Polygon, the Dancing Bear

Occasional notes on politics, history, architecture, and life

Sunday, August 8, 2004, 11:14 pm

Challenge-response spamblockers. We're all trying to cope with the ever-rising flood of spam and viruses, but some are doing better than others.

Quite frequently, I receive email from a user of my web site, often with a question or comment. I write a reply, send it, and receive an autoreply from a spamblocking program.

The autoreply contains instructions: in order to my mail to be delivered, I must click on a certain several-lines-long URL. So I painstakingly paste the URL together in my browser's address bar — and get an error message. Unable to process your request or similar.

It never fails.

I think from now on, I won't bother to deal with these. You're the one who started the conversation. If my reply to your letter gets vaporized by your spam blocker, then I guess we're not communicating.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments

Friday, August 6, 2004, 5:32 pm

Good signs from the primary. Tuesday, August 3rd was primary election day in Washtenaw County. As a candidate, I was unopposed in the primary, of course, as was my opponent, but the numbers bode well for November:


   Lawrence Kestenbaum (D) 16,886

   Peggy M. Haines (R)     11,362

Put those together, and I got nearly 60% of the total vote for County Clerk — despite the fact that Republican turnout, traditionally high in primaries, was bolstered by the big 7th District congressional primary, while Democratic Ann Arbor was extremely quiet.

I also did very well relative to the other countywide candidates — a key measure of holding the Democratic base.

In partisan primaries, voters have a demonstrated tendency to cast votes for unopposed candidates if they plan to support them, and to "skip" voting for unopposed candidates when they plan to vote for the other party's nominee in the general election.

Brian Mackie, our county prosecutor, traditionally gets the most votes; his vote in the primary is the yardstick for any Democratic countywide challenger. Here's how past candidates have measured up:

In August, 1996 (PDF), 16.4% of the Democrats who voted for Brian Mackie in the primary "skipped" voting for the Democrat running for County Clerk. That same weakness showed up in November, when she ran well behind the Democratic baseline, and lost.
In August, 2000 (PDF), 8.4% of the Democrats who voted for Brian Mackie in the primary "skipped" Dan Minzey, who was running for Sheriff. Minzey ran only slightly behind the Democratic baseline in November, and won by 8,000 votes over a well-known and popular incumbent.
In August, 2004, only 6.4% of the Democrats who voted for Brian Mackie in the primary "skipped" voting for me. That low fall-off suggests that I am very well positioned to hold the Democratic base in November, and win the election, just as Dan Minzey did four years ago.

Not only is Washtenaw County voting more and more Democratic from year to year, but Democratic voters are now more partisan, and less inclined to make exceptions for a few Republican candidates.

Moreover, I have been able to articulate to a wide audience my vision for the Clerk-Register's office: more efficient workflow, an ethic of unfailing courtesy and respect for every customer, election administration geared to greater inclusiveness and participation, and an end to seven decades of one-party control.

Many thanks to everyone for the great support!

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments

Wednesday, July 28, 2004, 9:02 am

All In The Family? As part of building my web site, PoliticalGraveyard.com, I've been incorporating delegate lists from past Democratic and Republican national conventions into my database. At last count, I had more than 55,000 delegates listed.

The 2004 Democratic delegate list is now online at the convention's official web site. The most striking aspect of this new list, compared with past conventions, is the much greater number of delegates who appear to be related to one another. Same surname, same hometown, same candidate preference, hmmm.

Just a small piece of the list, up through Colorado:

Alabama:
- Maudie Bedford and Roger Bedford, of Russellville, AL
- Beatrice Brooks and Bernest Brooks, of Enterprise, AL
- Artur Davis and Carolyn Davis, of Birmingham, AL
- Tyna Davis and Warren Davis, of Montgomery, AL
- Grover Dunn and Priscilla Dunn, of Bessemer, AL
- Jim Folsom and Marsha Folsom, of Cullman, AL
Alaska:
- Carol Anderson and Willie Anderson, of Juneau, AK
Arizona:
- George Miller and Roslyn Miller, of Tucson, AZ
- Ed Pastor and Laura Pastor, of Phoenix, AZ
- Carmen Prezelski and Theodore Prezelski, of Tucson, AZ
- Evangeline Rios and Joe Rios, of Kearny, AZ
- Ash Silverburg and Barbara Silverburg, of Tucson, AZ
- Karl Tucker and Sue Tucker, of Tucson, AZ
California:
- Floyd Allen and Maureen Allen, of Norwalk, CA
- Eugene Benavides and Vida Benavides, of San Leandro, CA
- Caren Bolinger and Robert Bolinger, of Westminster, CA
- Dean Florez, Elsa Florez, and Fran Florez, of Shafter CA
- Maggie Florez, Nina Florez, and Rudy Florez, of Visalia CA
- Erika Girardi and Thomas Girardi, of Pasadena CA
- Carl Henley and Cynthia Marroquin-Henley, of Los Angeles, CA
- Bradley Johnson and Nicole Johnson, of West Covina CA
- Greg Morgan and Kathleen Morgan, of Palmdale, CA
- Christine Pelosi and Nancy Pelosi, of Washington, DC
- Carmen Stone and Lawrence Stone, of Sunnyvale, CA
- Antonio Villaraigosa and Corina Villaraigosa, of Los Angeles, CA
- Fabian Wesson and Herb Wesson, of Los Angeles, CA
- Ernest Winslow and Laura Winslow, of Lafayette, CA
- Barbara Yaroslavsky and Zev Yaroslavsky, of Los Angeles, CA
- Betty Yee and Leland Yee, of San Francisco, CA
Colorado:
- Josie Heath and Rollie Heath, of Boulder, CO
- Bill Moore and Patricia Moore, of Westminster, CO
- Alexis Perlmutter and Ed Perlmutter, of Golden, CO

There is certainly nothing new about husbands and wives (or fathers and sons, or whatever) serving as party convention delegates. And indeed, it should be no surprise that people in political families are involved in politics.

