The resolution’s one resolved clause states:

NOW THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED, such funds from state surplus should be used in part for roadway maintenance using the fair formula allocation as prescribed by Public Act 51 of 1951 to ensure Washtenaw County benefits fairly from surplus use. [.pdf of resolution]

At the board’s Jan. 22, 2014 meeting, Alicia Ping (R-District 3) had indicated the likelihood of this resolution coming to the board. She reported that a subcommittee that’s exploring the future of the Washtenaw County road commission had met prior to the county board meeting on Jan. 22. The subcommittee, which Ping chairs, had voted to ask the county board to pass a resolution urging Gov. Rick Snyder to allocate the state’s budget surplus for road repair, distributed to local entities using the current state formula for road allocations.

The resolution states that the Washtenaw County road commission maintains about 1,654 miles of roads, including 770 miles of gravel roads. It also is responsible for 111 bridges and more than 2,000 culverts, and is contracted by the Michigan Dept. of Transportation to maintain about 580 lane miles of state trunkline roads. Road commissioners have indicated that there are several million dollars worth of needed repairs that are unfunded.

In a statement issued earlier in the day on Feb. 5, Snyder released some details for a fiscal 2015 budget proposal, including $254 million “to match federal aid and maintain Michigan’s roads and bridges, transit services and aeronautics projects across the state.”

This brief was filed from the boardroom of the county administration building at 220 N. Main St. in Ann Arbor. A more detailed report will follow: [link]

David Erik Nelson

You might choose to disintermediate your meat consumption for a variety of reasons.

Maybe you’re a local organic kinda gal. Maybe you want a niche product (e.g., heritage pork, halal goat, bilingual llama) but can’t swing the upmarket prices at Whole Foods and their ilk. Maybe you want to keep the government out of your meat purchasing decisions.

Maybe you thrill to the challenge of using the whole hog, one piece at a time. Maybe you want to eat meat as ethically as possible, personally verifying that the animals are treated kindly in life and compassionately in death. [1]

Whatever your motivation, as Michiganders, you are perfectly situated to enjoy the most deliciously ethical domestically raised meat available in this modern world.

Who do you have to thank for this boon? Lazy deer-hunters, fickle farmers, conspiracy theorists, gun “nuts” – the usual folks.

Deer and Farmers and Butchers Galore

The average Ann Arbor Chronicle reader lives smack in the middle of one of the deer-huntingest states in the Union: More than 95% of Michigan’s hunters are deer hunters. In terms of raw number of hunters, we’re ranked third, behind Texas and Pennsylvania (states with appreciably larger populations).

As of 2006, about 700,000 resident hunters populated Michigan, about 45% of whom bag a deer in a given year. [2] So, that’s 315,000 dead deer. In case you haven’t hung out with many deer, a 150-pound buck is about average. In other words, butchering a deer is much more akin to butchering a welterweight boxer than it is to cleaning a fish or dressing out any other popular game animal (i.e., turkey, rabbit, squirrel, or pheasant). You can imagine that a certain percentage of our 700,000 hunters – especially those who have to be up early for work on Monday – would be happy to pay someone to take care of this for them. Subsequently, rural Michigan is peppered with mom-and-pop processors ready to break down deer at a breakneck pace between now-ish and January 1.

In case it can’t go without saying, hunters aren’t looking to sell their venison. Considering the time and capital they need to invest in the hobby to bag a buck, the price would be insanely exorbitant. Because there’s little risk of interstate commerce coming into play, small processors don’t need USDA approval. They’re often called “custom exempt,” which means they’re inspected by the state, not the feds. Everything they hand back to the hunter is stamped “NOT FOR SALE” or “NFS,” and the hunter is expected to abide by that.

It’s a tidy little boutique, service-oriented business. But what, you wonder, do these intrepid businessfolk do for the other three fiscal quarters, when no deer need butchering? Well, they don’t sit on their hands – ’cause that wouldn’t be sanitary. Also, they’d go broke. Instead, they hook up with the caretakers of our second largest industry: Farmers. [3]

Michigan’s farmers are very special farmers, because they specialize in not specializing in anything. Michigan is home to 56,000 farms, 95% of which are family owned, and most of which are “small farms”. [4] Lots of small players, and no single dominant cash crop, has resulted in Michigan rising to be the nation’s second most diverse food producer, right behind California. If you haven’t traveled these great United States much, you can take it from me: Local farm markets in the rest of the country are notably lame compared to what we’ve got going on. [5]

We have the fixings for a classic synergy: A group of suppliers eager to experiment with a little of this and a little of that, a group of manufacturers with an idle production line nine months out of the year, and a government happy to basically stay out of the way provided everyone keeps it clean. It’s highly practical for lots of our small farms to raise a few cattle, sheep, or pigs, and profitably get them to consumers, who in turn enjoy a good value. That good value is defined in terms of price relative to quality – because no family farmer is ever going to beat the going prices from a factory farm churning out commodity-grade flash-frozen meat in the Mountain Time Zone and trucking it to Sam’s Club thrice weekly.

While 80% of our nation’s meat production infrastructure has been gobbled up by just four mega-corporations, Michigan has maintained a robust, jackstraw quasi-network of rugged individualists and surly guys in blood-stained aprons.

