Aired on WDET Monday, Nov.

6, 2017

Sandra Svoboda: Why should voters return you to your job as city clerk?
Janice Winfrey: Well I'm a proven leader. I have what it takes to ensure that the process makes
the proper advances. You know, this is a non-partisan position and it should not be politicized.
That's very important. It's also important that you choose a leader that is highly ethical. These are
all qualities and qualifications that I possess and have demonstrated during my tenure. And if
you want progress to continue in a professional, ethical way, you want to return me back to the
clerk's office.
SS: What are some of the advancements you've made in the clerk's office that you're most
proud of and have had the biggest effect on Detroit voters?
JW: So the ones that I'm most proud of may not have a large effect on Detroit voters but
certainly on Detroit itself and that's the establishment of the archives facility or the archives
division. You see as clerk we are the keeper of all official documents in the city of Detroit. Those
documents were spread all over the city in no kind of order. And in fact the city was losing
thousands of dollars in lawsuits because houses were being demolished without notification.
Notification comes from the clerk's office. So we pulled all those 10,000-plus documents
together in my first term and we established an archives facility. So I'm most proud of that.
But some of the other advances that we've made include were the only municipality in the state
of Michigan that has a free app that you can download to your smartphone. It's Vote4Detroit.
And on that app you can actually request your absentee ballot. That app also tells you where you
go to vote if you were to go to the precinct, it give you a sample ballot and it holds all of your
political composition, all the information that you need right there in the palm of your hand.
One of the other things that I'm most proud of is we are the only municipality in the state -- I
think Grand Rapids does it as well -- but we allow for satellite voting. What is satellite voting?
You can vote your absentee ballot in person a full month prior to Election Day, Monday through
Friday, 9 to 5 and some Saturdays. That's significant because we strategically put those satellite
voting locations in areas that may be considered depressed, in areas where the turnout may not
be as high as in other areas. So we can make it convenient for those voters to participate in the
process.
SS: What are the priorities if you're elected to yet another term? Which is another way of
saying what's left to do? So what haven't you done yet?
JW: There's a lot left to do. I'd like to expand our satellite voting, if you will. I'd like to have no-
reason absentee voting. See for me, you should be able to vote an absentee ballot simply because
you request such, and also I'm working with our state legislators because it is imperative that we
update and modify our election laws. We are one of one of three states that does not allow for
human error in recounts. And that's ridiculous because the only way you're going to ensure purity
of the process is that you're able to recount every transfer case upon request.
SS: What else are you requesting or would you request from Lansing that would better the
process and make voting more accessible and easy and have more trust from the voters
here in Detroit? What else could the Lansing do?
JW: Same-day registration. Same-day registration, voter registration. An individual should be
able to register, if they go to the precinct and they want to vote and they find that they arent
registered, they should be able to register at any time during the process.
SS: Let's talk a little bit about 2016 because there were some there were some issues. The
state came down and made some recommendations. Talk about how those were made and
how youve addressed them.
JW: So we've always maintained a good relationship with the state of Michigan. We meet with
the state of Michigan at the top of the year. Every year we meet with the state director of
elections. We've always maintained a good relationship, and they knew what issues would arise
if the state ever had to have a state recount. That was not just an issue for Detroit. That was an
issue for the entire state. Of course being the largest municipality in the state, all eyes are on us,
and that's OK because we looked at what our deficiencies were. And I'm sure you read the audit,
which by the way, takes place any time a state changes from one political party to another, when
you go from blue to red or red to blue, you're always going to have a state audit. That's just
standard operating procedures. I rather like the state audit in that it allows us to see what we've
done right and what we need to improve. And they said we conducted the election in the spirit of
the law, that there were no improprieties that took place. But what did happen was there was
poor performance at the precincts. And so we took that information and we revamped our entire
training process. And do we work with the state? Absolutely. We always have. There's been
nothing different as it relates to that.
SS: So walk me through the changes in that training process what did you have and what
do you do now?
JW: So the state requires that poll workers are required to be trained once every other year.
We've always surpassed that. We've always trained prior to every election. So once before the
primary and once before the general. But we found that was not enough. Right? So now our
supervisor poll workers train quarterly throughout the year in order to work for us on Election
Day. And that bodes well for us because we saw in the primary significant, significant
improvement in the process in August 2017.
SS: Since you've been in office we've seen a lot of changes in personal technology.
Smartphones have come a long way. Apps and expectations and access to the Internet. How
have you balanced incorporating new technologies with kind of the traditional roles of a
clerk and what citizens in Detroit who aren't comfortable or have access to technology
might be able to use?
JW: So we have to remember when we talk about technology that 40 percent of Detroiters are
not online. And so when knowing that, you have to prepare to serve everyone whether they're
online or not. But we do a number of things When I first took office in my first term, I offered
laptops to all of the council members so they can receive the information, the papers from us, the
supporting documents, their calendars and the like, via email. Some of them didn't like it, and
they pushed back, and they decided we're not going to use it. Others embraced it. This current
council we use I-pads, and most of them have their own. And so they prefer it. We do those
kinds of things. We put information online in terms of council proceedings, council agendas, the
actions that they've taken, and actual council meetings, the formal sessions. We have videos that
are online so that people that are online and they want that information, they can easily acquire
that information. But for those individuals that are not online, we maintain a very healthy, robust
mailing list and we mail those documents out to our constituents upon request.
SS: We have a lot of about have a lot of new citizens in Detroit who may be comfortable
speaking a different language what has your office done to address maybe Spanish or
Arabic speakers in the community?
JW: So all of our instructions on our newsletters are in Spanish and Arabic, and we recruit very
heavily translators from those communities. The Hmong community is another community that
we've engaged and we've hired individuals from those communities because people feel better
when they know that there's somebody that can speak their language and interpret what it is that
they're really trying to say. So we have these special t shirts, they're black and they say that I'm
a translator and we use that for the various language deficiencies or barriers that we may have in
the communities.
SS: And that's for poll workers?
JW: That is for poll workers that's at the poll, and then we do the direct mailing of our
instruction, of our newsletters in Arabic and Spanish.
SS: As youre out campaigning, what do you hear from voters about the office of city
clerk? How full of an understanding do they have, what are their biggest questions about
what you do?
JW: The biggest question I get is, When am I going to get my absentee ballot? I get that a lot,
and I'm not surprised. But you might be surprised Sandra, but many of the voters say thank you.
They just say thank you because one thing I do is I work hard. I'm not a city clerk that sits up
high and look down low. I get out there in the trenches. You'll see me carrying boxes. You'll see
me setting up precincts you'll see me delivering materials to our citizens. I'm a worker bee on
purpose and they appreciate that.
SS: So in this in essence you're overseeing an election that you're also running. And how
can you protect against the appearance of impropriety or are there certain parts of the
process you step back from when it's your name on the ballot?
JW: No I have to do my job. The charter says that I am required to do my job on Election Day
and that is to administer the election process. But I tell you the only difference for me is running
around to the various forums but I shut those down by the end of October because my job is
priority and I must focus on that for the entire time after the campaigning. But you know for me
it is what it is, you know.