Nonetheless, there are now so many related delegates that it is getting worrisome. It begins to suggest either a shortage in the pool of potential delegates, or a delegate selection process so open to manipulation by insiders that it's easy for a politico to get voting credentials for family members.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments

Wednesday, June 30, 2004, 12:21 pm

Attention campaign volunteers! Come march with me in the Ann Arbor 4th of July Parade, and get a cool blue-and-white KESTENBAUM for County Clerk & Register of Deeds t-shirt. RSVP via email for precise time and location.

Also, I have a fundraising party scheduled for Monday evening, 6-8 pm, July 12, at 1506 Granger Ave. in Ann Arbor (east of Packard, four blocks north of Stadium Blvd). I still have some more invitations to be addressed and sent out, if you're available to help tonight (Wednesday) or possibly tomorrow.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments

Sunday, June 13, 2004, 12:45 pm

Campaign web site. My campaign for Washtenaw County Clerk and Register of Deeds now has an official web presence: KestenbaumCampaign.com.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments

Thursday, June 10, 2004, 12:03 am

Salon and Me. Recently, as noted in Common Monkeyflower, ArborBlogs, and Arbor Update, I was interviewed for an article in Salon: "Invasion of the Spambots".

The reporter came to me because of this posting about referer log spam, from way back in January 2003.

I'm quoted, but the author got many details wrong. Excerpt:

For Lawrence Kestenbaum, the realization that a new species of intelligent agent — or "bot" — was prowling the Internet first dawned about two years ago.

It was about that time, Kestenbaum says, that a series of "fluke" addresses started popping up in the HTTP referrer log of his personal Web site, the historical cemetery database Political Graveyard.

"If you're at all concerned with how your Web site is being received, you're almost compulsively checking the logs to see who's coming in and from where," says Kestenbaum, laying the scene. "You get to know what sites are linking to you. Anything new gets your attention."

Even more attention-grabbing, Kestenbaum adds, was the fact that the fluke referrals came in bunches. Curious, Kestenbaum pasted in the URL and went to look. His disappointment was immediate. Expecting something interesting, he instead found a page filled with nothing but banner and pop up ads.

For a moment, Kestenbaum says, he suspected a glitch. How else could one explain a dozen or so Internet browsers flipping directly from a site boasting zero unpaid content to one documenting historical graveyards? It didn't make sense.

"That's when I had this 'Aha' moment," says Kestenbaum. "I'd visited the site because of the very technique they'd used to advertise it. Somebody had taken the trouble to write a program that would plant strange links in referrer logs knowing that the people curious enough to check those logs would also be curious enough to follow the link.

Scary as it may seem, spam is evolving....

What I meant was this: some company was advertising "neural marketing," i.e., spamming referer logs, by spamming referer logs. I had suspected that something like this was going on, but didn't expect to see such direct evidence.

Since January 2003, referer-log spam has become a widespread and taken-for-granted reality — hardly something so new and dramatic as to justify breathless coverage.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments

Wednesday, June 9, 2004, 11:40 pm

Letter from Little Rock. From Ken Parker, retired Arkanas newspaper editor, comes the following:

Subject: State Funerals (or slightly less)

This week, while watching the obsequies for Ronald Reagan, I could not help thinking about another funeral. Like Reagan's, it was painfully orchestrated.

Undoubtedly, the grandest funeral ever in Little Rock was that of Senator Joseph T. Robinson. He was the Democratic nominee for vice president (running with Alfred Smith) in 1928 and, at the time of his death in 1937, the majority leader of the United States Senate. A special train brought members of Congress and other VIPs from Washington for the funeral.

S. J. (Stonewall Jackson, of course) Beauchamp owned a moving and storage company at Little Rock. Stoney told me that, when Joe T. died, the undertaker called him and asked that he have a van at the church to get the flowers from the church to the cemetery before the cortege got there.

Stoney Beauchamp said he picked out his newest, shiniest van and had it washed and polished. Then, he picked his two best-looking drivers and made certain they had new uniforms and fresh haircuts. Then he took those drivers on dry run after dry run so they would know how to take a truckload of flowers from the church to the cemetery and get there before the funeral procession.

Everything went beautifully—except that the van ran out of gas en route to the cemetery.

Stoney said, "That was embarrassing."

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments

Friday, May 28, 2004, 8:11 am

Bloggers in the News. My old friend Rich Wiggins (and Wigblog) was featured in a New York Times story yesterday.

Indeed, if a blog is likened to a conversation between a writer and readers, bloggers like Mr. Wiggins are having conversations largely with themselves.

Mr. Wiggins, 48, a senior information technologist at Michigan State University in East Lansing, does not know how many readers he has; he suspects it's not many. But that does not seem to bother him.

"I'm just getting something off my chest," he said.