If you’re a hippie with a penchant for ethical pork, beef, or foul, it’s a helluva lucky break. So let’s get started. Step one: Go get a pig.

Get a Live Pig

But, for the love of God, don’t bring it home. According to the Ann Arbor City Clerk’s office, it’s more than a stretch to claim that a 250-pound pig you’re just keeping around for a few months prior to its execution and dismemberment qualifies as a small animal commonly classified as a pet.

But, for legal reasons, it’s important that you purchase the pig when it’s technically still alive. The private transfer of a live pig – much like the private transfer of a firearm – is a very straightforward transaction (Pure Michigan!). Conversely, the transfer of a dead pig – especially one that the seller has any reason to suspect the buyer intends to eat – is a legally fraught transaction, and liable to trigger Uncle Sam’s meddling.

So, you’ll need to contact a farmer and reserve one of his or her live pigs. This is usually done a couple-three months prior to the pig reaching “market weight” (i.e., something like 225 to 300 pounds). [6]

Weights and Measures

Three kinds of weight come into play, when you are dealing with domestic animals you intend to eat: Live weight, hanging weight, and processed weight. Live weight, you’ll be shocked to learn, is the weight of the live animal. Hanging weight is the weight of the dead animal, drained of blood, and minus the parts you don’t have any use for (such as the intestines, stomach, head, feet, skin). The processed weight is the final weight of all that meat (aka, the “cuts”) neatly wrapped in butcher paper (or, more likely, vacuum sealed in plastic).

Sharp tacks have already surmised that live weight is greater than hanging weight, which in turn is greater than processed weight. Things vary by breed, individual pig, and butcher, but in general the hanging weight is about 75 percent of the live weight, and the processed weight about 66 percent of the hanging weight. So when all is said and done, if you start out with a 250-pound live pig, you’ll end up with about 125 pounds of cuts.

Most of the negotiating you’ll do revolves around hanging weight – although a pig might be priced based on its live weight, its hanging weight, or just as a pig. Per-pig pricing is the equivalent of wholesale in most cases: The farmer is just asking for you to reimburse him for the feed (which, at today’s corn prices, means around $240).

In terms of hanging weight, the price currently seems to hover in the $2 to $2.50 per pound range. So on a hypothetical 250-live-pound hog, that would amount to $375 to $470-ish. If the farmer quotes well below that, then he’s probably doing so on live weight, and you should clear that up. I’m not saying anyone is being nefarious, but the difference between hanging weight and live weight on your average hog is something like 62 pounds. A buck-fifty per pounds sounds like a tremendous deal, but actually amounts to the same thing as paying $2 per pound hanging weight.

At the end of the day, you should budget around $375 for your pig. But that only gets you half way to the dinner table.

At this stage, you’ve dropped almost four bills on a live pig that, we’ve established, is of very little use to you within Ann Arbor city limits. It lives its happy piggy life out in the mud somewhere many miles from a Starbucks. It runs around under the pine trees listening to AM radio and rooting for fat grubs. If a spider is up in the rafters writing nice things about him, he has no clue, because he’s illiterate and happily snorting up mud and knocking over his brothers and sisters. He is a pig, just as God and evolution and human meddling in natural selection made him.

Connect Up With A Processor

Once your little piggie hits market weight, it’s time for processing. The likelihood that the folks who’ve been raising the pigs also processes them is essentially zero – much as the odds are essentially zero that the folks who designed your car can also fix it. Fortunately, pretty much every farmer raising edible animals already has several processors he/she has worked with many times, and is certainly willing to drive your pig anywhere you want it (within reason; you may need to buy the tank of gas).

Mark Sponsler of Parmanian Acres (a prominent breeder of mulefoot pigs, and the guy I’ve most often bought whole animals from) referred to this first and final trip in the pickup as the pig’s “ride of a lifetime.” The pigs tended to enjoy the ride, but I suppose that’s because they are not, as a species, known for readily picking up on word play.

You’ll need to make arrangements with the processor in advance, which means calling them with your “cutting instructions,” making sure they’re able to connect with your farmer so the two can sort out drop-off arrangements, and maybe giving a credit card number.

Cutting is basically a flat fee of something like 50-cents per pound of hanging weight. So, for your hypothetical pig (which weighed 250 when it was still trotting, and will thus be something like 180 pounds hanging) you can expect a base processing fee of $90. But that’s just cutting the fella up into chops, butts, hams, steaks, etc. You want some ground? That’ll be an extra nickel per pound. You want sausage [7] (which could be brats, or italian, or kielbasa, or breakfast links, or some special awesomeness the processor has concocted)? That’s another buck per pound. You want the bellies sliced for bacon? That’s a quarter per pound. You want anything smoked (which you do if you want bacon; by definition it’s a smoked meat)? That’s at least a buck per pound, and more if you want nitrate-free smoking. [8]

There’s a lot to know, and to be frank, many mom-and-pop processors will make you feel like an asshole as you stumble through this. Remind yourself that you are going to be paying them at least $150, and ask all the questions you damn well please.

