It’s time for professionals to run these convention elections

If you think you’re having a bad day, check in with Michigan Democratic Party Chair Curtis Hertel Jr.

The East Lansing politico has seemingly all segments of the party breathing down his neck over the sloppy voting system the party used at last month’s endorsement convention.

The immediate issue is over the Michigan State University Board of Trustees race, where incumbent Kelly Tebay Zemke won by an alleged 15 votes over former Sen. Sylvia Santana, who was supported by MSU Trustee Dennis Denno.

Santana’s team, which now includes the technology fraud team at the Miller Law Firm, found dozens of Tebay votes came from Democrats who were not voting from the convention hall at Huntington Place in Detroit — a violation of party rules.

All off-site votes need to be discounted, they claim.

The off-site voting is understandable. Delegates thought they’d vote at 3 p.m., but after the speeches and some technical problems, things didn’t get rolling until 5:30 p.m. People started leaving before then.

Meanwhile, hundreds of attendees didn’t get the email from the party on how to use the ElectionBuddy tool for voting, so they stood in line until 7:10 p.m. to cast their votes on a few tablets that were made available.

After that, the formula the MDP uses to calculate its proportional voting got messed up, and the party needed a couple of hours to straighten it out. Results came out at 9 p.m.

Basically, people lost their patience and went home before 5:30 p.m., thinking they could just vote from their car, home or wherever.

That’s not allowed.

So now Santana and her attorney, former MDP Chair Butch Hollowell, are calling for a full audit to make sure everything is on the up and up. They have support.

In the spirit of transparency, the MDP thought it was doing the right thing by giving each campaign access to the raw vote. Instead, someone leaked the information to a news site, giving the public a brief peek into which delegates voted for which candidates.

The losing candidate for attorney general, Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald, is cheering Santana along as well.

An intraparty appeals process is underway, with a report expected by May 18. None of the options here are great.

If the party shuts down the chance of an independent audit, it could accelerate the story. A contested nominating convention could break out in August. The MDP doesn’t want that.

They also don’t want the story that the political party that prides itself on “free and fair elections” only has the “free” piece of that slogan to claim. The election was free, but arguably not fair.

If the audit is allowed to happen, the results could validate the announced totals.

They could also change the results in favor of Santana and possibly other candidates. That could, again, put egg on the face of the MDP for not being able to pull off an election with reliable results.

Democrats hammered Trump and other Republicans for claiming fraud in the 2020 election, but now they can’t run their own election? What does Jocelyn Benson think of that? She’s the secretary of state and a leading gubernatorial candidate.

Honestly, I’m fine with the caucus selection process Democrats and Republicans use to pick their attorney general, secretary of state, Supreme Court and state board nominees.

It gives lightly funded candidates a chance to target the delegates they need one-on-one, as opposed to raising a ton of money for TV spots.

However, professionals need to run these things.

Just as corporations and retirement funds hold secret elections for their board positions, so too should election management companies be called upon to run these party elections.

Just as Republicans screwed up four years ago by hand-counting ballots, Democrats need to either keep voting on-site or change their rules.

Otherwise, they risk sacrificing their moral high ground on voting integrity.

(Kyle Melinn is the editor of the Capitol news service MIRS. You can email him at melinnky@gmail.com.)