Grim anniversary. When my wife was growing up in Northern Kentucky, the Beverly Hills Supper Club was a nightclub and a familiar venue for high school proms, wedding receptions, and so on. Many famous performers appeared there over the years. The original building was built in 1937, but it had been greatly expanded over the years with little or no safety inspection or enforcement. It postdated Prohibition, but locals thought of it as an old speakeasy, and it was said to be a headquarters for illegal gambling.

On May 28, 1977, twenty-seven years ago today, a fire broke out in the building, apparently caused by faulty aluminum wiring. The cheap building materials burned rapidly and generated toxic fumes. In the vast, crowded Cabaret Room, the exits were unmarked and access to them was constricted.

About two thousand people escaped from the building that night, but 165 died — most of them in the Cabaret Room.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments

Wednesday, May 12, 2004, 7:49 am

Zogby and Blogiversary. Pollster John Zogby says the election is Kerry's to lose:

Have you recovered from the shock? Is this guy nuts? Kerry's performance of late has hardly been inspiring and polls show that most Americans have no sense of where he really stands on the key issues that matter most to them. Regardless, I still think that he will win. And if he doesn't, it will be because he blew it.

I have had similar thoughts: that the biggest imponderable in predicting this year's election results is Kerry himself. Political self-destruction is an unfortunate habit of presidential candidates.

Greg Hlatky had this take on the race:

Hmmm, incumbent president running against a lugubrious senator during a period of sustained growth. How'd that turn out the last time?

I enjoy the very apt comparison of Kerry with Dole, but I think their differences are significant here. Bob Dole was a man of the Senate in a way that fatally undermined him as a presidential candidate. John Kerry is a Senator, but critics find little substance in his legislative career; ironically, his disengagement from the Senate may make him stronger as a candidate for president.

Zogby compares the economy of 2004 with the recovery which he says was well underway in 1992, yet didn't help GHWB.

A small blogging milestone. I posted the first entry two years ago today: an account of my throat surgery. Brief excerpt:

So, Wednesday morning, flat on my back on a gurney, I was wheeled into the operating room. Even in my addled state, I could see the architectural features: this was plainly a special, ceremonial space, a focal point to which much else was ancillary. It had a very high ceiling, and the walls were done all the way up in tan ceramic tile of a kind I had not seen elsewhere in the building. The elegance and intense focus of activity, and the hushed crowd of doctors and retainers in immaculate uniforms, made me think of a corporate board room, or perhaps the inner sanctum of the grand lodge of some great secret society.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments

Tuesday, May 11, 2004, 10:32 pm

Nominated. As of the filing deadline, 4:00 pm today, I was the only Democrat to file for the office of Washtenaw County Clerk and Register of Deeds. For practical purposes, I am now the party nominee.

I can also say that the clerk's office during last hour before the filing deadline is no longer the social gathering it used to be, since interested politicos and media can follow the filings on the Web. At 3:30 pm, I was the only member of the public present. From then until 4:00, less than a dozen political folks, and no reporters, came by.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments

Thursday, April 8, 2004, 7:06 am

Idaho Denial. It's pointless to debate with those who deny the existence of Idaho.

If you would ask any schoolchild how many states there are in the United States, you will get the same answer: 50. Fifty states in the Union. It is simply an accepted "fact." If you would disagree with this supposed "fact," you would be branded insane or worse.

However, mounting evidence shows that there are in fact only 49 states in the US, and the "state" of Idaho is a baseless myth.

We have been trying to distribute and publish this information for over *two years*, but our scholarship has not been given any respect. We have been censored, vilified, ridiculed and spat upon by the "traditional" geographers and historians, but WE WILL NOT BE SILENCED!

All we ask is that the existence of the state of Idaho be debated, as every other historical and geographic "fact" can be debated. Time after time, our opponents have refused to debate us on the FACTS. This alone should tell you something about the people who support the "existence" of this "43rd state."

Do you know anybody from Idaho? Do you know anybody who knows anybody from Idaho? According to the 1990 "census," there are over one million (1,000,000, or 1 x 10^6) people living in Idaho. But if there are so many Idahoers, where are they?

Some people have come forward and claimed that they were born and raised in "Idaho." But every single person who made this claim have been shown to be frauds and charlatans. These "Idahoan wannabes" are invariably inconsistent with each other about the size (in square miles or square kilometers) of "Idaho," about various town and village names, and even about the names of "Idaho's mighty rivers."

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments

Thursday, April 8, 2004, 6:25 am

Passover. This poem by Primo Levi has become a fixture of many American Seders.

Tell me: how is this night different
From all other nights?
How, tell me, is this Passover
Different from all other Passovers?
Light the lamp, open the door wide
So the pilgrim can come in,
Gentile or Jew;
Under the rags perhaps the prophet is concealed.
Let him enter and sit down with us;
Let him listen, drink, sing and celebrate Passover;
Let him consume the bread of affliction,
The Paschal Lamb, sweet mortar and bitter herbs.
This is the night of differences
In which you lean your elbow on the table,
Since the forbidden becomes prescribed,
Evil is translated into good.
We will spend the night recounting
Far-off events full of wonder,
And because of all the wine
The mountains will skip like rams.
Tonight they exchange the questions:
The wise, the godless, the simple-minded and the child.
And time reverses its course,
Today flowing back into yesterday,
Like a river enclosed at its mouth.
Each of us has been a slave in Egypt,
Soaked straw and clay with sweat,
And crossed the sea dry-footed.
You too, stranger.
This year in fear and shame,
next year in virtue and in justice.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments

Monday, March 22, 2004, 5:20 pm

Giving Voters More Choices. Last night, an Ann Arbor activist challenged my commitment to an open process with regard to ballot access for parties and proposals. Here's some of what I told him, and some subsequent thoughts on the subject.