The last time I got a pig processed it ran about $185. My cutting instructions were something like this:

• both hams (that’s the thigh/butt) kept whole and smoked
• all the bacon, including jowl bacon, cut and smoked [9]
• the neck bones and hocks (which is sort of the knee/lower leg of the pig) smoked (I make a lot of beans and jambalaya, both of which are vastly enriched by a good smoked pig bone)
• both shoulders whole (pork shoulder is used to make slow-roasted deliciousness like pulled pork and tamales)
• the loin cut in half (this is a big, lean, boneless hunk of meat off the back; it’s generally roasted whole and then cut into medallions and served)
• the spare ribs (you often want to specify this, as the rib meat will otherwise go into the ground meat)
• sausage of every stripe (breakfast links, brats, kielbasa, spicy italian, some in casings and some as bulk ground meat)
• the remainder cut into bone-in pork chops, steaks (some smoked), and ground

There’s clearly lots of room for variation here. If you wanted, you could get the whole damn thing as kielbasa, or chops and steaks. Don’t like loin? Get it sliced and smoked as Canadian bacon (also called “back bacon”).

The last time around I also got a few surprises. Because I’d specified the hog’s heads should be left on (I wanted that tasty, tasty jowl bacon), I also ended up with pork tongue (which I’d never had, but it’s like beef tongue, which I like just fine). And, for reasons unknown, I ended up with the liver (in two portions; pigs have big livers, I guess) and heart. [10] Surprise!

But aren’t we getting ahead of ourselves? Your farmer sold you a live pig – although you may never actually have met that pig in person – but your whole conversation with the processor revolves around the treatment of a gutted, exsanguinated, hanging carcasses. Seems like we’ve glossed over something.

Many processors also handle slaughtering. (It’s an additional fee of $45 or so, which covers the small work of killing and the big work of cleaning the carcass and properly disposing of its guts, head, blood, etc.) If you want the jowl bacon, make sure whoever handles your killing knows that, so they leave the head on. If you want to be sure to get the heart, liver, or God forbid, the “sweetbreads” (shudders), now is the time to make that clear. If you have any questions about how your pig is to be dispatched, this is the moment to ask.

So, on that hypothetical pig (which started out weighing in at a lively 250, and ended up as 125 pounds of frozen yummies), you can expect to pay a grand total of about $570: $375 for the pig, $45 for someone to kill it, and $150 for some other folks to break it down, slice it up, smoke some parts, grind up others, and cram some of that into some animal’s scrubbed intestines. This amounts to $4.50 per pound of edible meat. That’s actually pretty competitive, plus you get to have phone conversations with new and interesting people of varied and diverse political leanings, and a nice drive (or two) out into rural Michigan. (Processors don’t deliver.)

Caveats

If you’re going to meet your meat while it’s still fit to root and snuffle, I suppose I should warn you: Pigs, in general, are intelligent animals. They have big ears and small damp eyes, and the nature of clumsy dogs. A pig is a pretty charming brute – and this goes doubly so for family-raised animals and heritage breeds: They each have distinctive markings, which makes it easier to assign them personality. A life in outdoor paddocks makes them lively and inquisitive. Out in the open air they are significantly less offensively smelly than you’ve been led to expect.

Folks of a certain nature might have trouble eating someone they’ve met. In my humble, such people shouldn’t eat meat. The pigs you meet at a small family farm in Michigan are going to be the happiest food animals you will ever meet. Animals in the wild live a life that is marked by continual fear and danger of violent death; it is distinguished by being solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

As for animals bred as a food commodity: Their lives are worse. I once inadvertently drove through the ConAgra feedlots in eastern Colorado. If you’re mostly familiar with Colorado from screens, large and small (as I was until that day), then you likely think it’s all mountains and vistas. That’s western Colorado. Eastern Colorado is basically just an extension of Kansas: Countertop flat, and monoculture as far as the eye can see, countless acres of corn or wheat or, in this case, cows. It was breathtaking and nauseating, cows packed shoulder-to-shoulder out to the literal horizon, as thick as flies on mid-August shit. This was all out in the open, with no obstruction to the wind, and I was driving past at 70 m.p.h., but nonetheless the smell was like being locked in an over-full summerfest Porta John.

Up near the road there were calves, each trapped in a little pen maybe only four times as big as the calf itself, with half that space taken up by a huskie-sized igloo-style plastic dog house (Why? I haven’t the foggiest; to hide in? None of them seemed to be taking shelter in their domes, if that was the intended purpose.) Behind that, it was cows.

I want to stress that this is not hyperbole: There were literally cows packed without gap from the calf pens all the way to the outbuildings, and around those buildings as tight as the tile around a kitchen island counter. From there it was motionless cows right to the edge of the sky. I could have pulled over, climbed the wire fence, hauled myself onto a cow’s back, and walked for hours, out past the horizon, without ever touching the churned, dead mud, hopping from cow to cow like Eliza fleeing Uncle Tom’s cabin.

The sheer number of bodies, the close proximity, was inherently nauseating. More cows than there are kernels on an ear of corn, or maggots on a dumpster-bottom hamburger patty, or stars in the sky. Each weighing about as much as the car I owned at the time. Each as live as me, none with anything very much resembling a life.

In short, it wasn’t a process I really wanted to participate in. I didn’t touch a Hebrew National for a decade.

