson.

Please come in.

Ms.

Johnson, welcome to Off the Record.

Your group requests you at this time to respond to the folks that were on earlier on ranked choice voting.

So what's so bad about that ballot proposal if they get on the ballot?

Well, we've done a lot of research on it.

We we we operate by going out and getting the facts.

So we started we did a report.

It's a white paper, basically.

It's on our website.

You're welcome to take a look at it.

I brought some for everybody here, too, but we traced this back to 1892.

It was in Michigan and the and the Socialist Party platform, actually.

And then in later in 1919, I think it was Kalamazoo was practicing it and the Michigan Supreme Court outlawed it.

So then in 1974, Ann Arbor tried it for two years and it was so unpopular, so disliked tha they rescinded it by a 62% vote.

So it's been recinded.

It's been banned in 17 states and it's more expensive.

It discards ballots.

Cornell found that of, I think, almost 200 elections that it studied.

Almost half our candidates win without winning a majority.

So it's a, we feel it's an unfair process that throws out people's votes.

Is it undemocratic?

Well, depends on how you define democratic, but it's definitely not one vote, one person.

It is it's weighed in terms o helping third party candidates.

So it's not good for either party, actually.

And what it does is it create a system where people are voting for people based on personality or how well they campaign.

Whereas when there are two parties, you have platform forms and people can decid whether they support a platform or not.

And here it gets kind of squishy.

So it's a whole system that you cannot audit without going through using computers, for example, you can't do a hand recount on it.

It's way too complex.

So because you can't see into it, you can't you can't guarantee that a majority of voters will elect candidates.

And because it tosses out votes.

It ha it has some serious flaws to it.

That could be if you want if you want a majority to to elect candidates, then we have a system.

You can have a runoff system.

But to to completely upend our our electoral process with this this process is not feasible, really.

And 65% of Michigan Michiganders have been polled to be opposed to it.

So it keeps coming back.

It's it' a tired, old communist process that is not popular.

One of one of the one of the elections that the proponents point to when they say like this, this could be helpful, is is that the primary election, particularly in Detroit, and they've pointed to a congressman, Shri Thanedar, who in 2022 in that primary won the primary with with 20 something percent of the vote in.

And in Detroit, those primaries essentially decide elections.

Right.

So I guess, how would you address that?

Do you think that's a problem that needs addressing in that sense?

And do you think this is potentially a way t to to identify and address that?

Well that's a really good question.

I appreciate that.

I do think that's up to the people whether they want to address that.

If a person with 20% of the vote wins.

Maybe that's not what the public wants In Michigan.

We don't have a runoff system.

But in other states, there are like Georgia.

If you don't get 50% of the vote, it goes to another election.

And that that then there is it to two candidates and people choose between one or another, and it gives them more time to think about the candidates, more campaign, more understanding of their platforms.

But this system takes it and puts it, scrunches it all into one and makes it an auditable and doesn't really accomplish the fairness effect.

People don't see into the election, so they don't trust it.

And studies show that where there's ranked choice voting, people trust their election.

Less and fewer people vote and minorities are affected even more than than other voters.

I'm curious about the inaudible part of this, because if you talk to the choice folks, they'll say, you know, it's a simple process where the lowest vote goes.

Just get reshuffled and the spouse just continually getting reshuffled in a reshuffle until you get a majority.

But those ballots are still exist.

You can still go back through those paper records.

You could still go and check things in again under this Michigan election law.

These elections are audite automatically anyway afterwards.

So I guess we're at the issue b with if you could dive deeper.

Excuse me, but the issue comes with hand recounts.

If you if you as a candidate felt things were awr and you contested the election, you can't use hand recounts with ranked choice voting.

It's it's far too complex because out of ten ballots, you might have to cycl those ten ballots through ten, ten counts, and it end up throwing out that votes, too.

So, for example, if you only vote for one or two candidates and it goes through three rounds, there's a good chance your your ballot will be cast out.

And the whole recount proces then becomes very complicated.

And it's it's not You have to feed it through the machines in order to do a recount.

So it's awkward, very awkward for hand hand recounts.

A group of Michigan clerks recently came out with some concerns about this proposal.

What did you make of that?

Did you, I guess, expect clerks to be an ally in your fight against this proposal?

Well, we were delighte because they have obviously paid a lot of attention.

We had drafted a resolution for people to consider and to a large extent, they adopted our resolution.

And I really appreciate that the county clerks have taken a real serious look at this.

As a matter of fact, Bo Janetsky, who wrote the preface to our our light white paper said that he could not endorse a form of voting that discards people's votes.

And that's what this does.

So we were thrilled.

We were just thrilled that the whole and the Michigan Association of County Clerks, by unanimous vote, adopted the resolution.