My interest in these issues is one of the reasons I'm a candidate for County Clerk and Register of Deeds. The county clerk is the lead local election official and has a significant influence over the whole process both directly and indirectly.

I have always been opposed to laws which make it unduly difficult for new parties or independent candidates to obtain a place on the ballot. In the 1970s, I was strongly opposed to the so-called McCollough Act, which imposed such a high standard on small parties that all were eliminated from the Michigan ballot in 1978. (Eventually it was struck down by the Michigan Supreme Court: Socialist Workers Party v. Secretary of State, 412 Mich. 571, 317 N.W.2d 1 (1982).)

In the 1990s, I assisted the Green Party in its challenge to Michigan's prohibition of local political parties; only statewide parties can be listed on the ballot. The Green Party (which at the time had ample local support, but not enough to get on the ballot statewide) challenged this in court. I prepared evidence showing the abrupt decline in the number of candidates in the early 1960s, when the no-local-parties rule was suddenly imposed on Michigan village governments. Many villages had active and ongoing competition between local parties with names like "Citizens" and "Independent"; this active politics often vanished when candidates could only run as Democrats and Republicans. (Michigan didn't have any provision for independent candidates in partisan elections until forced to by court decisions in the 1980s.)

Recall elections have something of a bad reputation among educated and liberal folks, but I don't see why this should be. Obviously a drive to recall officials from office creates conflict and bad feelings, can be motivated by very short term considerations such as unpopular tax hikes, and can lead to decisionmaking in low-turnout special elections. On the other hand, not all of these things are necessarily characteristic of recalls: for example, the California gubernatorial recall generated plenty of interest and voter turnout.

Uneasiness with recalls has led to the enactment of a number of legal limits on the recall power. In Michigan, recall organizers now have to submit petition language (stating the reasons for the recall) to an election commission to determine if it is sufficiently "clear". I think some have abused this "clarity" proceeding to delay and frustrate recalls.

Indeed, not just in recalls, it is tempting to politicos (especially entrenched insiders) to abuse the process to deny their adversaries access to the ballot. In New York, with perhaps the nation's worst election law, it is routine for candidates and parties to go to court over petition technicalities to get opponents thrown off the ballot; many elections are effectively decided by judges and lawyers based on the degree of precise adherence to a law which is full of absurdly intricate requirements not seen in other states.

Unfortunately, due to the short-term interests of specific politicos, Michigan has moved in New York's direction. In 1986, a number of candidates affiliated with Lyndon LaRouche filed to run for Congress as Democrats. Efforts by lawyers for the Democratic Party to expunge the LaRouche names from the primary ballot were successful, and created some awful precedents for severe scrutiny of petition details.

Of course, the temptation to fraud in petition circulation is strong, and no one should be allowed to obtain ballot access through identity theft or forgery. However, a diligent and attentive clerk's office has the tools to detect and act on this.

I believe in representative democracy, but in general I don't think that blocking or withholding choices from the electorate is constructive. I do admit that there are specific areas where other considerations take precedence (at least among my personal priorities) over offering maximum choices.

One of those issues is the death penalty. In 1846, Michigan was the first English speaking jurisdiction to abolish the death penalty. I think this was a wise move; the availability of capital punishment is, I think, corrosive to a polity. But over the last thirty years, there have been numerous efforts to bring the death penalty back to Michigan, either via the Legislature or through a petition drive. Polls usually show that a majority of Michigan voters are inclined to vote in favor of the death penalty; hence opponents, including myself, fear seeing it on the ballot.

That being said, even in the case of the death penalty, if the advocates collected enough signatures or enough support in both houses of the Legislature to force a vote, they would be entitled to that vote; we opponents would have to make our case to the people. And perhaps we would prevail.

Similar concerns arise in the current case of the amendment to ban affirmative action in Michigan.

Another kind of limitation on electoral choice which I support is the rule in most states, including Michigan, which prohibits candidates from running on multiple party tickets. I was very relieved when the Supreme Court, in the Timmons decision, declined to strike down the rule and extend the "fusion" system to all states.

Of course it sounds like an appealing idea. Advocates point to New York State, where one candidate might be nominated by the Republican, Conservative, and Right-To-Life parties, while his opponent might run on the Democratic, Liberal, and Working Families lines. And obviously each of these parties (and more) would be able to coalesce in different combinations or run their own candidates if they chose to. The ability for these groups to give or withhold electoral support, and hence advance their agenda, would seem like a hallmark of democracy.

Unfortunately, it doesn't really work that way, even in New York where the small parties are well established, and it was even worse in Pennsylvania and California, when those states allowed it.

The problem with the ability of parties to cross-endorse is that it creates a political culture of interparty dealmaking — leaving the voters out. Incumbents in this system often manage to obtain both major party endorsements, which insulates them from effective accountability and makes the election irrelevant. For example, Richard Nixon, hardly a consensus figure, won re-election to Congress in 1948 as both a Republican and a Democrat.

I lived and voted in New York State for two years. It is remarkable how little democracy happens there, and what meager choices voters get. I was appalled at how few incumbents faced any effective opposition.