All of that said, as charming as family-farm pigs are, they are still rough beasts. The first time I visited Mr. Sponsler’s farm, one of his sows had just had a litter. One of the newborns found its way through a loose section of wire fence into a neighboring pen. There, another sow killed it, for no other reason than that the piglet was there, and she could. So, let us have no delusions about these animals. We – as a species – bred them – as a species – to a purpose. If that purpose itself disturbs you, I can’t fathom why you’ve read this far. If you are fine with that purpose – but only so long as you don’t have to look at it head on – then maybe it’s time to reconsider your diet. Say what you like about these pigs, but at least they come to their reputation honestly.

Contacts

-

• Byron Center Meats. This is my processor of choice. They don’t handle slaughtering, but do synthetic nitrate-free smoking, are USDA inspected daily (!), process deer, and have a pretty extensive retail operation with beef, pork, poultry, in a vast panoply of cuts and preparations; if you happen to be in West Michigan, you can pop in and just buy some cuts of whatever you’d like on the spot. www.byroncentermeats.com
• Caledonia Packing. This is a small family-run slaughter operation, the people I use when I’m getting processing done at Byron Center Meats. www.caledoniapacking.com
• DeVries Meats. They specialize in pork processing, handle both slaughter and processing, and are fully USDA inspected. I haven’t dealt with them personally, but I’ve had plenty of pork sausage and bacon that they’ve processed. (They are one of the few full-service USDA-certified processors in the state, so many farmers selling pork cuts go through them.) www.devriesmeatsinc.com
• Mark Sponsler of Parmanian Acres. Mark has been very active in preserving and expanding an especially delicious variety of heritage pig, the mulefoot (I wrote about this a bit for the Current back in 2010; here’s a version of that article, with an overview of heritage pigs vs. conventional factory pigs). A few years back the mulefoot herd numbered only a few hundred nationwide, and was on the brink of being delisted as a viable breed. Thanks to a network of farmers like Mark, it now numbers several thousand and is again robust (and in high demand). Mark’s shifted primarily to raising hogs for breeding (rather than eating), but knows most of the mulefoot breeders in Michigan. (About 90 of those mulefoot are descended from his breeding groups.) He is generally happy to connect farmers and buyers. parmanianacres.tripod.com (Or email me and I’ll connect you to Mark; he’s a really nice guy).
• Old Pine Farm. If you want to dabble in ethical meat without getting quite so nitty gritty (or driving across the state), I advise getting in touch with Old Pine Farm. I’ve had chicken and ducks from them, and they were great. They’ve done meat CSAs in the past, which is something I find pretty tempting. www.oldpinefarm.com

Notes

[1] Disclosure: This whole discussion makes me sound a lot more carnivorous than I am. In the years we’ve bought live pigs and had them processed, our 50 pound share of the pig constituted most of my meat eating for that year – and that’s for a family of three (at the time). On average, a single American will eat that much meat in a given season. Just to make it crystal clear: The average American annually eats four times as much meat as my family of three. And I’ve never considered myself a vegetarian of any stripe, nor do I mean for this to constitute a criticism of those Americans. We’re just whistling different tunes, is all.

[2] I know that percentage sounds bad, but it’s actually just a touch below the national average – like so many things in Michigan. (Data courtesy of this 2011 report from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service: Deer Hunting in the United States: Demographics and Trends Addendum to the 2006 National Survey of Fishing, Hunting, and Wildlife-Associated Recreation)

[3] If you’re from Detroit Metro, like me, it might be hard to think of Michigan as an ag state, but check it out: Michigan agriculture is a $90 billion industry employing more than 10% of the population. We ship apples to Mexico and soybeans to Asia. For all you know, the Kikkoman in those little packets came from our Michigan soy fields.

[4] The USDA defines any farm of less than 179 acres as a “small farm.”

[5] FUN FACT: Michigan currently rears every domesticated comestible worth eating; to hell with citrus and bananas! Besides, give us a few more years of climate collapse, and we’ll harvest those, too! And Asian carp! And ocelots! And delicious fresh-water river dolphins! Pure Michigan! Pure Michigan FOREVER!

[6] Incidentally, you know how you wiggle your baby’s big toe and say “This little piggie went to market, this little piggie stayed home”? Odds are, if you are an average 21st Century American, when you say that you vaguely imagine the little piggie trotting off to market with a grocery basket slung over one arm and a shopping list held in the other trotter. At this time, I invite you to meditate on this term “market weight” a little further, and then rethink why the plumpest toe goes to market and the skinny one next to it gets to hang around the farm for a while longer.

[7] Pro-Tip: The word “sausage” is really imprecise in this context. Many times it just means “ground pork” or possibly “ground pork with some fennel in it.” So, avoid this word. If you want the kind of sausages you cook on a grill or serve on a bed of kraut, say “brats” (which, more confusingly, refers to both a sausage size/shape and a preparation). If you want breakfast sausages, you want “breakfast links.” If you want to make your own sausage patties, say “ground sausage” or “bulk sausage.” If you want pre-made patties, say so, but that’s often pricey (at a buck per pound) and a waste, in my humble.

[8] Which not every processor is keen on doing; the synthetic nitrates help the meat maintain a meat-ish color and texture during the smoking process. Folks accustomed to Oscar Meyer products are often thrown off by the color and texture of raw “natural” smoked meat (which, incidentally, is still processed with nitrates, just “natural” nitrates in the form of concentrated celery juice; it’s a slightly more labor intensive process, and thus slightly pricier). It still cooks up the same, but you may need to reassure the processor that you understand that “natural smoked” bacon might look a little funky pre-frying. FYI, the scientific consensus on the dangers of nitrates (synthetic or otherwise) in processed meats seems to have shifted toward “Mehn – who cares?” over the last several years. That said, I still go for “natural” smoking, because it makes my family happier.