So it's very exciting.

The RCV people say what they are really after here is to get all of the negative fighting that goes on in ballot proposals and and and candidates and the like.

And this is one way to do i because it becomes not so much what you're if you say something bad about the other guy could cost you votes.

Do you buy that theory?

Well studies show that's not true.

Studies show that it actually increases rancor because people lose faith in the elections.

And it it is built into the system to cultivate backroom deals.

So you have vote more vot buying and more backroom deals that occur with ranked choice voting.

Can you prove that?

So it's I think was MIT did the study on that and proved that.

Yes.

What type of like fundin or operation do you guys have?

I mean, are you planning ads or what type of opposition?

And then also, i if you do see like runoff votes as a possibility I mean, is there any effort to to put that on the ballot or to to raise that as a possibility moving forward?

Well, we certainly would not oppose that.

We are a volunteer organization.

I think we have maybe tw or three paid staff, part time, but so we aren't planning a big television ad campaign.

So we would operate purely by donations and what we ar trying to do is educate people.

So we thought by researching what the history is and it's a fact and studies done on it, we would set a baseline for the facts.

And then from there we can build, we can build educating people.

So we do have people when we'r invited, we go speak at events and we have like we created a resolution.

We try to, you know, write stories about it, things like that.

But no major campaign in the in the plans.

So how is Michigan's election system?

Is it full of integrity?

Well, basically what we have is in our system was called first past the post.

It's like a racehorse, a horse race where the first the first candidate t get the most ballots votes wins.

And if you look behind the scenes on all that and of course, there are times when you we question things.

We have studied, for example that there are duplicate voters on the on the voter rolls and there are deceased voters on the voter rolls.

And about 800,000 folks are on the voter rolls that are inactive.

That should probably in 27% o those should probably be removed because they haven't vote since in the last two elections or three elections or four elections.

So our elections aren't perfect.

We're not saying they're perfect by any means, but the ranked choice voting option would be devastating to the state, I believe.

Again, proponents of ring choice voting will say that this gives people an option to vote their conscience or vote for the candidate they feel most align with their beliefs, regardless whether or not the candidat has a legitimate chance to win.

But they also, right no under Michigan's current system, and they say the issue with that is there's no second choice, there's no fallback.

It's all or nothing on that, where this gives people at least some insurance policy where maybe if the candidate I truly align myself with doesn't win, I need to have a candidate has most of what I align wit on the also count for my vote.

What's your response to that?

And the idea that we've see this too used in other cities?

Maybe New York, for example, this year with Zohran Mamdani or even in the past in Maine, I believe conservative Governor Bill Bill, Governor Page.

He was also elected, I believe, using ranked choice voting.

You know so people along the political spectrum have benefited from this.

What's your response to that?

Well, my response to that i that people have an opportunity to vote to vote for their favorite candidate.

What's difficult is if you have 13 candidates and you have to rank all 13, and if you don't rank all 13 and it goes through 13 rounds of counting, your vote is cast out.

It's discarded.

So my my problem our problem is that we don't believe ballots should be thrown out.

Every everyone's vote should count.

And this is this is a opposition to one person, one vote.

It negates a person's vote.

How is Mrs.

Benson doing as secretary of state?

Well, we have trouble with her initiating rules sets right now tha we think would favor would add leverage to her gaining gaining leverage in running for governor.

So there's an inherent conflict of interest when you change the rules of the game before your own election.

So, for example she's introduced rules sets 13, 14 and 15, and some aspects of those rules are just fine.

But when she singles out specific people and she's and she ties the hands of poll challengers and basically cuts the clerks out of a lot of the election process, we are opposed to that.

So we have som we have some problems with how.

She can do it.

How do you connect that to her race for governor?

Well, if you cannot challenge an election fairly, if you're if you're observing an election, you can't you can't read that log a concern about something that's occurring, then you're taking the eyes off the election.

And as citizens, we have a wonderful opportunity because of our because of our form of government, which is self-government by citizen participate.

And we can have input.

And some of these rules that are being promulgated cut the citizens out and they cut out input from the citizens.

And that's where we have the that's where we have the problem.

So what are the chances that you Ranked choice voting?

Well, everywhere it's been up for up on the ballot lately, it's been opposed.

It's been it's gone down.

And we're showing 65% people of the publi in Michigan are opposed to it.

So I'm not really sure why they're trying to push it through in Michigan, other than there's there's some large donors with some motives.

They want to have this occur in Michigan, but I don't think it'll pass.

Ms.

Johnson great to see you.

Thanks for doing our program.

Thank you for inviting me.

Appreciate it.

See you all next week for more off the record right here.

Thank you.

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