OntheWilderSide

La Pietra Wins Another “First Step” on the Road to Non-Partisan, Non-Promotional Clerk’s Website

Page Gave Detailed Local HQ Contact Information for Two Major Parties Only; Deputy Clerk Has Now Added
Links to State, National Websites of Other Parties

John Anthony La Pietra, candidate for Calhoun County Clerk-Register for the Green Party of Michigan (GPMI),
is making a bit of progress again towards one of his goals for the office — even before the election.

John has sent an e-mail to Deputy Clerk for Elections Teri Loew thanking Loew for taking the “first step” in
eliminating the bi-partisan bias in a page apparently posted last month on the Clerk’s Website.

That Webpage, titled “Political Party Headquarters” and featured on the site’s front page, gives detailed contact information for the “headquarters” of the County Republican and Democratic Parties.  But it had no information at all for any of the other four parties on the ballot in Michigan — the Green, US Taxpayers, Libertarian, and Natural Law Parties — until this weekend.  Saturday afternoon, Loew added basic links to state-level Websites for three of the parties, and the national home page for the fourth.

“It’s not fair and equal yet,” comments John.  “But it is a first step on the road to fairness and equality — or at least it can be.”  But he adds that the new links should have been includedon a different page of the Website — the “Offsite Resources” page.  In fact, he asked for that five months ago.

Besides, John’s seen a first step from the Clerk’s office before — also five months ago — and it hasn’t been followed by a second one yet.      In the spring, he pointed out the lack of need for a large photo of the current Clerk on the front page of a new online property-records search function.  And after he rebutted some claims that the photo was necessary for any public purpose, there was a change:  the big new photo was quietly replaced with an older, smaller photo.

“But it still does nothing for the users but tell them who the current clerk is — in a re-election year,” John
points out.      “And it’s not as if she’s the tech-support person.  In fact, she’s denied knowing anything about how the records database is organized.”

John hopes for faster, better results on this issue.  He’s sent Loew his own contact information — since he has served GPMI as the Calhoun County Co-ordinator for years.  He has even posted a page on his Website to serve that function:          http://www.jalpForThePeople.org/CalhounCo_GP.html

He expects to report it as an in-kind expenditure in his post-general-election report, on or before its December 4 due date.

John is posting a greatly hyperlinked version of the full correspondence on this issue, which began on October 18, on his campaign Website at  http://www.jalpForThePeople.org/corresp_party-HQ.pdf

Filed under: election, Election 2008, elections, Green Party Websites, Political Websites