[9] Jowl bacon is exactly what it sounds like: The pig’s chubby neck fat sliced into irregular hunks and smoked. As a rule, muscles that get used very little are tender and mild (see, for example, penned veal), while those that get used a lot are tough and flavorful. Thus, the jowl is great meat.

[10] A pig’s heart is the size and shape of a human heart – which is creepy – but it also works every minute of every day of that pig’s life, so it is tasty (if tough). Grind it up for stew. Am I grossing you out? Keep this in mind: If you’ve had a coney dog or chili at a diner, you’ve eaten plenty of cow heart. Get over yourself or eat more produce. I’m cool either way.

The Chronicle relies in part on regular voluntary subscriptions to support our publication of local columnists like David Erik Nelson. Click this link for details: Subscribe to The Chronicle. So if you’re already supporting us on a regular basis, please educate your friends, neighbors and colleagues about The Chronicle and encourage them to support us, too!

Map 1. Michigan 2012 presidential primary election – Democratic participation as a percentage of total turnout, by county. Details after the jump.

For Democrats, President Barack Obama was unchallenged in the Michigan primary this year, amid a political scuffle about whether the Democratic primary should even be held. With little at stake in terms of the choice of the Democratic nominee, it’s not surprising that the 2012 Democratic turnout was light, compared to 2008.

This  year only 16% of participants in the primary voted on the Democratic side compared with 40% in 2008. That year Obama’s name did not appear on the Michigan ballot, which resulted in about 41% of Democratic voters selecting the “uncommitted” option, compared to roughly 55% who voted for Hillary Clinton. Part of the diminished Democratic turnout this year could have been due to Democrats crossing party lines to vote for Rick Santorum – based on the idea that Santorum would have less of a chance to defeat Obama in the general election.

In Ann Arbor, however, absentee Democratic voters participated in far greater relative numbers than their counterparts who went to the polls in person. Even in the more strongly Republican wards – Ward 2 and Ward 4 – almost 40% of the total primary turnout for absentee voters was on the Democratic side. In the other three Ann Arbor wards, Democratic absentee turnout was closer to 50%.

For readers already familiar with the general geographic distribution of voters who mainly vote Democrat or Republican, the results of the 2012 presidential primary in Michigan likely offer little to refute prevailing wisdom.

After the jump we take a geographic look at Democratic participation, as well as the performance of Romney, Santorum and Paul. We’ve mapped out results at the state level (by county), the Washtenaw County level (by township and city) and the city of Ann Arbor (by precinct). Statewide data is from the secretary of state’s office election results, while the data for jurisdictions within Washtenaw County is based on the county clerk’s election results. Mapping is done through geocommons.com with shape files available through the city of Ann Arbor.

Dynamic Maps

Maps created by The Chronicle include results for the 2008 and 2012 presidential primaries – for Democratic turnout (and by implication Republican turnout), the performance of Romney, Paul and Santorum. (Santorum’s results are for 2012 only, because he didn’t run in 2008.)

Links to the dynamic maps generated on geocommons.com:

• Michigan, results by county
• Washtenaw County, results broken down by township and city
• Ann Arbor, results by precinct

For each map, different results are presented in different “layers,” which can be controlled on the right side of the screen. To view different results, first “uncheck” the box of the layer currently displayed, and check the box of a different layer.

Below we present a selected set of static images from those dynamic maps.

Michigan Dems

Compared to 2012, relative turnout among Democrats across the state in 2008 showed a geographic pattern similar to that in Map 1. Although the relative strength of Democratic turnout was roughly similar in those two years, many more counties were relatively week this year, compared to 2008, and fewer counties were relatively strong.

Map 1. Michigan 2012 presidential primary election – Democratic participation as a percentage of total turnout, by county. The darkest shade of blue (Wayne) reflects 33% turnout. The lightest shades (e.g. Ottawa and Allegan) reflect around 5% Democratic participation.

Map 2. Michigan 2008 presidential primary election – Democratic participation as percentage of total turnout, by county. The darkest shade of blue (Wayne) reflects 62% Democratic turnout. Neighboring Washtenaw had 50% Democratic turnout. The lightest shades correspond percentage-wise to the high-teens and lower 20s. Ottawa, on the western side of the state, had just 17% Democratic participation.

 Michigan: Republican Candidates

Map 3. Mitt Romney's performance in the 2012 Michigan presidential primary election, by county. Romney had a bit over 41% of the statewide vote. He was strong in the southeastern part of the state, in particular in Oakland County, where he received a bit over 50% of the vote.

Map 4. Mitt Romney's performance in the 2008 Michigan presidential primary election, by county. That year, Romney had about 39% of the vote statewide. As in 2012, he was strong in the southeastern part of the state, polling more than 44% in Livingston, Oakland, Macomb and Wayne counties that year.

Map 5. Rick Santorum's performance in the 2012 Michigan presidential primary election, by county. Statewide, he received 37.9% of the vote. He received more than 49% of the vote in several of the western counties.

