Roger Lange
Mayor AND
Gordon Pedrow
City Manager
City of Longmont
Longmont, Colorado
Subject: Election Process and Rule of Law
Dear Mr. Mayor,
The integrity of government is 100% dependent upon open non-hypocritical administration of the election process. When the legal process, interpretation of the law and making of the law is 100% controlled and maintained by the people in office to replace themselves or keep themselves in office Longmont no longer has a Constitutional process for elections.
Councilman Hansen and Council candidate Juday clearly are in violation of the letter and spirit of the strict liability law requiring full disclosure 41 days before the elections they are engaged in and did not do it. Councilwoman Benker made it clear in open forum last night she is calling the shots on election law interpretation last night, not the Charter Authority responsible for all law enforcement, the City Manager when she ignored the two complaints "pending" and chastised a legal entity for exercising its own Constitutional right to free speech by sponsoring candidates that Benker now wants to make unlawful. This very position by a City councilwoman is advocating socialized elections whereby the incumbents' job security is controlled by themselves, not the rule of law. She was seconded in that unlawful position by councilwoman Levinson. They want their cake and eat it too by controlling the rules instead of the Court determining who is guilty and not while tightly controlling the flow of information the public sees to make informed election decisions.
There is no separate law enforcement of the election law except by council cronyism. First and foremost, what is council doing as a block sponsoring political candidates in the first place? That is a socialism PAC per se and 100% conflict of interest because the members represent 100% of the people, not just a plurality. That should be addressed and forbidden in the Fair Practices Act and is not.
Secondly, pure travesties like the following are going un-investigated and un-reported to the detriment of justice under the rule of law and the undermining of democracy in the election process of the City of Longmont:
"Hi all,
We just got an interesting phone call on the campaign line. Apparently some of the homes in the Willow Creek Estates HOA who have Santos signs in their yard received a recorded message stating that they were in violation of the HOA rules by having a campaign sign displayed. The guy who called us is the President of that HOA, and the recording was absolutely NOT done by them.
They traced the # through caller ID to a cell phone that is registered to someone named Shauna Kelly Moore (not sure on spelling or absolute accuracy, he rattled it off quickly) with an address somewhere in Denver.
The HOA President did note that they have in the past had a homeowner who was disgruntled and in some way impersonated an HOA official previously, so they thought perhaps it is something like that. The other possibility, of course, being that someone is playing very dirty politics.
I have no idea what should be done with this info, and I told as much to the gentleman I spoke with. But I wanted to pass along the info in case anyone wants to do something with it, and certainly so we all can keep an ear out as to whether this is happening in other neighborhoods.
If anyone would like to talk with him further I can get you contact info. But really I just wanted to pass along info."
Mr. Mayor, I address your attention to your capacity jointly with the City Manager to represent the sovereign authority and the joint obligation of both offices to enforce the law irrespective, of the political power of individual council members who are abusing their power, to protect all of the People of Longmont, not just their political cronies who support socialism over capitalism. Therefore, I ask that the law be respected and enforced in order to maintain the trust in the integrity of the government election system itself as a friend of the City.
Very truly yours,
Richard Yale
CC: news media