I feel similarly about proportional representation schemes which attempt to emulate European models for fair distribution of seats in legislative bodies. The problem is that the unitary elected presidency and the Electoral College has hardwired the two-party system into our political culture. Any electoral scheme that doesn't take this reality into account will lead to unintended bad consequences: it will insulate officeholders from the electorate, reward strategic voting, or create perverse incentives for parties and candidates.

See my discussion of proportional representation in May 2002, and (following a contrary view from another weblog) my rebuttal with discussion of strategic voting.

However, there is one innovative voting scheme which holds a lot of promise for improving elections: Instant Runoff Voting (IRV).

IRV is already used in many organizational elections, such as for the presidency of the American Psychological Association and the choice of winners for science fiction's Hugo award.

The basic premise is that each voter may rank his or her choices from 1 to however many. Only the "1" counts as a vote initially; a candidate who wins a majority of the 1st-place votes is the winner. However, if no candidate wins a majority, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated, and his or her votes are redistributed based on the second choices of the voters. Repeat until one candidate has a majority.

There are some limitations to this approach. It would work well in high visibility single positions (with multiple viable candidates), not so well in multi-seat races. It obviously would encourage small parties, but it would not change the fundamental two-party reality of our system; in a two-candidate race, it would make no difference at all. And it requires some rethinking of appropriate election technology.

Ann Arbor once, briefly, had IRV for mayoral elections. A group of people has proposed amending the charter to bring it back. From their announcement:

A group of us, originally spurred by the Huron Valley Greens, have been planning an Instant Runoff Voting campaign in Ann Arbor for a long time. We are kicking off this exciting campaign at 7:00pm, Monday, March 22, at Leopold Bros on S. Main St. Our goal is to collect sufficient petition signatures from Ann Arbor registered voters to put the question of enacting Instant Runoff Voting for future city elections on the November 2004 ballot.

See also the A2IRV web site.

Update. Year of Nixon's bipartisan re-election corrected. Thanks to Greg Hlatky for the catch.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments

Sunday, March 14, 2004, 10:36 am

Ink. A brief item about my campaign appeared in the Ann Arbor News today: Democrat seeks clerk's post held by the GOP for 70 years.

The Ann Arbor lawyer and curator of the Political Graveyard Internet site has recently ramped up his grassroots campaign by making public appearances in recent weeks in preparation for a tough race against entrenched Republican incumbent Peggy Haines.

Rather than criticize Haines, whom he said he likes and respects, Kestenbaum plans to run a positive campaign that focuses on providing an alternative and his knack with computers and archiving information.

The unexpected line "'Madman' in the Fold" (shortly after that paragraph) refers not to me or to my opponent, but to Ted Nugent, featured in a following story.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments

Tuesday, March 9, 2004, 11:00 pm

Brief notes from the last several days:

Chelsea becomes a city. Chelsea, a village in Washtenaw County about 15 miles west of Ann Arbor, held its last village election yesterday. More than 1200 voters came to the polls to choose whether to become a city, to select a mayor and city council (in case it passed), and to select a village president and village council (in case it failed). The vote on the plebiscite was overwhelmingly "yes", so Mayor Ann Feeney and the city council winners will take office.

Every square inch of Michigan is either in a city or a township, never both; villages are subsets of one or more townships. Chelsea was part of two townships, Sylvan and Lima. Many of those who advocated the change to city status pointed to the difficult relationship between the village and Sylvan Township.

I stood outside Chelsea's single polling place all day meeting voters and passing out literature for my campaign for Washtenaw County Clerk-Register of Deeds. During the course of the day, I got to meet almost all of the candidates on the two competing slates, who also braved the cold and snow to distribute campaign literature.
Blog weddings. Congratulations to local bloggers Aaron Larson, Steven B. Cherry, and Hillary J. Blough, who all married recently.
News from Nowhere. Urban critic and writer James Howard Kunstler, author of The Geography of Nowhere and other interesting books, spoke at the U-M Art and Architecture building on Friday, March 3rd. Brandon (of Past the College Grounds) had announced the event the day before in his weblog, and I hastily changed plans to go see it.

I had no idea where in the AA building the talk was taking place. I expected to see announcements posted on bulletin boards, but there were none; by the time I found the room, I was late. Given the lack of publicity and what I assumed to be Michigan's low interest in the subject matter, I was stunned to find an overflow crowd.

Brandon posted a good summary which I won't attempt to replicate, especially since I arrived late and had to leave early to attend a 7pm meeting in Ypsilanti.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments

Sunday, February 22, 2004, 11:48 am

George Steinbrenner and Howard Dean. Rick Heller of Centerfield, no fan of Howard Dean, has been reading the campaign finance disclosures, and discovered that the chief funder of notorious anti-Dean attack ads was none other than New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments

Thursday, February 12, 2004, 12:13 pm

Internet voting did NOT go well. The Michigan Democratic caucus offered online absentee voting. I didn't try it myself, but I certainly heard from/about a lot of folks who tried and failed. I also heard about many problems with the online interface — that it was full of Javascript errors, didn't work with Netscape browsers, etc.

Indeed, trying to validate voters based on free-format (but case sensitive) place of birth seems very chancy to me. How many ways can YOU spell and punctuate, say, "Mount Clemens, Michigan"?

Mount Clemens, Michigan
Mt. Clemens, Mich.
Mount Clemens, MI
MT CLEMENS MI
and so on, and on...