Map 6. Ron Paul's performance in the Michigan 2012 presidential primary election, by county. Paul received 11.6% of Republican votes statewide. Support was strongest in Lapeer and Wayne counties with around 16% of voters supporting Paul. On the low side were counties like Ottawa, where Paul tallied around 8.5% of the vote. Paul's support across the state was more uniform in 2012 than in 2008. (See Map 7.)

Map 7. Ron Paul's performance in the Michigan 2008 presidential primary election, by county. Paul tallied 6.2% of the vote statewide that year. He was strongest in Hillsdale County (in the south), getting nearly 17% of the vote.

Washtenaw Dems

The Democratic turnout in Washtenaw County in 2012 compared to 2008 was a similar story to the statewide picture. Both years, Democratic turnout was strongest where it would ordinarily be expected – in the eastern part of the county. But diminished participation translated into fewer townships at the strongest levels of support.

Map 8. Washtenaw Democratic participation in the Michigan 2012 presidential primary election as a percentage of total turnout, by township and city. Ypsilanti Township, with 28% participation, had the highest in the county. The city of Ypsilanti had 24%, while the city of Ann Arbor had 17%. Townships with the lowest Democratic turnout, like Saline Township in the mid-south, had low single-digit Democratic turnout.

Map 9. Washtenaw Democratic participation in the Michigan 2008 presidential primary election as a percentage of total turnout, by township and city. The city of Ypsilanti had the highest Democratic participation, with 65%, followed by the city of Ann Arbor with 63%.

Washtenaw: Republican Candidates

Map 10. Mitt Romney's performance in Washtenaw County in the 2012 Michigan presidential primary election. Countywide, Romney had 42% of the vote. He was strongest in the middle swatch of townships, and the city of Chelsea, where he tallied better than 50% of the vote. He was weakest in Ypsilanti, where he received 29% of the vote.

Map 11. Rick Santorum's performance in Washtenaw County in the 2012 Michigan presidential primary election. Countywide, Santorum had 37% of the vote. He was strongest in August Township (lower righthand corner) with 47% of the Republican vote. He had 45% of the Republican vote in Lyndon Township (upper lefthand corner). He was weakest in the geographic center of the county in Scio and Lodi townships, where he received about 31% of the vote.

Map 12. Ron Paul's performance in Washtenaw County in the 2012 Michigan presidential primary election. Countywide, he almost 16% of the vote. He was strongest in the city of Ypsilanti, where he received 29% of the Republican vote. He was weakest in townships like Saline, where he received just over 5% of the vote.

Ann Arbor Dems

Compared to the 2008 turnout in the city of Ann Arbor, when the outcome of the nomination process for both parties was somewhat uncertain, the Democratic turnout in the city of Ann Arbor is somewhat of a mixed bag.

Map 13. Ann Arbor Democratic participation as a percentage of total turnout in the Michigan 2012 presidential primary election. Democratic participation was strongest in Ward 3, Precinct 5 in the south of the city, with about 18% of the total turnout.

Map 14. Ann Arbor Democratic participation as a percentage of total turnout in the Michigan 2012 presidential primary election. In the strongest precincts, Democratic turnout ranged between 70-80%, while in even the weakest precincts, it was around 50%.

Ann Arbor: Republican Candidates

Map 15. Mitt Romney's performance in Ann Arbor in the Michigan 2012 presidential primary race. In the traditionally strong Republican precincts of Ward 2, Romney's support ranged from 54% to 63%. In other precincts, his percentage was mostly in the low 30s.

Map 16. Rick Santorum's performance in Ann Arbor in the Michigan 2012 presidential primary race. Santorum was strongest in precincts that as a whole do not tend to enjoy strong Republican support. In Ward 1, Precinct 10 in the central north of the city, he got 53% of the Republican vote, and in Ward 3, Precinct 6 he received 44% of the vote. In traditional strong Republican precincts of Ward 2, he received percentages in the low to mid-20s.

Map 17. Ron Paul's performance in Ann Arbor in the Michigan 2012 presidential primary race. Percentage-wise, Paul was strongest in the center of the city, where he tallied more than half the Republican votes – but the raw numbers were in some cases in the single digits. In the next-strongest areas, he typically had percentages in the mid-20s.

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The general election on Tuesday, Nov. 2 comes after eight games have been played on a 12-game schedule for the University of Michigan football team. The guys in the winged helmets are currently sitting at 5-3, which is better than the 2-7 record they’d achieved at the same point during their 2008 campaign.

The top end of a voting machine tape from Ward 1, Precinct 5 from the Aug. 3, 2010 primary.

For me, the 2008 general election – and because I am quick to generalize, all elections – will always be linked to UM football. They’re linked in the form of Jonas Mouton, a linebacker I met in the course of my election day travels in 2008. Mouton was nearly denied the franchise when he tried to vote at the Pioneer High School precinct, but was finally able to cast his ballot.

Elections are, of course, not one bit like a football game, let alone a football season – that’s purely a writerly ploy to set up some kind of thematic backdrop against which I can ask readers a favor: We’re asking for help in collecting precinct-level election results on Tuesday night.

Otherwise put, on Tuesday evening, we’d like to ask that you play for The Chronicle’s team. To quote legendary UM coach Bo Schembechler, when we collect the precinct level results, “we’re gonna play together as a team. We’re gonna believe in each other, we’re not gonna criticize each other, we’re not gonna talk about each other, we’re gonna encourage each other.”

