A Companion Letter to “The Hero of Hillsdale County”

The HERO of Hillsdale County

By Pythia, High Priestess of the Temple of Delphi

Dear Hillsdale Conservatives,

There is a misunderstanding in Hillsdale County.

People keep asking why the man with no name does not simply say his name.

It is an easy question. It is also the wrong question.

That question forces the citizen to explain himself while allowing government to avoid explaining its authority. It turns the person challenging the rule into the problem and leaves the people who created and enforced the rule safely outside the frame.

The proper question is this:

By what lawful authority may government require a citizen to identify himself before he may address it?

That question is not really about a name. It is about the limitations placed upon government.

It is also the question at the center of another Hillsdale County story.

The companion article, “The Hero of Hillsdale County,” tells the story of former Adams Township Clerk Stephanie Scott and what happened when she challenged instructions handed down by election authorities. This letter examines the principle connecting her case to the stand now being taken by the man with no name.

It is the difference between a rule and a lawful rule.

The Order of Authority

The phrase “limited government” has been repeated so often that many people no longer stop to consider what it means.

Limited government does not mean that government should merely exercise restraint when convenient. It means government possesses only the authority lawfully granted to it.

Our constitutional order does not begin with an administrator’s instructions, a department manual, a mayor’s interpretation or a board’s newly adopted policy.

It begins with the United States Constitution. Beneath it are state constitutions and statutes enacted through the legislative process. Administrative agencies may then promulgate rules within the authority delegated to them. Local governments may adopt procedures within the authority granted to them.

The order matters.

An administrative instruction cannot override a statute. A local rule cannot override a constitutional right. An official cannot create authority merely by announcing that something is “required.”

A rule is not lawful simply because someone in government wrote it.

The Instruction Comes First

In 2021, Clerk Stephanie Scott began asking questions about election records and voting equipment in Adams Township. She identified discrepancies that she believed required investigation and began attempting to understand the legal and technical systems surrounding election administration.

What she encountered were layers of authority:

The United States Constitution.

Federal election statutes.

The Michigan Constitution.

The Michigan Election Law.

Administrative rules promulgated by the Department of State.

Bureau manuals, directives and instructions.

County procedures.

Vendor contracts.

The problem was that those layers did not always say the same thing.

On October 15, 2021, Michigan Bureau of Elections Director Jonathan Brater sent the Adams Township Clerk a letter stating that he was writing to “advise and instruct” her, to correct what the Bureau characterized as false statements and to warn that legal action could follow. The letter addressed public accuracy testing, preventative maintenance, electronic pollbook deletion and other subjects.

The letter carried the authority of the Michigan Department of State.

But governmental authority cannot be measured by the letterhead.

It must be found in the law.

Delete the Records

One of the Adams Township Clerk’s concerns involved the Bureau’s instruction to delete electronic pollbook files after an election.

The October 15 letter dismissed that concern by claiming that all electronic pollbook data was printed on election night and placed in the paper pollbook. It described the deleted material as merely the electronic version of already printed data and said clerks were instructed to delete it to protect personal information.

The legal question was therefore legitimate:

Was every electronic record truly duplicated on paper, or was government ordering the deletion of information that election-record retention laws required officials to preserve?

That question became even more important during the August 11, 2025 court hearing.

Brater was shown a proposed electronic pollbook rule submitted for the administrative rulemaking process in May 2025. The proposal required electronic pollbook software and associated files to be deleted from devices after canvass and certification, subject to specified exceptions.

Brater testified that the proposed language was “very similar” to the directive issued in 2021.

But he also testified that the proposal was not yet in effect. The assistant attorney general objected to its admission because, as he told the court, the proposal had “no force of law” and “no effect.”

That exchange matters.

It confirmed the distinction Adams Township Clerk had been insisting upon:

An instruction is not the same thing as a promulgated rule.

The instruction existed in 2021.

A substantively similar rule was still moving through the formal rulemaking process in 2025.

That fact alone does not resolve every question about electronic pollbook retention. It does expose why the Adams Township Clerk was entitled to ask officials to show the legal authority behind their demand.

Government’s answer could not simply be, “Because we instructed you to do it.”

Before a public official destroys election records, “Show me the law” is not defiance.

It is the responsible question.

Testing Rules Written for Another Age

The Adams Township Clerk also challenged the testing of voting equipment.

The administrative rules then in effect had been written in 1979. They spoke of ballot cards, punches, chads, header cards, end cards and centralized computers. They were plainly written for punch-card voting systems, not the modern optical-scan tabulators later used throughout Michigan.

Those rules were not comprehensively rewritten until May 2025. The revised rules finally replaced much of the punch-card terminology with provisions addressing modern tabulators, accessible voting devices, electronic pollbooks, physical pollbooks and current election procedures.

For decades, clerks were expected to apply rules written for one generation of technology to an entirely different generation of equipment.

That does not automatically prove every test conducted under those procedures was invalid.

It does prove that township clerk’s questions were not irrational.