Now I receve the following from Mark Grebner of Practical Political Consulting:

Subject: preliminary result from Caucus survey

Based on just 20 calls, one really obvious conclusion is the people who failed to vote all wanted to, but were thwarted by various failures -didn't receive a ballot, the internet site didn't work or rejected their login, etc. Not one so far has said they decided not to vote, and everyone named a plausible barrier. This puts a whole new spin on the fact less than 50,000 votes were received from the 126,000 applications - it wasn't lack of interest.

We'll probably do 50-100 calls over the next week, and I'll write a semi-formal summary.

Wow — it sounds like 76,000 people tried and failed to vote online. More about this as it develops.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments

Monday, February 9, 2004, 12:07 am

Ahead of the Curve. History may not repeat itself but, as Mark Twain is supposed to have put it, sometimes it rhymes.

Right now, as John Kerry gains momentum toward the Democratic nomination for president, and as the value of that nomination is on the upswing, I imagine that somewhere deep in the political apparatus of the Right, someone is now laying plans for activities during 2005.

It must be very secret, because this Google search still gets zero results today.

I'm a Democrat and I expect to vote for and support the guy. But I know that regardless of how well or how poorly his presidency goes, or what the issues of the day happen to be, next year's right-wing battle cry of "IMPEACH KERRY!" is eminently predictable.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments

Sunday, February 8, 2004, 10:22 pm

Great day for campaigning. The Michigan Democratic presidential caucus was held yesterday. My volunteers and I distributed thousands of my campaign flyers to voters at caucus sites in Washtenaw County. The response from voters and politicos was very positive.

Big thanks to Eric, Brian, Aaron, Lynne, Katherine, and many other volunteers!

Next steps: fundraising, and a campaign web site.

Update. The caucus results were no surprise: John Kerry won by a wide margin. At my own caucus site, after long indecision, I cast my vote for John Edwards. But Edwards got only 14% in this congressional district, failing to reach the 15% viability level, and hence got no delegates here.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments

Thursday, February 5, 2004, 12:45 am

Seeking campaign volunteers. The Democratic presidential caucus (actually, a party-run primary) will be held this Saturday, from 10 am to 4 pm. I'm still seeking a few more volunteers to hand out my campaign flyers at caucus sites.

As previously announced, I will be a candidate for Washtenaw County Clerk/Register of Deeds, in the Democratic primary on August 3rd, and the general election November 2nd.

This Saturday, each site wll be open for six hours, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. It will be an exciting and very political day, and by volunteering, you'll be in the thick of it. If you're in or near Washtenaw Couty, and can help, let me know via email (see my address at upper right).

Many thanks!

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments

Friday, January 30, 2004, 1:26 am

Who owns facts? A very worrisome development in Washington: the U.S. House Judiciary Committee approved and sent to the House floor a bill which is claimed to "curb database copying".

The Database and Collections of Information Misappropriation Act of 2003 would make it possible for facts to be "owned". Disclose owned facts, and face a federal lawsuit from the "fact owner".

Previously, the U.S. Supreme Court, in the 1991 decision Feist v. Rural Telephone, had declared that facts are not copyrightable. This new legislation is an attempt to overturn the Feist decision.

My Political Graveyard web site has a link to the Feist ruling at the bottom of every page. If facts become property, compilations like mine will be placed in severe jeopardy.

For example, I have found many politician birthdates and birthplaces in Marquis Who's Who publications. Under this law, Marquis would own that information, and be entitled to sue me for damages. Moreover, while the suit is pending, they could seize ("impound") all my computers.

The bill is opposed not only by the American Library Association, the National Academy of Sciences, and the ACLU, but by Amazon.com, AT&T;, Comcast, Verizon, Google, Yahoo, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

However, the combined effort of these organizations (the NetCoalition) was not sufficient to educate the committee on the costs and risks of this idea.

In support of the bill are database and software firms, including the owners of Lexis/Nexis.

The Association for Computing Machinery is the leading organization of computer professionals. Currently they're polling the membership on whether to take a stand against the legislation. The following comes from that page:

It is common practice in science, education, government, and business to create data collections and make them available for others to use. Under current US law, once data and information are distributed to the public, they enter into the public domain. Researchers and consumers are then free to reuse them in countless ways.

Some commercial interests are concerned that their data collections will be used contrary to their interests, and are proposing changes to US law that would create new ownership rights in a wide variety of the data and information collected and contained in online databases. They suggest that the current array of existing US laws are inadequate in that they fail to provide protection from acts of unauthorized uses of data contained in databases.

A diverse coalition of database producers and users (the NetCoalition) opposes the broad legislative effort to expand legal protections for collections of data. They have concluded that the proposed legislation will lead to the growing monopolization of the marketplace for information, threatening the freedom individuals have to search, gather and exchange information over the Internet.

The bill, H.R. 3261, was reported out by the House Judiciary Committee on January 21, by a vote of 16 to 7. The sponsors are Howard Coble (R-NC), Lamar Smith (TX), James C. Greenwood (PA), F. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI), Michael R. Turner (OH), William D. Delahunt (MA), David L. Hobson (OH), W. J. (Billy) Tauzin (LA), Robert Wexler (FL), and Rob Portman (OH).

Many thanks to Declan McCullagh for his reporting on this and related issues.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments

Friday, January 30, 2004, 1:05 am

Between "would" and "will". Brian and Murph both point to an interesting essay by Clay Shirky, Is Social Software Bad for the Dean Campaign?.

"Would you vote for Howard Dean?" and "Will you vote for Howard Dean?” are two different questions, and it may be that a lot of people who “would” vote for Dean, in some hypothetical world where you could vote in the same way you can make a political donation on Amazon, didn’t actually vote for him when it meant skipping dinner with friends to drive downtown in the freezing cold and venture into some church basement with people who might prefer some other candidate to Dean.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments

Thursday, January 29, 2004, 12:33 pm

Hill and Coathooks. A few days ago, my wife and I attended the inaugural concert in the newly renovated Hill Auditorium at the University of Michigan. Designed by Albert Kahn and built in 1913, it is often compared to Carnegie Hall and other famous venues.

The renovation architects were Quinn Evans of Ann Arbor, a firm which includes friends of mine.

A principal charge to the renovators was to increase the supply of toilets in the building, especially for women. And indeed, in lots of unexpected corners, there are restrooms now. For example, the grand series of five entry doors across the front was shortened, with the leftmost and rightmost replaced (on the facade) by brass dummies; behind the dummies are now bathrooms.

And the style of all these new bathrooms is remarkably like the 1913 originals, with period fittings and marble partitions between the stalls. Not Napoleon Gray (a now-unavailable marble which was often used in early 20th century bathrooms), but I don't think the originals were Napoleon Gray.

One criticism of the new bathrooms I heard from men and women alike: the lack of coat hooks in the stalls. Some of those complaining blamed the absence of coat hooks on what they assumed to be a misguided concern for historical accuracy.

But I can't imagine that the originals were without coat hooks. Of course, over the years since 1913, undoubtedly the original coat hooks were systematically broken or stolen by vandals, as they are in most public toilet facilities — at least in those designated for use by men.

I'm not sure why vandals are so angered by the presence of bathroom coat hooks. Nonetheless, the audiences who attend concerts at Hill these days seem very well behaved. To leave out the bathroom coat hooks is a pre-emptive surrender to vandals who may not actually exist in this population.

I was urged to point out to the architects that men's dress suits often involve suspenders, so that one must remove one's jacket (and hang it where?) before lowering the pants. I am also told that women sometimes face a similar clothing problem. Moreover, women typically come into bathroom stalls armed with shoulder strap purses, and prefer not to set them on the floor.

So, both genders wish for coat hooks in bathroom stalls at Hill Auditorium.

Update, Friday, January 30: Architect Ilene Tyler of Quinn Evans responds as follows:

Coat hooks, schmoat hooks! Goodness gracious! If we hadn't solved some of the bigger problems, then I would be responding to things like, "why can't I open the stall door past the toilet?" and "why aren't there any Men's toilets on the main floor?" and "where is the coat check room?" etc. There are some things that just didn't happen. But, hey, the acoustics are excellent, the colors and lighting are breathtaking, and it is comfortable at the upper reaches of the upper balcony. Annual Folk Festival this weekend should be lots of fun, can't wait! Larry, go pick on some other budget-crunched theater...and I'll pass along your comments, as appropriate, and let you know if I get a definitive answer.

New Flash!!!

Coat hooks are being installed this week. They will be "wardrobe hooks" mounted on the marble between the stalls. However, these are being added by request, as the original Hill did not have hooks; they relied on the coat check, which we have indeed lost to providing more toilet rooms, etc.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments

Thursday, January 29, 2004, 12:03 pm

"Doorbell heterogeneity." As someone who has done extensive door-to-door political campaigning, this intriguing phrase brings many images to mind. Not only is every house different, every door different, but every doorbell is different.

Sometimes the muffled sound of the doorbell, as heard on the front porch or stoop, gives a hint of the resident's personality: melodic chimes, ethereal bong, ringing schoolbell, brisk buzzer. Or perhaps it says more about the ambitions of the builder or developer who shaped the streets and houses to express a marketable concept, a New Neighborhood (at the time) as inventive in its way as a New Town.

So you can imagine that my interest was piqued when I received an email message this morning with the Subject: "doorbell heterogeneity".

Hmmm, I wondered, a campaign volunteer, or a weary political activist? Someone from a building preservation list contacting me backchannel? An Ann Arbor historic district issue?

Alas, none of these. It was only an ad for "Gewnejric Vijagxra".

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments

Sunday, January 25, 2004, 11:39 pm

Joe-jobbed. I regret to announce that I have been "joe-jobbed".

I didn't know before this that there was a word for it.

What happened is that a spammer forged my email address in the From: and Reply-To: lines of thousands of fraudulent spam messages advertising some product which is claimed to increase the size of a body part.

Hence, my email has been deluged with vast quantities of bounce and rejection notices. The first wave subsided, and I thought I was okay, but then the second and much larger wave of spam bounces arrived.

But, I am not alone in this. Like I said, there's even a word for it. Apparently millions of people have been joe-jobbed; I'm a bit late to the party.

The spammer's web sites are registered in Kuala Lumpur. The actual messages are routed through hijacked machines, ordinary people's DSL or cable-internet connected computers which have been remotely taken over to act as spam forwarding centers. Obviously the spammer has access to hundreds of these, thanks to the insecurity of MS-Windows and the carelessness of most users.

And ISPs like Verizon and Adelphia and RoadRunner and Bellsouth — all of whom have hundreds of customers unknowingly forwarding spam which claims to be from me — are apparently doing nothing about this. My complaints to ISPs were answered (if at all) by form letters; in once case, the canned text advised me to wait 5 days for the spam bounces to subside. But it's been 18 days, and the bounces keep pouring in.

What makes me the most angry are quantities of rejection messages from supposedly reputable spam-filter companies. They know the message is spam; they know the From: line is forged. So why the hell are they sending nastygrams to uninvolved third parties like me?

And I have no recourse whatever against any of those resposible. Indeed, people tell me that I should consider myself lucky not to be getting hundreds of millions of bounce messages, overloading my connection and the server.

Well, I suppose if I was extremely litigious and had a lot of time and resources to hassle people, I could follow RIAA's lead. I could serve subpoenas on Verizon, Bellsouth, Comcast, and all the rest, listing IP addresses and demanding to know whose machines those were. After all, presumably the owners of those computers are negligently ignoring rudimentary computer security, and are legally responsible for whatever vile slanders their computers are pumping out across the world.

But there are serious issues of proof. All I have as evidence are the bounce messages, which by definition never reached anyone else. And everything on my server is under my control and hence suspect as evidence in the eyes of a court.

And if anything I did served to annoy the spammer himself, then I would be joe-jobbed but good, with hundreds of millions of bounces instead of thousands.

Meanwhile, my domain name will now be added to spam blacklists, so that my own outgoing mail will be blocked in many places as presumed spam.

This kind of thing (not to mention ordinary spam and viruses) is going to destroy email as a useable communications medium.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments

Sunday, January 4, 2004, 11:00 pm

A Political Announcement. It's an election year, and I have been induced to re-enter the political fray. Here it is:

I will be a candidate for Washtenaw County Clerk/Register of Deeds, in the Democratic primary on August 3rd, and the general election November 2nd.

County Clerk and Register of Deeds have different responsibilities, and are two distinct positions in most Michigan counties; in Washtenaw County they have been merged into a single elected position.

The Clerk-Register is the chief local election official, is custodian of a vast array of public records from birth certificates to mortgages, and mediates a lot of the public's dealings with the local court system.

I have a lot of interest and background in each of these areas. I have worked in local government as a county commissioner in two different counties. In Ingham County, I was chair of the Personnel Committee, which directed labor negotiations and arbitrated grievances for the county's 800-plus employees, and of the Administrative Services Committee, which handled budget and policy issues for the County Clerk and Register of Deeds. I have also been a member of many appointed boards and as a director and officer of several nonprofit corporations.

As an election inspector (at the city, township, and county level), poll challenger, candidate, elected official, and attorney in recounts, I have participated in nearly every aspect of the election process, and I have written articles and given speeches about problems in election administration, voter authentication, tabulation, and voting systems (see, most recently, this op-ed piece). I have worked with deeds and other land records literally since boyhood. I'm an attorney. Plus, I have a good deal of background in computer databases, networks, and security, all relevant to the work of the Clerk-Register.

Another requirement for this job is a determination to provide excellent customer service. Dealing with the public day after day is not easy work. The inevitable hassles and headaches tend to create a defensive, "customer-is-the-enemy" mindset in even the most well-intentioned organizations. That tendency must constantly be resisted. Washtenaw County's official slogan is "World Class Service": that should mean each and every person who comes to the Clerk-Register's office is treated with the utmost courtesy and respect. To achieve this requires an ongoing commitment, including adequate training and active support for front-line staff.

Democracy is simple in theory, but administering elections is a complex process. Every step must be completed with care, and handled in such a way that all sides are fully satisfied with the fairness, efficiency, security, integrity, and transparency of the entire system.

Among county election officials, the Clerk leads the way on issues from choosing voting technologies to training election workers to coordinating the tabulation and certifying of results. Our next county clerk will implement the new state election laws, which change election scheduling and consolidate authority over local and school elections.

It should be the goal of election administration to be inclusive, to reduce or eliminate barriers to voting. The Clerk should be an advocate for necessary changes to election law to help maximize voter participation.

Similarly, though the final authority rests with the judges, the Clerk administers many aspects of the jury system for local courts, and is in a position to recommend changes to make jury duty as flexible and hassle-free as possible.

The Clerk is elected on a partisan ballot and does handle some partisan issues, including county redistricting and the replacement of other county elected officials when a vacancy occurs. The county is now predominantly Democratic in its partisan preferences, but has not had a Democratic county clerk since 1934.

I have an excellent chance to change that this year. I'm putting together a solid, grassroots campaign, with support from many party and community leaders. Parma Yarkin has agreed to be my treasurer. As far as I know, I'm the only Democrat running. Mine will be a positive campaign; I look forward to many debates or joint appearances with the incumbent.

If you'd like to help out the campaign, I have an immediate need. On Saturday, February 7th, the Michigan Democratic Party will be holding a presidential preference caucus, essentially a party-run presidential primary. Though some will vote on-line, thousands will come to caucus sites (polling places) to cast their votes, and campaigning to them is encouraged.

I'm going to need probably a couple of volunteers at each of 17 caucus sites in Washtenaw County to distribute campaign flyers to voters. Each site is open for six hours, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. It will be an exciting and very political day, and by volunteering, you'll be in the thick of it. If you're interested, let me know via email (see my address at upper right).

Check this blog (and the soon-to-appear campaign web site) for further news.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments

2002:
May / June / July
August / September / October
November / December

2003:
January / February / March
April / May / June / July
August / September / October
November / December