Veteran consumers of local online information know that election results for all the precincts in Washtenaw County will eventually be available on the county clerk’s website. As results are filed with the clerk, election staff upload them incrementally. With polls closing at 8 p.m., and poll closing procedures taking roughly 30-60 minutes to complete, the first results typically begin to appear on the clerk’s website towards 10 p.m. and are generally uploaded for the entire county sometime in the early morning hours, if not sooner. That’s pretty quick, actually.

But it’s not Denard Robinson quick.

So The Chronicle is making publicly accessible a Google spreadsheet with city of Ann Arbor election results that will contain data that’s available directly from the precinct polling places. Results should start to trickle into that spreadsheet around 8:30 p.m. and could be completed by 9 p.m. or so.

We experimented with this approach back during the Aug. 3 primary – a kind of non-conference game warm up – and what we learned is that it would be helpful to have more people on our team. If you’d like to help – by gaining editing access to the spreadsheet, or by texting, Tweeting, or calling in results to us – shoot us an email: dave.askins@annarborchronicle.com.

For readers who are willing to play on our team, but are daunted because they don’t know how to run any of our plays, I’ve put together a short election eve playbook.

Paper Tape

The optical scanning voting machines generate a paper tape with all the tabulated results from the paper ballots it scanned during the day. It’s similar in appearance to a cash-register receipt. This is what you’re waiting for.

Note that the poll workers generate the paper tape from the voting machines as one of the later steps in the regimented process for closing down the polling location. They generate two tapes as a part of their prescribed procedure, and then generate an additional tape, which they’ll affix to the wall outside the entrance to the polling place for public viewing. If a poll worker drops one of the paper tapes, do not yell “FUMBLE!” and start a scrum for it. That’s a personal foul and is penalized from the spot of the infraction with 15 yards and a loss of down.

Procedures

Be respectful of the fact that poll workers have already worked a long and tedious day. Don’t crowd them – that’s a 5-yard penalty for being off-sides. If they ask why you’re there, tell them, and ask where you can park yourself so that you are out of their way. Don’t try to chit chat with them. You’re not allowed to help them. Just sit on the bench and be patient.

Preferred Data

The ballot contains over a hundred different data points. If you volunteer to play on The Chronicle’s team, are we really expecting you to report every piece of data on the paper tape? No. Some of you will choose to do that. Others will choose to report just some of the races – those you have time for, or those you think are the most interesting. We’re not going to yell at you and make you do punishment push-ups for not reporting exhaustively. As Bo said, “we’re not gonna criticize each other, we’re not gonna talk about each other, we’re gonna encourage each other.”

Preferred Data Entry Method

It’s less work for The Chronicle if you opt to accept access to the spreadsheet and enter the results directly into the sheet. But some of you might want to just head over to the polls and send us a text message or an email with a result or two. That’s fine – a touchdown drive is sometimes made up of 3- and 4-yard runs.

Preferred Precinct

The most natural precinct to choose would be your usual voting location. If we hear from several people who are covering a particular precinct, though, we might suggest a different one that’s still close to your neighborhood. But if multiple people wind up collecting results from the tape at a single polling location, guess what we’d like you to do?

That’s right. Work together to double- or triple-team the paper tape. That way it’ll go faster for everyone.

Go team.

Joel Goldberg inspects a pouring of white wine – either from Michigan or Ohio – as Heidi Kabanuk, Vinology's wine director, brings out more offerings to be judged on Sunday evening. A similar wine judging took place the following night in Columbus, Ohio.

“Did you hear why the Michigan-Ohio State game might be canceled? Because Michigan can’t get past Toledo.”

David Creighton told the joke while sitting at a table in Vinology’s Bubble Room with Joel Goldberg and Claudia Tyagi, waiting to be served 30 glasses of wine. Each. Everyone laughed – and they weren’t even hammered.

In fact, despite the fact that plenty of people who are focused on the Michigan-Ohio State rivalry this weekend will be intent on getting hammered, the gathering at Vinology on Sunday evening had an entirely different goal: To highlight the quality of each states’ wines, in the setting of a friendly competition staged in Ann Arbor and Columbus.

Here’s some words about the event for you to savor before we reveal the winners, but if you read The Chronicle like you drink your wine – straight from the bottle in one long chug – scroll right down to the bottom.

Sunday’s event illustrates the power of personal networks. Andrew Hall, who’s involved with Slow Food Columbus, had originally envisioned a kind of anti-Beaujolais Nouveau campaign, intended to highlight Ohio wines at a time when this year’s Beaujolais hits the shelves – that happened on Thursday. He talked with Bear Braumoeller, an Ohio State professor and another Slow Fooder, who suggested linking it to the Michigan-OSU rivalry. Braumoeller contacted his friend Julie Weatherbee, who agreed to handle the logistics under the auspices of Slow Food Huron Valley in Ann Arbor. That included the task of finding a venue.

Julie Weatherbee, right, handled the logistics for Sunday's wine tasting in Ann Arbor. Next to Weatherbee is her husband, Bob Droppleman. Inspecting the contents of the glass is Shana Kimball, one of the three Gastronomical Three, which is a local blog with a focus on food. In the background, the judges do their work.

