Mike Kennedy sent the following email to County Clerk Cliff Hayes and his assistant, Pat Raffee, this morning: "I’m not sure if you are both on vacation or not, but as the candidate filing window for this election year has begun, the interest in an answer to questions that I posed almost two weeks ago is increasing.  I’ve received calls from elected officials on this email list asking me to press on to find the answers to these questions.  These folks aren’t interested in confronting you publicly, as they expressed concerns about negative retribution from your office.  I’m disappointed to hear that, but it’s apparently a fear shared by several.  I suppose that I’ll “take one for the team” here and continue asking for information." Questions listed below.

Reaction?

In summary I’m asking for detailed answers to the questions posed in the August 25th email below regarding:

• 1 – the possible commingling of funds from the new state election consolidation law and the legislative intent to not do that (enlighten me as to your understanding of how that works, please);
• 2 – the budget worksheet that you sent which includes tens of thousands of dollars in expenditures on things like travel and furniture, which is hard to understand when you are closing polling places at the cities citing cost as a factor;
• 3 – the logistics of adding possibly thousands of voters into the county elections office as opposed to allowing voting stations at city halls; and
• 4 – the statutory authority for having volunteers go through registered voter lists to challenge voter registration, and ultimately voting rights.

These are not small matters, and the lack of a cogent and detailed response after nearly two weeks is both disappointing, and serving to make some folks consider whether there is more to the story here than meets the eye.