Monroe Vote Tracker: More Bullshit

Hello, Monrovians. Kevin Daniels here. I know you can see my name as the author of this piece, but I wanted to put it out there one more time so that people knew where this was coming from. It’s important to me that we know who it is that is providing us information or, in the case of Monroe Vote Tracker, who is blowing smoke up our ass. 

You may recall that Michelle Ball was busted using fake profiles to like and support her posts, most prominently “Butch Williams”. For a woman who doesn’t like men to dress up in women’s clothes, this was an interesting choice…but I digress. This creating a fake profile just to agree with yourself isn’t new. Who will ever forget this gem…

This nonsense of hiding who they really are is a continuous campaign of ridiculousness. They pretend to be people who usually disagree with them and then start coming around. Or they want to be able to bully folks without having their own (fake) reputation, tarnished. But usually it’s just a vehicle to spread misinformation without being held accountable. 

Not to say that every thought that enters one’s head must be shared for the sake of transparency or honesty. I’m often reminded of a great quote from the Benoit Blanc character in Glass Onion; “It's a dangerous thing to mistake speaking without thought for speaking the truth.” For the sake of my own mental health I routinely scroll past posts that I disagree with, from a friend or other. You can do that if you want. Not everything in the world requires your opinion. 

Recently, in Mayor Burns’ endorsement of recently thrown under the bus mayoral candidate David Dotson, Burns claims to have lived in Monroe for 30 years. Lying is just second nature at this point. His followers don’t question him and we just laugh at him. There was a time when we actually tried to create a Burns Lie Tracker. It was too hard to keep up with and we found that it would be easier to track which statements he mads were actually true. 

But the real reason for today’s blog is about more election interference being run by the Chaos Caucus.

You may have noticed a Facebook page and website popping up in the comments of elected officials called Monroe Vote Tracker. At first glance, it looks innocent enough. It looks like a good source of information, tracking votes and meeting dates/times. But if you’ve been in this game long enough you start to spot what is known as “loaded language”. Look here at this vote and explanation: 

Let’s start at the top. Why is this a “Conservative” issue? Freedom of speech is not a conservative or liberal issue. It’s an American issue. Folks trying to shut down drag at a local restaurant certainly aren’t in favor of free speech. Trying to label this as an issue that only conservatives care about and fight for is part of their ruse. But it only gets better from here.

Read the “official” description of what the vote was about. “The vote specifically addressed past actions by the council that had a chilling effect on these rights.” Chilling effect? That’s not neutral language. Even the title “suppression of first amendment rights” is supposed to illicit an emotion before providing information. If you can remember, it was because of the shenanigans of the Chaos Caucus that all these rules became necessary. They continue to bring people from other cities and towns to harass our council rather than speak on the issues facing our community. The performances, oh the performances. The wall of people holding prop bibles that had never been opened had the opposite effect they were going for. Turned a threat into a laughingstock. Or the set up where Michelle was removed, an act pre-coordinated with Burns, and her daughter stood up and read a prepared speech about how her mother was just removed. How can you not look at this entire group as a bunch of clowns?

Finally, let’s look at the vote as we move into the labels affixed to the council members themselves. In this case, James Kerr voted no on this motion. James Kerr is a registered Republican. That means that the two Democrats, the liberals if you will, voted yes. But when we start to look at the labels affixed to the council, James Kerr is naked as part liberal while Burns and Dotson, who voted WITH the two Democrats on the council remain at 100% conservative? As a matter of fact, looking at how MVT grades the council, only two candidates are 100% anything, Burns and Dotson.

As ridiculous as that sounds, check out the little “hazard” signs next to the Republican candidates who “voted liberal”. If you scroll down on the page you’ll see that those symbols are used to mark the Republican candidates that MVT doesn’t like as a “concern”.

This is where it gets interesting…

This loaded language was curious to me. These labels, as arbitrary and nonsensical as they are, had to come from somewhere. In researching the source of their information, it turns out that “Data (is) sourced from CivicClerk”. I looked into CivicClerk and they are on the up and up. They do all the tracking for cities and keep people updated on meetings. But down in the corner, there’s a little button…an AI chat bot that you can talk with. And golly gee, I decided to have a chat with the bot to see what I could glean from them. 

As it turns out, the random subjective labels attached to the votes and council members? They’re “pre-assigned by the data provider for each vote”. When I asked who the data provider was, the response was “I don’t have information on the specific data provider for this site.”

Not good enough? Let’s ask ChatGPT…and note the unbiased prompt to get an unbiased answer…

As stated above, we (nor ChatGPT) have not been able to trace the financing of this project to any individual or organization. This is kind of a big deal because they also plan to expand to other cities. This war on information is starting right here in Monroe and we have to make sure their bullshit is labeled.

Our first impressions were that this misinformation page, disguising a campaign page for Burns and Dotson, was being run locally. It might still be, and probably is, but the expansion raises more questions about the funding. Who is paying for all this? According to campaign law, someone should be reporting these expenses in their reports. If they’re not, then they’re in violation of the law. If they are paying for this out of their own pocket, then they’re also in violation of campaign finance laws. Either way, the “transparency” they laud is missing here and could wind them up in a bit of trouble. 

So there you are. This is a campaign page that could be financed by any organization with deep pockets. Michelle has endless money for filing frivolous lawsuits. Is the man behind her the one paying for this? Is Burns using campaign funds in a ramp up to his run for governor?

The constant division, using subjective labels, is a schtick we’re all getting sick of. If you’re looking for unbiased truthful information, it’s not at Monroe Vote Tracker, that’s for sure. I don’t pretend to be unbiased, but we do stay close to the truth. And when we make a mistake, it gets corrected. 

One favor. I plan to save the link to this blog to comment on anything Monroe Vote Tracker posts or comments. I’ll probably be blocked eventually. Please take up the cause and make sure that MVT gets called out anytime they try to comment about how pure their tests are. 

Thank you.

Kevin Daniels  (My name is out there. Your turn Monroe Vote Tracker)