After a bit of a search, she ended up at Vinology, which donated their basement Bubble Room, as well as the services of Heidi Kabanuk, the restaurant’s wine director and private events manager. They also provided some of the Michigan wines at cost, baskets of their made-in-house crackers to cleanse the pallet, and a few plates of hors d’oeuvres for the judges and 20 or so other guests who attended.

Weatherbee was also tasked with finding judges. At about this same time, The Chronicle published a wine column by Goldberg, which Weatherbee saw. She contacted him and he agreed to enlist others he knew in the wine community. Goldberg, whose column will appear in The Chronicle on the first Saturday each month, is editor of the MichWine website. He pulled in David Creighton, who has worked in the wine industry for 35 years and is currently writing a wine column for The Ann Arbor News, and Claudia Tyagi, a wine consultant and member of the elite Court of Master Sommeliers. The fourth original judge – Chris Cook, who was this year’s chief judge of the Michigan Wine & Spirits Competition couldn’t make the event. Goldberg’s wife Sally, a former editor of a wine trade magazine in South Africa who arrived a few minutes after the tasting began, was drafted to act as the fourth judge, with a minimum of arm-twisting.

Claudia Tyagi, a member of the Court of Master Sommeliers and a judge for the Michigan-Ohio Wine Clash.

Wines were brought out in flights of two to six glasses per category, beginning with sparkling wines. Though all had served as judges many times before, they were first briefed by Hall about the peculiarities of this particular contest. Primarily, that included the fact that they were using a 20-point system rather than the more common 100-point scale, and they were asked not to use half points. (This caused a bit of mild consternation – the judges felt that the 20-point scale did not allow for nuance, especially without the half-point option, but they did not press the issue.)

Hall provided scoring sheets, which outlined the maximum number of points allowed in each of five categories: appearance, aroma/bouquet, taste/texture, aftertaste/finish and overall impression. Each glass was marked with a number written on a tag that was affixed to the stem of the glass – only after the judging was completely finished for the evening did they learn which wines had been served.

After this point, much of the evening went like this: Swirl, sniff, sip, spit. Repeat.

The spitting part happened discretely into a mug, then when the mug reached capacity, judges would pour the liquid into one of two buckets set on the floor.

The judges remarked that this competition was more solitary than most. Typically, judges are asked to score after reaching a consensus, and so spend much time talking with each other about the various qualities and characteristics of the wine. On Sunday, things were often quite quiet.

David Creighton, a wine expert who currently writes a column for The Ann Arbor News. None of the judges wore maize, blue or red.

That’s not to say there wasn’t lively banter from time to time. Here are some of the judges’ more descriptive comments from throughout the evening:

• “It tastes like soap – acidic soap.”
• “This actually hurts my teeth.”
• “Is it gold enough for you?”
• “This is everything I don’t like in a California Chardonnay – and I found it in a Michigan Chardonnay!”
• “The older vintages are sublime when the oak drops out. But this one hasn’t reached sublimity yet.”
• “That’s as bretty as they get.”
• “For a lot of wines, it’s like opening a musty closet – they need to get out and stretch.”

So for The Chronicle, it was quite a spectator sport. And since it was abundantly clear that we don’t know the first thing about wine, the judges were gracious enough to try to explain what they were seeing, smelling and tasting. Exchanges went something like this:

David Creighton, deftly swirling the wine in his glass: “Smell this.”

The Chronicle, sticking our nose into the glass and breathing deeply: “Mmmm.”

Creighton: “It’s sulfur.”

The Chronicle: “Er…is that bad?”

The correct answer is yes.

On Monday, a similar judging occurred in Columbus, after which Hall compiled the results. He hopes this becomes an annual event, with the goal of promoting wines in both states, increasing consumer demand and prompting more restaurants to add local wines to their offerings. It might also increase the availability of Michigan wines in Ohio, and vice versa. Currently, state laws require that wine be sold through distributors, who often don’t have the economic incentive to deal with small local wineries, Hall said, especially ones that are out-of-state.

And now, the results you’ve been waiting for – the winners of the Great Wine Clash of ’08. In this competition, at least, it was a pretty good year for Michigan:

• Sparkling Wine: Shady Lane Cellars Blanc de Blancs 2000 (MI)
• Aromatic White: Ferrante “Golden Bunches” Riesling 2007 (OH)
• White Wine: Black Star Farms “Arcturos” Chardonnay sur lie 2006 (MI)
• Pinot Noir: Black Star Farms “Arcturos” Pinot Noir 2006 (MI)
• Red Wine: Kinkead Ridge Revelation 2006 (OH)

One final note: The “Arcturos” Chardonnay sur lie was Goldberg’s pick, in his Nov. 1 Chronicle column, for the best bargain in the city, at $11. Read about his other finds here.

Guests at the Ohio vs. Michigan Wine Clash – many of them members of Slow Food Huron Valley – watch the judges do their thing.

Andrew Hall, who organized the Ohio vs. Michigan Wine Clash, and Heidi Kabanuk, Vinology's wine director, pour wine for the judges. Heidi reports that she can carry 12 wine glasses at a time.

Joel Goldberg, publisher of the MichWine website, recently began writing a monthly wine column for The Chronicle.

Heidi Kabanuk serves the judges another flight of white wines. A black spit bucket is sitting on the northeast corner of the table.