Mark Grebner

Career

Grebner is a resident of East Lansing, Michigan. He enrolled at Michigan State University as an Alumni Distinguished Scholar in 1970, completing a bachelor's degree in urban policy through MSU’s James Madison College in 1981. He earned a juris doctorate from the University of Michigan Law School.

He became active in voter registration efforts in East Lansing in 1971 following the ratification of the U.S. Constitution's 26th Amendment, which lowered the voting age from 21 to 18. He was an elected Ingham County Commissioner from 1977 to 2012, except 1981-84, and was selected by board colleagues as Chairperson of the Board of Commissioners in 1997, 2001, 2005 and 2011. Grebner's work as Ingham County Commissioner included drafting a comprehensive county ethics policy and support for public transit initiatives.

A Democrat, he represented a district on the Board of Commissioners that included a substantial portion of the MSU campus. In 2012, instead of running for re-election to the county board, Grebner challenged incumbent Ingham County Drain Commissioner Patrick E. Lindemann, alleging fiscal mismanagement and cronyism, while Lindemann touted environmental protection and cost-savings. Lindemann defeated Grebner in the primary election and won re-election in the November general.

In 2016, Grebner again ran for Ingham County Commissioner, this time as a resident of district 8, including precincts on the western edge of East Lansing. He was elected to a two-year term with 70 percent of the vote.

Grebner is the president of Practical Political Consulting, a voter list and consulting firm which works mostly for Democrats in Michigan. In 1999, the firm expanded its operations to include Wisconsin. In an article about local and national campaign consultants in the early years of electronic data science, The Wall Street Journal described the work necessary to transform raw voter data into a mailing label targeted to specific voters: "Mr. Grebner painstakingly gathers lists of local voters from hundreds of Michigan township and municipal clerks, many of whom don't have computers and keep only hard-copy records. He enters the names in his battery of desktop computers, then matches them to addresses and other data."

Beginning in 2004, his firm conducted a large-scale experiment, called ETOV, to "shame" nonvoters into participating in elections. The results of the research were published in multiple academic peer-reviewed journals, including American Political Science Review. The journal Political Behavior described the origins of the experiment: "Mark Grebner, a political consultant in search of a cost effective way to increase voter turnout, developed a form of direct mail with information about whether they and their neighbors voted in recent elections. Grebner's intuition was that nonvoters are ashamed of abstaining but believe they can get away with it because no one knows whether in fact they voted." The effects of this study communicating voter history to neighbors, in research conducted in partnership with Yale University, was determined to be three times more effective at increasing voter turnout from other get-out-the-vote mailings.

From 1974 to 2004, he published Grading the Profs, which reported student survey results on Michigan State University teaching faculty.

Grebner is a commentator on politics and political issues, and is often interviewed on radio and television and quoted in news articles. He also writes on "Technical Politics" for the web site Michigan Liberal. He is described by public radio as "an ardent liberal known widely for his political savvy and his irreverent, often provocative commentary."

Grebner is noted for his iconoclastic and humorous political tactics. The New York Times wrote that "Calling Mr. Grebner eccentric would be too obvious." David Josar, of the Detroit News, calls him "super wonk". During his campaigns for election and re-election as county commissioner, he has used self-deprecating slogans such as "No Worse Than The Rest," "He May Be a Fool, But He's Our Fool," and (in a coupon book) "Buy One Politician, Get One Free." A humorous letter he sent to his constituents in 1986, announcing his plans for re-election, was reprinted in the "Readings" section of Harper's Magazine. In 2009 Grebner filed a lawsuit based on alterations to this Wikipedia page that he alleges were defamatory.

Political activities

Grebner has been frequently involved in public controversies, typically as an advocate for liberal positions, for voting rights, for freedom of information, and for the interests of university students: