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Gun Plain Township

by Pat Foster

Prior to the 2008 Primary Election in Gun Plain township, the people there had an issue with the current township clerk. This issue involved money that had been paid to the clerk. Some believed she had a right to take it, and others felt she did not. I became involved in this issue after the Primary election, because many of these people who felt that the clerk had taken this money incorrectly had placed Ms. Jennifer Button to run against her in the Primary election. She had lost this election, and these people had felt that the election had been stolen from her. During my campaign against Ms. Watts, the Allegan County clerk, I had the opportunity to speak to many residents in the Plainwell area. Many of them had expressed this fear to me that their votes were not being counted correctly.

During my campaign for county clerk, I was contacted by Tim Knoblock, who was definitely not a Democrat, for a large number of yard signs. I went over to his house with the signs, and we had talked about Ms. Button running against the township clerk in the Primary, and they felt that this election had been manipulated. The Knoblocks' son had been almost killed by the wrestling coach at Plainwell high school by forcing him to work out in a plastic sweat suit that is barred not only by the school systems, but also by the International Olympic Committee. The boy had collapsed while working out and was taken to the hospital. The Plainwell school administration had fired this coach. There was a lot of news about this firing and people had differing opinions on whether or not he and the other coaches should have been fired.

The main coach that had been fired is also married to the Gun Plain township clerk, and they put together a group of three men to run for positions on the Plainwell HS Board in the May 5th election. Ms. Button had contacted me to be there during this election, and I went over with my friend Ira to talk to her. We agreed that we would do it.

The questions in our mind was how many possible ways could the election be compromised. We ruled out the Diebold machines from being compromised, because the state and federal authorities would not compromise their ace in the hole on a school board election. That left the two oldest forms of election theft open. First is "stuffing the ballot box", which is done by the election workers during slow periods in the morning and afternoon. They fill out an election application is someones name that they know will not show up to vote, and vote their ballot. This method takes a lot of collusion, because every worker has to be in on the cheat. The second, and most likely method of cheating is to manipulate the absentee ballots. Here, you only need a few people in the backroom that are in collusion with each other. As they open the ballots, they look at how they are voted and place a mark on the ones they do not want counted, and the machine disallows it.

On the day of the election, Ira and I arrived before the poles had opened to make sure that we were starting with -0- totals on the tabulator. That confirmed, I had a audio recorder on my clip board. One of the elections workers noticed it and asked me to remove it from the polls. I did so, and requested that they sign the rule established by the Secretary of State for doing so. They refused. This was very important to us, because the Michigan Election Reform Alliance (MERA) was preparing to get a legal opinion from the Attorney General on a rule created by the Secretary of State that did not undergo the Administrative Rules Act by opening it to public comment. Shortly thereafter, Joyce Watts arrived at the pole, saw Ira and I sitting there, so she went a got her camera and took pictures of us. We both agreed that she had every right to do just that, so why are the citizens prevented from doing what those in power can do with impunity?

The time came for the absentee ballots to be counted. No one informed me even though I requested to be there. I went into a back room, and sure enough, there was Joyce Watts, the township clerk, and two other women beginning to open the envelopes. Joyce told me that could take a seat next to one of the women, which I did. Joyce gave the procedures, and they followed them. When it was time to transcribe the ballots from original to duplicate, I got between both women doing it, so that I could observe what one called out was correct, and what the other entered was correct. In the past, Joyce would have prevented me from doing this, but Ira had called the state police before we went there. While the Bureau of Elections keeps them from inforcing election law, the officer told us that if we called in a complaint, they would send over a squad car and take a report. We had her between a rock and a hard place.

The three men running for the board to rehire the coaches all lost the election. Jennifer Button said the most common quote she heard that night was: "this is the first honest election we have had in Gun Plain township for years, and we all owe it to Pat and Ira."

Letter to the Bureau of Elections

PF Senate testimony

Loose Change