They are investigating some voting irregularities in past years, where the official vote counts were higher than the number of people who signed in at the polls. They have invited the city's inspector general to investigate any tips involving misbehavior in the commissioners' offices.
And the commissioners' website - for years an empty shell with virtually no useful information - now has links to a broad array of election material, from political calendars and campaign-finance rules to ward maps, voter-registration forms, absentee-ballot applications, past election results, and advice on the state's new voter-ID law.
Relying on its experienced civil-service staff, the new commissioners survived their first election last month with no significant problems.
But there is friction among the three commissioners.
The two Democrats, Singer and Clark, were rivals last year to chair the agency, and their relationship has not improved. At one weekly meeting, Clark complained that he hadn't been informed of one agenda item and Singer openly wondered how she might keep him informed, since he so rarely showed up at his City Hall office.
In private, Singer and Clark are said to be openly hostile.
"There are three commissioners and you can't go ahead without two of us," Clark said. Sometimes, he said, Singer "just wants to, I guess, dictate."
Schmidt, the Republican whose swing vote gave the chairmanship to Singer, is still a reliable ally on the reform issues they both embraced while campaigning.
But like Clark, Schmidt complains that Singer occasionally claims more authority as chairman - the power to schedule meetings or make employment decisions - than the other commissioners are willing to concede.
"All three offices should play equally active roles," Schmidt said. "I wasn't elected to be a potted plant."
Over opposition from Schmidt and Clark, Singer scheduled a commissioners' meeting Wednesday with two items on the agenda - directing staff to develop programs to explain the new voter-ID requirements to both the public and the election-day officials who will have to apply voter-ID rules in November.
"We didn't think the meeting was necessary," Schmidt said. He and Clark decided not to attend, forcing Singer to adjourn the meeting for lack of a quorum.
"People have differences of opinion all the time," Singer said. ". . . Resolving them is part of the process of governing collaboratively. I'm holding meetings because there is a lot of work that the commission has to do and a lot of things we need to do to keep the promises we made when we were running." - Bob Warner
