Ballot Tampering ; City's Antics Threaten to Taint Election

Summary

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Maybe they should just provide Douglas Bruce with a cubicle of his own at the courthouse, given the amount of time he's spent there in the last year -- including frequent recent visits -- trying to get local officials to obey the letter and spirit of the law. Bruce's knee-jerk litigiousness is annoying, to be sure. But many of these court visits wouldn't have been necessary if the city wasn't engaged in a campaign of obstructionism, foot-dragging and ballot- box sabotage.

Not only have the city's win-at-all-costs tactics demonstrated a breathtaking contempt for voters -- whom most city leaders apparently don't trust to make the right decision on election day -- but the game-playing has now put the prospect of a fair election in jeopardy. The flurry of 11th-hour legal challenges and ballot language adjustments has thrown the process into confusion, casting a shadow over the election and serving as an engraved invitation to even more litigation.

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Extract

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Ballot Tampering ; City's Antics Threaten to Taint Election

How much money and trouble might have been saved, and acrimony and public distrust avoided, had City Council not embarked on this destructive, anti-democratic course a year ago, by bumping two Bruce- authored measures from the ballot? Th...

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