She questioned whether the test decks being used were sufficient to demonstrate that the equipment would accurately count every candidate, office and proposal appearing on the ballot.

The Bureau responded by accusing her of failing to perform her responsibilities. Its October 15 letter stated that the election commission was required to conduct the public accuracy test and, after completion, sign a certificate verifying that the testing had been conducted.

The distinction remains important.

A certificate is supposed to attest to something that has actually happened.

Testing must come first.

Certification must follow.

The current rules make that sequence clear. The commission conducts the test, corrects any detected error, obtains an errorless count and then certifies the accuracy of the test.

There is a difference between refusing to perform a statutory duty and refusing to certify a result before its accuracy has been established.

A certificate should record a fact.

It should never be used to manufacture one.

Maintenance and Custody

Preventative maintenance was another subject on which authority was asserted more confidently than it was demonstrated.

No one seriously disputes that voting equipment must be properly maintained.

The dispute concerned custody, timing, responsibility, data preservation and the procedure officials were demanding that the Adams Township Clerk follow.

The administrative rule in effect during the elected Adams Township Clerk’s tenure stated that when a township’s legislative body provided for the purchase and use of an electronic voting system, the township clerk had custody of the devices and responsibility for their maintenance, repair and preparation for elections.

The revised May 2025 rule retains that basic allocation of responsibility.

Meanwhile, Bureau correspondence repeatedly characterized the state contract as requiring Hart InterCivic to perform the preventative maintenance.

When that contract was examined in court, the details were more complicated.

Its maintenance tables assigned numerous routine and preventative tasks to the “User.” Other tasks were assigned to the user with contractor assistance “as needed.” Brater acknowledged on the witness stand that this was what the cited section of the contract said.

The contract itself identifies many maintenance tasks as user-performed, including cleaning, calibration, battery replacement and other scheduled procedures.

That does not mean Hart could never be involved in maintenance.

It does mean the contract did not support the simplistic claim that every maintenance procedure had to be performed by the vendor in precisely the manner officials demanded.

Again, the question was not whether maintenance was beneficial.

The question was whether the particular order being enforced was supported by the rule, statute and contract cited to justify it.

Government’s answer was essentially the same each time:

It is required.

It is the procedure.

It is the rule.

Comply.

But repetition does not supply missing authority.

The Other Challenge

That brings us back to the man with no name.

Public bodies may adopt reasonable rules governing the conduct of their meetings and public-comment periods.

But the word “reasonable” does not make every rule lawful. The act of voting on a rule does not place it beyond constitutional or statutory review.

The man with no name is not attempting to conceal his identity from Hillsdale officials. They know who he is.

His refusal to state his name is a direct challenge to the proposition that government may compel identification as the price of addressing elected representatives.

He has been denied the opportunity to speak because he would not submit to that condition. He has been ordered removed. Officials later amended the wording of their rule and continued enforcing the identification requirement.

But changing the rule does not answer the underlying question:

Did the government possess the authority to impose that condition in the first place?

The right to petition government loses its meaning if government may first place an unlawful condition upon its exercise.

A right that may be exercised only after government grants permission is no longer functioning as a right.

It has become a privilege.

The Rule Before the Rulebreaker

There is a habit developing in American government.

An administrator issues an instruction.

A board adopts a procedure.

An official declares something mandatory.

Law enforcement is then asked to compel obedience.

Only afterward, sometimes years afterward, does anyone ask whether the instruction was supported by law.

That order must be reversed.

Before accusing a citizen or public official of breaking a rule, government should be required to answer four questions:

Who made the rule?

Under what delegated authority?

Through what lawful process?

Does it comply with the Constitution and the statutes below it?

Those are not radical questions.

They are the questions that preserve a republic.

The Adams Township Clerk challenged instructions concerning the deletion of electronic election records, rules written for outdated voting equipment and demands involving a tabulator placed in her custody.

The man with no name is challenging a local rule that conditions public participation upon compelled identification.

The subjects are different.

The principle is the same.

Neither story is merely about election equipment.

Neither story is merely about a name.

Neither story is about someone who woke up one morning and decided that rules no longer applied.

They are about citizens who asked whether the rules applied to government too.

Let the Bells Ring

We are told that Adams Township Clerk should simply have obeyed.

We are told that the man with no name should simply say his name.

“Simply” is a dangerous word when government uses it to avoid proving its authority.

Simply comply.

Simply trust us.

Simply follow the procedure.

Simply stop asking questions.

But America was not founded upon simple obedience to government.

It was founded upon the recognition that rights come from God and that government is instituted to protect them. The limitations are placed upon government because government possesses the power to grow beyond its lawful boundaries.

It is not about being an election denier.

It is not about refusing to follow rules.

It is not about a name.

It is about whether the breaking of a rule can be judged without first examining the making of that rule.

Hillsdale County speaks often of liberty, constitutional government and founding principles.

It is time to demonstrate that those principles are more than ceremonial words.

The bells of liberty do not ring by themselves.

Someone must be willing to pull the rope.

in liberty,

Pythia
High Priestess of the Temple at Delphi